[Etherlab-users] EtherCAT Mailbox Gateway

[Graeme Foot]

Hi Truc,

The mailbox gateway server allows direct access to slave device mailboxes for external utilities (e.g. TwinSAFE loader).

Note: it has no security so be careful when its active and what has access to it.  In my case I use the Windows based TwinSAFE loader from a separate Windows PC so I expose the server sockets to the outside world (which in this case is a local machine network).

The patch file you attached is for the Gavin Lambert patchset which includes the multiple mailbox protocol patches as you note below.  If it didn't have the parallel communication path it would need to block the master mailbox access which may affect your applications performance while it is in use.  We still use the Gavin Lambert patchset (20190904) against the HG repo (revision 2679 (33b922ec1871), from 18/18/2017) so I can't comment on the current state of the EtherLab master.

As I mentioned, the MBG server provides direct access the slave mailboxes, so you can manually send and receive mailbox communications to test the MBG server functionality.  The patch includes a readme file that has a Testing section.  This describes how you can use the commandline to send/receive mailbox data (see line 1545 in the patch).

>From memory, it is only the merge into master.c that directly affects the master code, the rest should be largely independent.

Regards,
Graeme.


From: Truc Vuong <truc.vuong at framecad.com>
Sent: Thursday, 12 June 2025 14:30
To: Graeme Foot <Graeme.Foot at touchcut.com>
Subject: EtherCAT Mailbox Gateway

Hi Graeme,


In my project, I had been using etherlab mainstream code on gitlab (https://gitlab.com/etherlab.org/ethercat) , which didn't contain mailbox gateway server  which is what I needed to use for twinsafe loader script provided by beckhoff.
I don't have lots of experience/ understanding with etherlab code, could you please give me some insights of how mailbox gateway patch reply on? Your advices would be so valuable to us since you are actively working on the project.

My goal is able to run the etherlab latest version with a mailbox gateway patch. I found your mailbox gateway server patch (attached above) online.
>From what I can see there is refactory version of ethercat code at somepoint that your patch is working based on , completely different from the mainstream etherlab.

I believed that the refactory commit happen around commit below : where how coe/soe/eoe mailbox received/ and some sii image scan and dict request introduce (attached above)

commit c361da20b0d1bf2cd768f2888093308667fb5b9d
Author: Knud Baastrup <kba at deif.com<mailto:kba at deif.com>>
Date:   Sun Aug 10 23:52:44 2014 +0200

Support for multiple mailbox protocols.


My question is that EtherCAT mailbox gateway patch depends on that refactory?
What would mailbox gateway mainly reply on inside master/ for mailbox gateway intepreter to work with twinsafe loader.bin?

Cheers


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Truc Vuong

Senior Control Systems Engineer

P: +64 22 0957098



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