ethercat/beckhoff e-bus modules in Tango?

# 7 years ago
claudio	Hello dancers, has anybody tested or intergated Beckhoff ELxx I/O modules with ethercat in Tango? Seems a nice and flexible soultion. Best regards

# 5 years ago
Alexey_Bykov	Dear Mr. Claudio Scafuri, i saw your post (https://www.tango-controls.org/community/forum/c/general/other/ethercatbeckhoff-e-bus-modules-in-tango/) about using EtherCAT with Tango. Did you get any information about this? I just try to choose a type of the Ethernet Fieldbus, but there are not so many communication classes in Tango Catalog.

# 5 years ago
claudio	Dear Mr. Bykov There were no Tango devices for using directly ethercat. We did some experiments with ethercat using a linux PC master with SOEM libraries. For some applications it may work. In our experiments we successfully used some Beckhoff I/O modules , analog and digital. For other more complicated applications, such as control of motors, the SOEM library seems to be not sufficient. At the moment we do not have the resources to test other libraries, etherlab for example. In the same time we also tested the same Beckhoff I/O modules with the EK9000 modbus over TCP/IP adapter. This solution is a little slower than the ethercat SOEM libray but offers the same functionality: analog and digital I/O; the control of motors seems out of reach. There are also some ready made Tango devices for interfacing to modbus systems. Keep in mind that ethercat, as far as i konw, cannot run on switched networks because the protocol is not routable, at least wiht standard switches, and is very sensitive to random transmission latencies. It needs a dedicate infrastructure: in our experiments we used a PC with two ethernet cards: one dedicated exclusively to ethercat. We are going to use some ethercat based systems in an indirect way: there will be a native industrial ethercat controller (for examplea a Beckhoof soft PLC) doing the low level motion control tasks, exporting a high level interface by means a TCP/IP based protocol. This interface will be exploited by a Tango device.

# 5 years ago

claudio

Dear Mr. Bykov
There were no Tango devices for using directly ethercat.
We did some experiments with ethercat using a linux PC master with SOEM libraries. For some applications it may work. In our experiments we successfully used some Beckhoff I/O modules , analog and digital.
For other more complicated applications, such as control of motors, the SOEM library seems to be not sufficient.
At the moment we do not have the resources to test other libraries, etherlab for example.
In the same time we also tested the same Beckhoff I/O modules with the EK9000 modbus over TCP/IP adapter.
This solution is a little slower than the ethercat SOEM libray but offers the same functionality: analog and digital I/O; the control of motors seems out of reach. There are also some ready made Tango devices for interfacing to modbus systems.
Keep in mind that ethercat, as far as i konw, cannot run on switched networks because the protocol is not routable, at least wiht standard switches, and is very sensitive to random transmission latencies. It needs a dedicate infrastructure: in our experiments we used a PC with two ethernet cards: one dedicated exclusively to ethercat.
We are going to use some ethercat based systems in an indirect way: there will be a native industrial ethercat controller (for examplea a Beckhoof soft PLC) doing the low level motion control tasks, exporting a high level interface by means a TCP/IP based protocol. This interface will be exploited by a Tango device.