Kick-start your slaves!
Thin EtherCAT stack designed to be embedded in a more complex software and with efficiency in mind.
- Working state (can go to OP state, read/write P.I., send/receive SDO)
- interface redundancy is supported
- CoE: read and write SDO - blocking and async call
- CoE: Emergency message
- CoE: SDO Information
- Bus diagnostic: can reset and get errors counters
- hook to configure non compliant slaves
- consecutives writes to reduce latency - up to 255 datagrams in flight
- Support EtherCAT mailbox gateway (ETG.8200)
- build for Linux, Windows and PikeOS
NOTE The current implementation is designed for little endian host only!
- CoE: segmented transfer - partial implementation
- CoE: diagnosis message - 0x10F3
- Bus diagnostic: auto discover broken wire (on top of error counters)
- More profiles: FoE, EoE, AoE, SoE
- Distributed clock
- AF_XDP Linux socket to improve performance
- Addressing groups (a.k.a. multi-PDO)
To improve latency on Linux, you have to
- use Linux RT (PREMPT_RT patches),
- set a real time scheduler for the program (i.e. with chrt)
- disable NIC IRQ coalescing (with ethtool)
- disable RT throttling
- isolate ethercat task and network IRQ on a dedicated core
- change network IRQ priority
- Tested on PikeOS 5.1 for native personnality (p4ext)
- You have to provide the CMake cross-toolchain file which shall define PIKEOS variable (or adapt the main CMakelists.txt to your needs)
- examples are provided with a working but non-optimal process/thread configuration (examples/PikeOS/p4ext_config.c): feel free to adapt it to your needs
Absolutely NOT suitable for real time use, but it can come in handy to run tools that rely on EtherCAT communication.
To build the library, you need to install:
- conan for windows (tested with 2.9.1)
- gcc for Windows (tested with w64devkit 2.0.0)
- npcap (tested with driver 1.80 + SDK 1.70 through conan package)
KickCAT project is handled through CMake. To build the project, call CMake to configure it and then the build tool (default on Linux is make):
- Create the build folder
mkdir -P build
- Install conan and the dependencies with it (you may need to adapt the profile to suit your current installation). This step is mandatory for Windows, optional otherwise
python3 -m venv kickcat_venv
source kickcat_venv/bin/activate
pip install conan
conan install conan/conanfile_linux.txt -of=build/ -pr:h conan/profile_linux_x86_64.txt -pr:b conan/profile_linux_x86_64.txt --build=missing -s build_type=Release
- Configure the project (more information on https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/)
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
- Build the project
make
In order to build unit tests, you have to enable the option BUILD_UNIT_TESTS (default to ON) and to provide GTest package through CMake find_package mechanism. You also need gcovr to enable coverage report generation (COVERAGE option). Note: you can easily provide GTest via conan package manager:
- Install conan and setup PATH variable (more information on https://docs.conan.io/en/latest/installation.html)
python3 -m venv kickcat_venv
source kickcat_venv/bin/activate
pip install gcovr
- Install GTest in your build folder:
mkdir -p build
cd build
conan install ../conan/conanfile.txt -of=./ -pr ../conan/profile_linux_x86_64.txt -pr:b ../conan/profile_linux_x86_64.txt --build=missing -s build_type=Debug
Beware -s build_type must be consistent with CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE otherwise gtest will not be found.
- Configure the project (can be done on an already configured project)
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
- Can go from INIT to PRE-OP to SAFE-OP to OP with proper verification for each transition.
- Can read and write PI
- Supports ESC Lan9252 through SPI.
- Supports XMC4800 ESC (with NuttX RTOS). Pass the CTT at home tests.
- Tools available to flash/dump eeprom from ESC.
- CoE: Object dictionnary
- CoE: SDO support
- Test coverage
- Support more mailbox protocols (SDO Information, FoE, EoE)
- Allow more than 2 PI sync manager. (multi-PDO)
- DC support.
- Improve error reporting through AL_STATUS and AL_STATUS_CODE (For now it only reports the errors regarding state machine transitions.)
A working example based on Nuttx RTOS and tested on arduino due + easycat Lan9252 shield is available in examples/slave/nuttx_lan9252.
Another example using the XMC4800 with NuttX is available.
Follow the readme in KickCAT/examples/slave/nuttx/xmc4800/README.md for insight about how to setup and build the slave stack.
It is possible tu run a virtual network with the provided emulated ESC implementation. To start a network simulator, you can either create a virtual ethernet pair (on Linux you can use the helper script 'create_virtual_ethernet.sh') or use a real network interface by using two computer or two interfaces on the same computer. Note: the simulator has to be started first
- Load eeprom
- Emulate basic sync manager behavior
- Emulate basic FFMU behavior
- Support interrupt (update the right register depending on the accesses on other one and the interrupt configuration)
- Support redundancy behavior
KickCAT versions follow the rules of semantic versioning https://semver.org/
On major version update, a process of testing starts. The version is in alpha phase until API stabilization. Then we switch to release candidate (-rcx). To leave a release candidate state, it is required that:
- the software is tested intensivly (at least 5 continuous days - 24*5 hours) without detecting a bug (realtime loss, crash, memory leak...).
- the code coverage is sufficient (80% line and 50% branch) for master/slave stack (tools and simulation can be less).
For each tag, Conan center has to be updated (https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/tree/master/recipes/kickcat).
When a version leaves the release canditate state a github release shall be generated on the corresponding tag.
Kickcat is available on conan-io. Whenever there is a new tag which is consider sufficiently stable:
- Create a new PR on https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index
- Follow PR: conan-io/conan-center-index#19482 to add new versions to the recipe
https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tc3_io_intro/1257993099.html&id=3196541253205318339 https://www.ethercat.org/download/documents/EtherCAT_Device_Protocol_Poster.pdf
various: https://sir.upc.edu/wikis/roblab/index.php/Development/Ethercat
diag: https://www.automation.com/en-us/articles/2014-2/diagnostics-with-ethercat-part-4 https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/ethercatsystem/1072509067.html&id= https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000kHwESAU
esc comparison: https://download.beckhoff.com/download/document/io/ethercat-development-products/an_esc_comparison_v2i7.pdf