Can't get EtherCAT (9144) to recognize CAN (9853) module

[BobbyO]

Well, just when I thought I was out of the woods... I made lots of meaningful progress with this system yesterday, and was successfully communicating via CAN.  I came in this morning and turned the system back on, and nothing relying upon the Scan Engine was working any more.  Carefully going through the build and deploy process again, when I got to the point where I needed to put the Scan Engine into Active Mode, I would consistently get an error dialog stating:

Error -2147138442 occurred at Property Node (arg 1) in Set Scan Engine Mode.vi

Possible reason(s):
The module cannot be found. If the physical module exists, and the device is in FPGA mode, recompiling and downloading may fix this problem.

I went so far as to completely wipe my RT system clean, re-install all of the software, and rebuild my application.  Same results.

Suggestions?

[DirkW]

It looks like your FPGA code is not executing correctly. Is your chassis powered and running?

Try power cycle the 9144 chassis and set the scan engine to active from the project. deploy your User definde variables again. before doing that.

For the FPGA code you could implement the FPGA LED blinking fromone of the EtherCAT example to see whether it runs.

DirkW

[BobbyO]

1. 9144 chassis is powered and the Run LED is blinking.  I can deploy the FPGA code without problems, so some kind of communication is occurring.

2. Tried deploying and then power cycling the 9144.  After doing that, the item for setting Scan Engine Mode (under RT Controller >> Utilities) is grayed out.  In this case, I opened up the Set Scan Engine Mode.vi and ran it to try to set the mode; it returned the error I mentioned previously.

3. I already have the FPGA LED "heartbeat" code in there, and it's not blinking.  However, the blinking logic is AND'ed with the EtherCAT State property, so I don't know if the FPGA isn't running or if the EtherCAT state is bad.

4. Let me point out again that this system was fully operational when I went home last night, and faulty on power-up this morning.  I must've compiled, deployed, and power cycled everything 20 times yesterday without any incident.  I made really good progress developing new functionality yesterday, and was confident that I had climbed the worst part of the learning curve concerning FPGA, EtherCAT, CAN, and all of those wonderful acronyms.

[BobbyO]

On a whim, I powered down the chassis, unplugged each module, and re-seated them in their connectors.  Everything works correctly now.

I cannot tell you how much this bothers me, that the symptoms and errors reported had nothing to do with the apparent fault mechanism.

[craige]

BobbyO,

I experienced the same thing and fixed the problem in a related way. Perhaps my experience will spread some light on the situation.

I was attempting to run a peice of RT code which used the Scan Engine palette for discoverying newly introduced or removed c-series modules from my system (I have a PXI running 3 etherCAT 9144 chassis). I made the mistake of adding the PXI to my project using the "Existing Device" option. This caused my C-series modules to be auto-discovered in the project. Normally autodiscovery would be good except the purpose of my development today was to demonstrate that modules could be effortlessly added and removed from my system. I had the RT code set the Scan Engine to Configure Mode and removed my modules. The code then refreshed the modules and placed the Scan Engine into Active mode upon my request. I got the same error (-2147138442) anytime I attempted to use the Search Variable Container.vi.

I believe the problem was that my project (which showed my PXI controller as being connected, i.e. green led in project) was holding on to the autodiscovered hardware configuration that was established when first added the PXI chassis. At the same time I had physicallly changed my hardware configuration by removing some C-series modules. Although I was handling this change in software, the projects outdated autodiscovered hardware now conflicted with this.

Solution: I power cycled my PXI and etherCAT chassis and created a new project by adding a "New Target" and then associating the IP address via the Right Click "Controller>>Properties". This avoided the autodiscovery and left me free of any conflicts. Now I am able to use scan engine VIs regardless of a change in my hardware configuration since my project isn't holding on to any of this.

I could have fixed my problem just like you fixed your by reconnected the appropriate hardware. Perhaps this wasn't your problem at all but in my case it makes sense and I got it working.

Hope this helps,

Craig E.

[paubin]

I have an application using a IC 3173RT controller with an ethercat chassis 9145. My application is working since 2 years now and I had a call from the maintenance teams this week-end saying they have error : -2147138442. Machine was down.

I tried couple of thing but I could never set scan engine to active, everytime I tried I had that error.

I finally swap the NI 9145 Ethercat with a new one and everything worked. not sure the old 9145 is bad because I tried it in an new project and I could start the scan engine with the same module in it.

the application exe was working  back with that new 9145....

I would appreciate to have some feedback.

Thanks

Patrick