Operation with modular machine configurations: Initialisation phase of the onboard EtherCAT can take a few minutes (corrected from V01.06.04)

The EtherCAT bus can now be transferred immediately to the "Operational" state during start-up and no longer requires several attempts to do so.

After completion of the start-up phase, an error may occur in the EtherCAT master regarding the bus status change. This should be acknowledged by the system. This remaining "unattractive" behaviour will be finally eliminated in a follow-up version of the firmware.

With the onboard EtherCAT, the duration of the initialisation until the 'Operational' state is reached can take up to several minutes if the parameter 0x2030 (checksum via the parameter set) is read cyclically in the application. 

The cause for this behaviour is the untimely processing of an EtherCAT command in the start-up phase, coupled with incorrect behaviour of the EtherCAT master. This causes the start-up of the bus to be aborted and then restarted by the controller. The time delay is caused by a longer processing of the checksum determination for 0x2030 in i950ES devices. If this parameter is polled from the application or via a fieldbus in a fast cycle, the described problem may occur. 

The behaviour can also occur if the EtherCAT bus is subsequently restarted via a bus reset (e.g. L_IODrvEtherCat.Restart= True). 

 

- Delay the polling of parameter 0x2030 into a phase after the start-up or restart of the EtherCAT bus.

- Reduction of the polling frequency of parameter 0x2030.