[etherlab-users] EtherCAT eeprom and EtherLab master driver

dgm dgm at baykitty.com
Tue Jul 10 06:46:56 CEST 2012


Thank you very much.
Don

On 2012-7-10, at 下午12:43, Graeme Foot wrote:

> Hi Don,
> 
> I don't have too much experience on this side, but yes, my understanding
> is that the .bin file you are trying to download to the drive is the
> same information that the drive should return.  (see:
> http://www.etherlab.org/en/ethercat/faq.php)
> 
> 
> I had a problem with an early firmware revision of the Yaskawa amp where
> it too had bad SII information and would not accept a download (all
> fixed in current firmware revisions).
> 
> To work around this I patched the EtherCAT master so that it would read
> the SII information from my own file rather than downloading it from the
> slave.
> 
> The original patch I used was from Jesper Smith:
> http://lists.etherlab.org/pipermail/etherlab-users/2011/001463.html
> 
> The above patch uses udev to find and load the file.  My distro hasn't
> got udev, so I made a modification to be able to load the file direct:
> http://lists.etherlab.org/pipermail/etherlab-users/2011/001464.html
> 
> 
> The above patches match the file name based on vendor_id and
> product_code.  To do this it downloads the first 16 words of the SII, so
> at least this much must be correct.
> 
> 
> Since then I have made another modification so that it will first look
> up a file based on vendor_id, product_code and revision_number.  If
> there is no match, then it will try vendor_id and product_code.  (I have
> attached the patch.)
> 
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Graeme.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dgm [mailto:dgm at baykitty.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 10 July 2012 14:40
> To: Graeme Foot
> Subject: EtherCAT eeprom and EtherLab master driver
> 
> 
> 
> Hello, Graeme.
> 
> I have a question that I am certain you can answer off the top of your
> head even though it doesn't involve the Yaskawa drive.
> 
> The company I work for wants to use a Metronix drive with their EtherCAT
> interface card in a complex industrial network. The drive appears to
> work (communicate) well driven by SDOs only.
> 
> The problem is that they don't really support the EtherCAT protocol for
> the eeprom. They only provide a boot portion (first 128 bytes) and
> expect that you will use TwinCat to configure and run the system. So
> setting up the PDOs/FMMUs for real time operation becomes a problem.
> 
> Using the configurator or TwinCat and their xml file, I can construct
> what I need in the eeprom and I can use either of those programs to down
> load that data to the drive.
> 
> My problem is that if I read back (upload) the contents of the eeprom,
> only the first 256 bytes are in the correct sequence, then the upload
> seems to start at address 0x0 again - only this time, the entire file
> that I wrote is read back. This means that the text strings are
> interrupted at 0x100 with a replay of the boot segment followed by the
> text strings and PDO/FMMU data. Unfortunately, the eeprom is only 1024
> bytes so I don't get all the PDO/FMMU addressing, etc and no terminator
> 0xfff.
> 
> The result is that the master driver cannot find what it expects at the
> addressed locations in the sii -> configuration fails.
> 
> So my question is: is it not true that the upload (reading the eeprom
> back) should look just like the .bin file that is downloaded to the
> eeprom using either the configurator or TwinCat?
> 
> This certainly appears to me to be what the specification says but
> Metronix is extremely slow or unwilling to answer any questions
> regarding EtherCat and I have no other EtherCAT devices (or experience)
> to compare with.
> 
> I would appreciate your time and promise not to dog you with questions
> if you will be so kind as to answer this one.
> 
> Thank you,
> Don Morgan
> ECET
> <etherlabmaster-1.5-2266-b_load_sii_from_file.patch>




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