Configuring 3rd party slaves programmatically with CoE

[MarkCG]

Hi everyone, I see that this topic has come up before but couldn't really find what I needed. I have many Beckhoff EP series etherCAT slaves and they are working fine with my cRIO. However I am using Beckhoff's "XAE" software to configure the 3rd party slave setting manually, things like measurement range / mode , averaging, etc. This configuration is done under a tab called "CoE online" in the Beckhoff software. I presume that means "CAN over EtherCAT". I want to be able to set all this stuff programmatically when the cRIO boots up so that way I can get around this manual process. 

Are there any examples on how to to do this? If not, how do I access the LabVIEW methods to do it? 

[MarkCG]

anyone?

[Yin_W · Accepted solution]

Have you looked into the NI EtherCAT SDO examples? I believe most of the configuration you done using other vendor's tool is manipulating OD object.

[joergh · Accepted solution]

Hi,

there is an example for read access (search for the 'Read SDO' example) with LabVIEW (at least in 2019). CoE (CANOpen over EtherCAT) is the protocol to read or write SDOs (Service Data Objects) individually. With FoE (File over EtherCAT) you can transfer a complete file consisting of multiple SDO values.

Although the example is for read access only, write works similarly.

[MarkCG]

Thank you Jorg and Yin, I'll try that example with the Write method and report back in a few days as I bring up a new system

[Thoric]

@joergh

Can you confirm that CoE is actually supported by NI? I appreciate SDO Read/Write probably uses CoE, but it's hard to find any definitive documentation from NI that confirms CoE is what they're using here, and that it's officially supported. I've found plenty of forum posts from people who believe CoE is not supported.

[joergh]

@Thoric

of course I am not 100% sure, but it looks like SDO access is always CoE (see e.g. https://www.ethercat.org/download/documents/EtherCAT_Device_Protocol_Poster.pdf), and SDO read/write is definitely supported.

A lot of advanced EC features are sadly missing, and sometimes it's hard or even impossible to get 3rd party devices to work with the NI EC master.