11-21-2017 02:21 AM
Hello together,
I own a PXI 1078 connected to a EtherCAT Expansion Chassis NI 9145. The expansion chassis will be used to implement FPGA I/O. At the same time, we want to control a Kollmorgen AKD drive.
My question is: if I put the ethercat expansion chassis in FPGA mode, how are the data transmitted to & back to the PXI? Can I still communicate with the motor drive or does the whole system have to be in Scan mode?
Best regards,
Lysandros
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11-27-2017 07:22 AM - edited 11-27-2017 07:25 AM
Hello Lysandros89
it depends on your implementation
Programming the FPGA on an NI EtherCAT Expansion Chassis
Programming EtherCAT I/O With FPGA Intelligence
A simple way are user defined variables on the FPGA and use the EhterCAT implementation in parallel with this.
11-28-2017 03:00 PM
Hello Alexander,
thanks for the links and the advice. I am realizing that by using the Ethercat bus, I am loosing the advantage of the backpane synchronization which is offered with PXI. Would you recommend adding I/O and FPGA cards into the PXI 1078 and running everything there instead of going with remote expansion chassis like the NI-9145?
Best regards
Lysandros
11-29-2017 01:28 AM
Hello Lysandros89,
if this is possible yes, because of better performance an access to the I/Os.