RE: EtherCAT and NI slave chassis [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

["LYNCH, Damien" <dly@ansto.gov.au>]

Hi Ronaldo,

A couple of guys in our group have been getting into NI a lot lately so I am told we have the software required to program the FPGA in the 9144 chassis (most probably with a 9402 digital I/O module installed). In our current system the counting gate time used is 100 ms so I think an EtherCAT 1 kHz update rate (which is what we'd aim for) should be fine.

Thanks,
Damien 


-----Original Message-----
From: ronaldo.mercado@diamond.ac.uk [mailto:ronaldo.mercado@diamond.ac.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, 12 September 2013 6:22 PM
To: LYNCH, Damien; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: RE: EtherCAT and NI slave chassis [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Hi Damien,

We trialled the National Instruments modules with the NI 9144 [1] backplane that supports several compact RIO modules.

I tested it with the NI 9125 [2] and the NI 9239 [3] at 1 KHz. Even though the modules are capable of acquiring samples faster, acquiring them over Ethercat would mean modifying the backplane FPGA and we were not prepared to reprogram it (it also involved purchasing more hardware and licenses). Our Detectors group characterised the ADCs and found them superior to Beckhoff ADCs.

Diamond's EtherCAT driver depends on XML information files that National Instruments don't provide. They do provide a tool to generate the xml description files and I only managed a few configurations using product revisions as a marker for configurations.

The backplane's EPROM also has to be programmed for Etherlab to bring up the chain, as described in Etherlab's FAQ page [4].

I have not tested any counters. Would the Ethercat update rate of 1 Khz be sufficient for your counters?

HTH,

Regards,

Ronaldo

[1] NI 9144 8-Slot EtherCAT Slave Chassis for C Series I/O Modules
    http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/206735
[2] NI 9215 4-Channel, 100 kS/s/ch, 16-bit, ±10 V Analog Input Module
    http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/208793
[3] NI 9239 4-Channel, 24-Bit Analog Input Module
    http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/208797
[3] I'm trying to establish communication with a slave, but the
    configuration fails. What can I do?
    http://www.etherlab.org/en/ethercat/faq.php


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