KPA EtherCAT Master is a comprehensive product for industrial automation specialists who intend to add high-speed communication capabilities to their applications and solutions. It is a second generation of EtherCAT Master by koenig-pa, implementing a new advanced architecture and several unique features that facilitate better integration and performance increase. Also, it supports a various range of operating systems.
KPA EtherCAT Master is a software stack, which corresponds to all EtherCAT Technology Group stan-dards and has numerous features, which can be used for developing of cost-optimized and powerful PLC on almost any platform (such as Arm/Arm64 or x86/x64) to control EtherCAT I/O produced by any vendor.
Meets EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) standards
KPA EtherCAT Master can be delivered as standard or customized feature packages. Two standard packages are available according ETG.1500 standard: Class A (Standard package) and Class B (Basic package). Moreover, koenig-pa GmbH introduces Premium package, which integrates various additional features for creating innovative applications.
Available for numerous operating systems, as well as OS-less systems
KPA EtherCAT Master is available for numerous operating systems, including Windows, INtime, RTX64, Linux, Xenomai, QNX, VxWorks, FreeRTOS, ITRON as well as OS-less systems. Upon request, koenig-pa GmbH experts can adjust support for any operating system.
Hardware extensions for Xilinx/Intel FPGA (Altera) and Texas Instruments PRUSS Sitara CPU
Availability of IP Cores for Xilinx and for Intel FPGA (Altera) FPGAs, PRUss co-program for Texas Instrument Sitara CPUs (AM47x and AM57x) increases productivity and data processing efficiency. Implementation for AM6x is available upon request.
Auto Configuration
KPA EtherCAT Master can configure bus on the fly without EtherCAT configuration tools. The Autoconfigurator module allows a user application to select slave’s configuration and to switch between different configurations of the slave, for example, between position control of a drive and velocity control, or between bus configurations with a different number of slaves.
Process image logging for data transferring into analytic tools
Process image (PI) logger allows to collect real-time data for transferring to other levels without influence on real-time behavior of the control system. Data can be transferred to MATLAB, LabView (TDMS format), and any other analytic tools. LabView full integration is provided by the partner of koenig-pa GmbH – Ackermann Automation GmbH. Moreover, koenig-pa GmbH has designed a special Python extension, which allows to aggregate data into a file of any format, for example a CSV-file, for its further processing.
EtherCAT network analysis
KPA EtherCAT Master includes diagnostic and statistical tools for examining EtherCAT traffic. When more detailed information is needed to analyze EtherCAT traffic, the third-party analyzer Wireshark can be used. Wireshark is a free and open-source tool, making it one of the top packet analyzers available. To analyze real-time systems alongside Wireshark, a real-time sniffer like ET2000 from Beckhoff should be utilized.
For details, refer to EtherCAT network analysis using Wireshark.
KPA EtherCAT Master 2 advantages
A new generation of the Master core brings exceptional possibilities of the automation control over EtherCAT network. Master 1.6 has many limitations due to its inflexible and monolithic architecture. In the version 2.x we revised Master architecture and do our best to avoid all limitations of previous versions and improve and extend Master functionality. Full description of KPA EtherCAT Master 2 advantages.
