VS EtherCAT Slave is a software stack, which is developed to run on microcontrollers, CPUs, or DSPs with or without any operating system (OS) and is especially designed to minimize time to market for companies that want to be a part of dynamically increasing EtherCAT market.
Meets EtherCAT standards
VS EtherCAT Slave Stack supports all features defined in the EtherCAT standards. Each new version is verified with the latest released and all internal versions of the EtherCAT Conformance Test Tool (CTT), as koenig-pa GmbH is a member of the Technical Working Group Conformance. EtherCAT functions:- Mailbox protocols: CoE, EoE, FoE, SoE VoE
- Distributed Clocks (DC)
- Different scan rates
Portability
VS EtherCAT Slave Stack may be presented as a software stack with an embedded Hardware Abstraction Layer (typically implemented through OSAL and driver part), which can be used for simple support of any EtherCAT ASIC and communication interface (PDI) between ASIC and a microcontroller.Interfaces
- Compatible with any Beckhoff EtherCAT Slave Controllers (ESC):
- ASIC ET 1xxx
- IP-Core
- IRQ-handling of hardware events
- Polling of mailbox and Process Image
- Static Object Dictionary (OD) with pointer given from application
- Supporting Intel- and Motorola-data formats
Optimized memory usage for embedded platforms
The amount of RAM used depends on the application design and the size of the Object Dictionary (OD). For example, in case of a static OD usage (a build based on source code):RAM size:
>= 3 KB for Basic package>= 8 KB for Standard package
ROM (flash) size:
>= 55 KB for Basic package>= 64 KB for Standard package
Moreover, to minimize the final size of the application, VS EtherCAT Slave Stack can be customized by editing the configuration file. For example, it is possible to deactivate Mailbox EoE, Mailbox VoE and Mailbox FoE.
Ready-to-use solutions
On the basis of the VS EtherCAT Slave Stack various EtherCAT slaves are implemented.
VS EtherCAT Slave Stack may include ready-to-use solutions for specific platforms and operating systems such as:
Platforms:
- SAB 80x16x (Infineon)
- XMC4800 (Infineon)
- MicroBlaze (Xilinx)
- Sitara AM335x with integrated ESC in PRUs (Texas Instruments)
- C2000 (Texas Instruments)
- STM32 (ST)
- NIOS II (Intel FPGA/Altera)
- ARM 3 – 9, ATmega128 (Atmel)
- PPC 52xx, MPC8536 (Freescale)
Operating systems:
- Linux (with/without RT-Preemption patch)
- Linux with Xenomai
- QNX
- SYS BIOS
- VxWorks
- Windows
- INtime
- RTX/RTX64
- OS-less
VS EtherCAT Slave Stack Development Kit (SSDK) is a complete tool chain containing the VS Slave Stack itself, VS EtherCAT Studio and VS EtherCAT Master for Windows and other types of OS.
Also, within SSDK koenig-pa provides the samples demonstrating various PDI usage.
Delivery Package
| Features | Basic | Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Mailbox protocol: CoE | + | + |
| Static Object Dictionary with pointer given from application | + | + |
| With / without Interrupt Service Routines (ISR) | + | + |
| Mailbox protocols: EoE, FoE, SoE, VoE | - | + |
| Runtime generation / changing of Object Dictionary (OD) | - | + |
| Adapted to operating system by using Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL) | - | + |
| Virtual Ethernet card support for EoE (depending on OS) | - | + |
