KPA EtherCAT Master 2.4 – New features

MIP Framework extension

A possibility to create executors in different threads automatically has been added into MIP Framework as the Threads Processor template.

Timed send emulation with RTX64 NAL

Added Timed send emulation support for RTX64 NAL driver.
With the emulation of timed sending enabled, the Master prepares the frames before the cycle starts and passes them to a separate thread (instead of the HW module in case of Hardware timed send). It sends the frames as soon as the cycle begins.

Reference design for Xilinx ZCU104

New reference design for Xilinx ZCU104 Evaluation Kit has been released.

Support for Xilinx Vivado 2021.1

From now on Master supports version 2021.1 of Xilinx Vivado.

KPA Sentinel dongle for Linux-based OS

From now on Master licensing can be bound to Sentinel dongle on Linux-based OS (Linux Rt-Preempt).

Support for RTX64 4.2

From now on Master supports RTX64 4.2 – the latest version of RTX64.

Support for RTX64 NAL

From now on Master supports RTX64 Network Abstraction Layer (NAL).

Unlike the TCP/IP stack interface, the NAL makes modern Ethernet adapter features available for engineers. The NAL offers a stable, reliable deterministic network interface, which is very important at building and connecting machines.

FSoE for Autoconfigurator

Parsing of safety connections and their verification have been added to Autoconfigurator.

If configured connections are not detected, Autoconfigurator generates ECAT_AC_EVENT_UNLINKED_SAFETY_CONNECTION and returns ECAT_E_AC_SAFETY_CONNECTIONS on export call.

To configure Autoconfigurator with FSoE, create the configuration in KPA EtherCAT Studio, set S2S connections between safety PDOs/PDO Entries and save it to uESI and then apply it to Autoconfigurator.

Autoconfigurator samples improvement

A new Autoconfigurator export template has been added to the samples. All Autoconfigurator samples now use this template to configure KPA EtherCAT Master.

Post validation for Autoconfigurator export

Post validation has been added to Autoconfigurator export. This allows different modules to check configuration consistency before export.