Re: Communicating with Bechoff I/O through EPICS

[Jure Varlec via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hello Sibylle,

Given that you were trying to use EtherCAT to communicate with the PLC, I think some additional explanation might be helpful. EtherCAT is Beckhoff's realtime protocol, and needs special hardware and software like etherlab. Which is why it can be fiddly. ADS, on the other hand, is not a realtime protocol. Inside the PLC, it serves as a boundary between realtime and non-realtime worlds. That's why it is much simpler to use and requires nothing special on the IOC side. Unless you want to do realtime control within the EPICS IOC, I recommend you go with ADS.

Best,
Jure

On 5/28/25 15:30, Žiga Oven via Tech-talk wrote:

Caution: This email originated from outside of Cosylab.

Hi Sibylle,

 

Regarding your questions about the communicating with Beckhoff I/O, Cosylab has developed an EPICS device support for Beckhoff ADS protocol.

 

You can find a presentation about it here [1], sources can be downloaded from the GitHub [2] and documentation can be found here [3].

 

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

 

Best regards,

 

Žiga Oven

[1]  https://indico.global/event/7048/contributions/66597/

[2] https://github.com/cosylab/adsDriver

[3] https://epics.cosylab.com/documentation/adsDriver/

 

 

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Sibylle Ducroizé via Tech-talk
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2025 13:24
To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: Communicating with Bechoff I/O through EPICS

 

Hello,

I have just started working on an update of the control system software for an accelerator.
I am still trying out different configurations and learning how to use EPICS. I followed the tutorial of the EPICS documentation so I know basic information about IOCs and have common support modules installed (asyn, calc, streamDevice,...)

I would like to communicate with Beckhoff I/O terminals, both as a way to learn EPICS and to try out configurations for the final project. I have tried following this advice from a previous tech-talk question from 2018.
So far I have installed etherlab's ethercat master and I've tried installing PSI's ecmc which needs e3 to build. Unfortunately, e3-build fails to install epics base so I didn't get very far...I am on ubuntu which might be the problem.

My questions :

1. Are there maintained EPICS drivers for communicating with Beckhoff I/O ?

    1.a. If so, is ecmc a good option ? (As it depends on e3, meant to run on centOS which is obsolete)

    1.b. Are there other similar alternatives ?

2. Should I basically write my own drivers ?

    1.a. An advice / general approach for me to follow as I am new to EPICS ?

Thanks,

Sibylle