REAL-TIME INDUSTRIAL ETHERNET ETHERCAT COMMUNICATION CONTROL

摘要

This present invention is a communication controller for real-time industrial Ethernet EtherCAT (Ethernet for Control and Automation Technology), which consists of the communication controller and corresponding computer program. The controller consists of micro processor with 100Mb/s Ethernet and USB function integrated, Ethernet interface, USB interface, FLASH memory and other peripheral components. The corresponding computer program includes micro process based EtherCAT master communication program and PC based configuration software. The master communication cycle contains two EtherCAT frames; one is defined as data fetching frame and another as data sending frame. The master read input data from every slave nodes with data fetching frame and map the input data to output data according to communication relationship between slaves, then send output data to slaves with data sending frame. The PC based software can exchange data with the communication controller via USB interface, configuring the controller and reading status data.