Installing EtherCAT IgH master

Dependencies

EtheCAT IgH master might need the libclang and protobuf libraries. To install them on ubuntu run:

sudo apt-get install libclang-dev
sudo apt-get install -y protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev
sudo apt install autoconf libtool pkg-config

Installing the EtherCAT master

Here are the steps to install the ethercat master

git clone https://gitlab.com/etherlab.org/ethercat.git
cd ethercat
use the stable-1.6 branch git checkout stable-1.6
- if needed stable-1.5 will work too
./bootstrap
./configure --enable-generic --disable-8139too
make all modules
sudo make modules_install install
sudo depmod

Info

Rust stack will need to know where the ethercat binary is located. So add the path to the ethercat binary to the ETHERCAT_PATH variable
- either by: export ETHERCAT_PATH=$HOME/ethercat
- or add it to the .bashrc file

Configure EtherCAT master

In order configure the ethercat we need to give the master the MAC address of the PC/ehternet port.

run ip a to find the mac address of the ethernet port:

2: enp8s0f2: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether d0:63:b4:05:47:37 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Modify the file /usr/local/etc/ethercat.conf
- MASTER0_DEVICE - set the mac address (ex. d0:63:b4:05:47:37) or the name of the port (ex. enp8s0f2)
- DEVICE_MODULES set to ”generic”
Then condifure the udev rules for /dev/EtherCAT0(go to the mode 0666)
- create the ethercat rule: sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-EtherCAT.rules
- add the following line: KERNEL == "EtherCAT[0-9]*" , MODE ="0666", GROUP ="users"
- reload the rules: sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Info

There are some helpful notion pages with a bit more info on the ethercat setup:
- ethercat github
- ethercat docs

Start the EtherCAT master

Start the ethercat master:

sudo ethercatctl start

Verify that /dev/EtherCAT0 exists

ls /dev/EtherCAT0

The output should be something like:

$ ls -l /dev/EtherCAT
crw-rw-rw- 1 root users 509, 0 Jun  4 07:01 /dev/EtherCAT0

Use ethercat (installed with make install after the compilation) to veviry is the master is working
- ex. ethercat graph (list of nodes connected)
- ex. ethercat slaves (list of slaves connected)

The output should be something like:

$ ethercat graph
/* EtherCAT bus graph. Generated by 'ethercat graph'. */

strict graph bus {
    rankdir="LR"
    ranksep=0.8
    nodesep=0.8
    node [fontname="Helvetica"]
    edge [fontname="Helvetica",fontsize="10"]

    master [label="EtherCAT\nMaster"]

}