README.md

EtherCAT drivers

This package contains EtherCAT drivers to integrate with IgH EtherCAT Master for Linux.

For now this only contains r8169 driver, for kernel 3.8.x, 3.10.x and 3.14.x. They are used to control the Meka robot at Ensta ParisTech at 1Khz with rtai 4.0.

Installation

Download EtherCAT 1.5.2

wget http://etherlab.org/download/ethercat/ethercat-1.5.2.tar.bz2
tar xfvj ethercat-1.5.2.tar.bz2

Get the drivers

cd ethercat-1.5.2
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ahoarau/ethercat-drivers/master/r8169-3.8-3.10.patch
## Apply patch
patch -p1 < ethercat-drivers/r8169-3.8-3.10.patch

Build the EtherCAT master modules

Example with kernel 3.10 and driver r8169 (Meka robot).

./configure --enable-cycles --enable-r8169  --with-rtai-dir=/usr/realtime/ --disable-8139too --with-r8169-kernel=3.10
make -j$[$(nproc)+1] all modules
sudo make modules_install install
sudo depmod

Configure your environnement

sudo -s
echo KERNEL==\"EtherCAT[0-9]*\", MODE=\"0664\" > /etc/udev/rules.d/99-EtherCAT.rules
cp etc/init.d/ethercat /etc/init.d/ethercat # to start the master
cp etc/sysconfig/ethercat /etc/sysconfig/ethercat # the config file
exit

Then copy the mac address of the ethernet card you'd like to use (use ifconfig, on meka-mob it's 00:01:2e:49:9c:a0) to MASTER0_DEVICE and set the driver your card should use to DEVICE_MODULES ( meka-mob uses r8169):

sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/ethercat

In Meka's RTPC, the file looks like this:

MASTER0_DEVICE="00:01:2e:49:9c:a0"
DEVICE_MODULES="r8169"

Start EtherCAT master

Then when you have configured your environnement (see the install note on ethercat-1.5.2), you can start the driver:

sudo service ethercat restart

See output messages with dmesg:

dmesg

Start EtherCAT master at startup

cd /opt/etherlab
sudo cp etc/init.d/ethercat /etc/init.d/
sudo chmod a+x /etc/init.d/ethercat
sudo update-rc.d ethercat start 51 S .

Contact : Antoine Hoarau hoarau.robotics@gmail.com