Software architecture
poulpe_ethercat_controller crate is intended to be used with the poulpe boards that are connected to the network. The crate can be used to communicate with the poulpe boards, read and write the SDO and PDO objects, and update the firmware over the EtherCAT network. The endpoint interface is a GRPC server and client interface that can be accessed by multiple clients at the same time, either in rust or python.
Crate structure
ethercat_controller: This is the main crate that does the heavy lifting of the communication with the ethercat master.- It is a wrapper around the
ethercat-rscrate. This crate enables to create the ethercat master form an ESI xml file. - See more in ethercat_controller
- It is a wrapper around the
poulpe_ethercat_controller: This is an abstraction layer on top of theethercat_controllercrate. It provides a more user friendly interface to the user with specific functions for poulpe boards.- See more in the poulpe_ethercat_controller
poulpe_ethercat_grpc: This crate uses thepoulpe_ethercat_controllerto allow for reading assynchronously from multiple poulpe boards connected to the same ethercat master. It is based on thegrpcprotocol. It allows for creating a single server that can be accessed by multiple clients.- See more in the poulpe_ethercat_grpc
python_client: This is a python wrapper of thepoulpe_ethercat_grpccrate’s client side. It allows for reading from multiple poulpe boards connected to the same ethercat master from python and in that way enables quick prototyping.- See more in the python_client
config: This is a directory that contains the configuration files for the poulpe boards. It contains the eeprom configuration files for the LN9252 chip on the poulpe boards as well as the EtherCAT networks slave configuration yaml files that are used to create the ethercat master.- See more in the config The full stack looks something like this:
ethercat_controller creates the direct connection to the EtherCAT master deamon (which communicates with the poulpe boards). poulpe_ethercat_controller provides the abstraction layer for the poulpe boards around the ethercat_controller. Finally, poulpe_ethercat_grpc creates the server that can be accessed by multiple client instances.