EtherCAT

Realtime Performance for Realtime-Communication!

EtherCAT Master for QNX Neutrino RTOS v.6.4

STEINHOFF is partner from Koenig-PA and offers the KPA-EtherCAT Master for QNX 6.4 for the DACHS product suite, as well as a DACHS-EtherCAT function-block library for DACHSview-SDL. For configuration tasks is offered the configuration tool "KPA EtherCAT Studio".

Features of the EtherCAT- Master for QNX 6.4:

it's based on a specialized protocol module for the io-packet interface of QNX 6.4
it allows the communication with EtherCAT based IO modules with short bus cycles:
the minimal bus cycle takes 30us with 64 bytes packets and a 2.2 GHz CPU)
the bus cycle can be synchronized by and with the application.
CANopen over EtherCAT (CoE)
Ethernet over EtherCAT (EoE)
File over EtherCAT (FoE)
distributed clocks
Master and Slaves state control
Slave-to-Slave communication on Master side
EtherCAT frames logger and scheduler
Events logging
Network diagnostic

Optimizing bus performance of Ethernet based fieldbusses

Frame transmission time vs. frame size

The frame size defines the maximal frequency of the bus cycle. This is the case for Ethernet based fieldbusses like e.g. EtherCAT, PROFINET, POWERLINK a.s.o.

This fact must be noticed for the design of the size of the slave I/O images and poll sequences. Huge I/O images of the fieldbus slaves lead to low bus update cycles.

QNX and Neutrino are registered trademarks and PHOTON is a trademark of QNX Software Systems