[etherlab-users] Synchronizing the EtherCAT application time to the DC reference clock

[Matthias Bartsch]

Hello Gavin,
Thank you very much for your explanations. They made the things much more clearly to me!
About the Sync0 phase between the slaves and my master, I forgot to tell that I'm using a shift time of -150 microseconds. My cycle time is 500 microseconds.
As far as I understood the slaves should trigger the data exchange and start their own plc cycle 150 microseconds before my master cycle starts.
When I read the input data at the beginning of my cycle I should get the slave data I/O from 150 microseconds before. Is it right?
In contrast the dc slave reference clock time will be the time when the telegram has passed the reference clock slave (- transmission time). Is it right?
Calling the "queue" commands will just trigger the desired operation for the next "send" command.
So that means I have to compare the time I get from the reference clock with my master application time when I have called the send function. Ok?

I'll rework my calculation of the application time because I think it's wrong.
I'm using a servo drive in cyclic synchronous torque mode but very rarely I get a wrong actual position from the slave. This is happened if the jitter for starting my communication cycle is 15 microseconds higher than normal.
Actually the jitter shouldn't be so important because I request the data triggered by Sync0 150 microseconds before....


Have a nice weekend!
Matthias

Von: Gavin Lambert [mailto:gavinl at compacsort.com]
Gesendet: Freitag, 2. Februar 2018 00:22
An: Matthias Bartsch; etherlab-users at etherlab.org
Betreff: RE: Synchronizing the EtherCAT application time to the DC reference clock

Actually you typically shouldn't have Sync0 simultaneous with your communication cycle; that causes problems.  The goal is to get it into a locked phase arrangement.

Sync0 is typically when the slave's actions trigger - it asserts outputs and captures inputs ideally both at that precise instant (though there might be some delay if it needs to do one before the other).  However there is generally some setup time before Sync0 required (so you have to provide the next cycle's outputs at least this amount of time before Sync0) and some transfer time after Sync0 required (so you have to wait that long after Sync0 before you can read the inputs).  The slave's documentation should tell you how long each of these times are, and you need to allow a little bit of extra time to cope with jitter on the master's end and the comms delay of the network itself.  If you have no clue, aiming for somewhere in the middle of your sync cycle is usually a fairly safe bet.

The most important aspect of the EtherCAT comms cycle is when you call ecrt_master_send.  This is what actually sends (and receives back) the datagrams and transfers all data to and from the slaves.  Your goal is always to make this call happen consistently with as little latency and jitter as possible.  None of the other calls matter in terms of timing.

ecrt_master_reference_clock_time retrieves the 32-bit time of the reference slave as of when you called ecrt_master_send, provided that you called ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks at some previous point (each cycle).

ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time retrieves the 64-bit time of the reference slave as of when you called ecrt_master_send, provided that you called ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time_queue at some previous point (each cycle).

(In principle doing both ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time_queue and ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks on every cycle is a bit wasteful.  It would be better if you could just do a 64-bit sync, but this is not supported at present.  If you're worried about bandwidth then you should call ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks on every cycle and ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time_queue only occasionally.  You cannot omit calling ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks.)

For maximum consistency, you should call ecrt_master_application_time immediately prior to ecrt_master_send.  You should also call it on each cycle, although in practice it matters most when it's doing the slave DC configuration, which will span several cycles across the slaves shortly after activating the master.  Also rather than using a monotonically increasing value as it appears you're using at the moment, I think it's more typical to use the actual PC clock time, corrected for the offset between the master clock and the reference clock.  I'm not sure which is "better" though.

(Also note that most things work best when you always use the first DC-capable slave as the reference clock, which is the default.  If you're explicitly designating a clock elsewhere on the network then there might be complications.)

If you are trying to synchronise the reference clock to the master (which you are not; it tends to be less accurate), you also have to call ecrt_master_sync_reference_clock between ecrt_master_application_time and ecrt_master_send.  It doesn't matter when you call ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks as long as you do it periodically (typically recommended once per cycle, unless you have a really fast cycle time).  If you're using ecrt_master_reference_clock_time then you have to sync slave clocks at least as often as you ask for the time.

ecrt_master_receive can be called at any time after the packets arrive back, which will be shortly after ecrt_master_send (exactly how long depends on your network size) - but it's most common to use this time to do a proper idle sleep and process it at the start of the next cycle rather than the end of the previous one.  That can cause higher jitter if your processing times aren't consistent, however (unless you have two smaller sleeps rather than one large one), so the way you're doing it isn't a bad one.  You do have to call it before anything else that uses the results of the datagrams, such as the time calls above.

If you can hook a scope up to a slave's SYNC0 and SOF pins (if accessible), that will give you the best idea of how your timing cycle looks.

From: Matthias Bartsch
Sent: Friday, 2 February 2018 05:12
To: etherlab-users at etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users at etherlab.org>
Subject: [etherlab-users] Synchronizing the EtherCAT application time to the DC reference clock

Hello everybody!
I'm using the unofficial patch set from https://github.com/ribalda/ethercat (2017-11-08).
My RTAI communication cycle is synchronized to the DC slave reference clock (average jitter < 1µs). I need to extrapolate the position of servo drives to the beginning of my cycle.

I'm not sure about the right use of the functions for reading the reference clock.
I want to start my cycle at the time of the "Sync0" interrupt.
My questions are: When is the time sampled that I get by calling
            ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time(m_poMaster, &ui64RefClockTime)); ?

How I have to initialize my application time (first call of "ecrt_master_application_time(...)")?
My synchronisation seems to work but I'm not sure about the phase shift between the Sync0 event and the start of my communication cycle.

My code looks something like this:

In the first real time cycle I call:
ecrt_master_application_time(m_poMaster, m_ui64AppTime_ns);  // with m_ui64AppTime_ns=0
ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks(m_poMaster);
ecrt_domain_queue(m_po_domainInput);
ecrt_master_send(m_poMaster);
// busy wait 25µs for getting the answer
ecrt_master_receive(m_poMaster);
ecrt_domain_process(m_po_domainInput);
//
// .... Later sending the output data
In the next cycles I do this:
ecrt_master_receive(m_poMaster);
ecrt_domain_process(m_po_domainOutput);
ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time_queue(m_poMaster);
ecrt_domain_queue(m_po_domainInput);
ecrt_master_send(m_poMaster);
// busy wait 25µs for getting the answer
ecrt_master_receive(m_poMaster);
ecrt_domain_process(m_po_domainInput);

uint64_t ui64RefClockTime;
ecrt_master_64bit_reference_clock_time(m_poMaster, &ui64RefClockTime));
m_ui64AppTime_ns += static_cast<uint64_t>((m_io__dNominalCycleTime) * 1e9);
ecrt_master_application_time(m_poMaster, m_ui64AppTime_ns);
m_out_iDcSysTimeDifferenceMaster   = m_ui64AppTime_ns - ui64RefClockTime;  // Time drift value
ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks(m_poMaster);


With kind regards

Matthias Bartsch
ARADEX AG

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