[etherlab-users] configuration

[Graeme Foot]

From: Paul Mulligan [mailto:mulligan252 at yahoo.ie]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 February 2016 11:17 p.m.
To: Graeme Foot
Subject: configuration

Hi Graeme,

What in your opinion is the best way to configure an Ethercat system. Do you use the ET 9000 configuration tool?

The requirement here is to be able to configure all the SDO and PDO entries for the modules with a GUI without having to hard-code this data into the application.

Thanks,
Paul


Hi,

What we do in our app is hardcode the functions around configuring and using each of the module types we support, and use an XML configuration file to define what modules are used for the particular installation.

Our EtherCAT PC is headless, connected to a separate Windows PC that provides the GUI and upper level (non-realtime) control logic.  The EtherCAT PC has a web server interface that allows control and monitoring of the application via the Windows PC.  We have also been working on extending the web interface to allow GUI editing of the apps config file.  This is 90% complete, but keeps being put on the back burner as other projects keep coming up and it really is quite easy to edit XML files direct.


In future versions, if I ever get time, I would like to be able to replace the hardcoded functions by instead reading module description (ESI) files, but hardcoded functions gives you so much more flexibility and we don’t often need to support new module types.

I’ve never used the ET9000 configuration tool so can’t comment as to whether that is a good option.  What I can say is that the EtherCAT configuration section is a small part of our configuration file so for us using the ET9000 tool would likely be pointless.


Regards,
Graeme.

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