Installing EtherCAT

  • ethercat-rs uses 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

Installing the EtherCAT master

  • Install the dependencies (on ubuntu):
    • sudo apt install autoconf libtool pkg-config
  • 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 (for older linex kernel <6.12)
    • ./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 configure 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: - Setup EtherCAT - Integration to Bedrock (a bit more recent) - Also the ethercat docs are very helpful

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"]

}