EhterCAT questions

We are looking at using the PPMAC EtherCAT to communicate with EtherCAT enabled I/O and drive modules. Can you please help answer the following questions:

1) My understanding is PPMAC can be ordered with EtherCAT option. Has this "master" been tested and certified with the EtherCAT technology group (http://www.ethercat.org/)?

2) Are there any Delta Tau EtherCAT I/O and motor drive slave modules available at this time? If not, when are they expected?

3) Does PPMAC EtherCAT master support re-routing when EhterCAT network have multiple routes to a slave, and the main/active route goes down?

1.There is no certification test for a master or at least there wasn't the last time we checked. However, Delta Tau is a regular participant at the EtherCAT North America plugfest to help insure interoperability with various slave modules, both I/O and drives. In addition, many drives are kept at Delta Tau's facility from various manufactures for testing.

2. Currently there are no Delta Tau slave modules available at this time. We do not currently have a target date for delivery of any.

3. Redundancy is not currently available.

Thanks for the information. One last question:

4) Will the Delta Tau EhterCAT master support synchronizing to an external clock provided by an EtherCAT slave (i.e. IEEE 1588 device).

Thanks for the information. One last question:

 

4) Will the Delta Tau EhterCAT master support synchronizing to an external clock provided by an EtherCAT slave (i.e. IEEE 1588 device).

Yes we have added the ability to synchronize to an external slave. ecat[0].dcrefslave will do this. You set this to the slave number you want the distributed clocks to use as the reference slave. We have not done this with the EL6688 but with amplifiers.

The other parameters associated with this are

A.) ECAT[0].DCRefBand

This is how many nsec out of sync before a correction to the PowerPMAC phase interrupt rate will be made in order to stay in sync with the reference slave. 10000 is usually a good value for this.

B.) ECAT[0].DCRefPlus

How much to increase the phase interrupt rate if the clock drift of the master is greater than positive ECAT[0].DCRefBand. Usually 2 is a good value for this

C.) ECAT[0].DCRefMinus=2

How much to decrease the phase interrupt rate if if the clock drift of the master is greater than -ECAT[0].DCRefBand. Usually 2 is a good value for this

D.) ECAT[0].DCClockDiff

The drift between the master and slave can be monitored with in the watch window.

If the distributed clocks are setup correctly the ECAT[0].DCClockDiff should stay not deviate more than +/- ECAT[0].DCRefBand

Regarding your previous question on redundancy we should have this feature verified in our Q1/Q2 2013 release.