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I am completely new for EtherCAT. And I am looking for a good starting point to study EtherCAT master.
I found that there is a great open source implementation called SOEM.
But without any background of EtherCAT, it is really hard to understand the code.
Could anybody help me to find the way studying EtherCAT master?
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No special hardware is required to implement an EtherCAT network. External switches are not used in an EtherCAT network. Instead, each EtherCAT device embeds a switch. Each device has two RJ45 ports.
Protocol. The EtherCAT protocol is optimized for process data and is transported directly within the standard IEEE 802.3 Ethernet frame using Ethertype 0x88a4. It may consist of several sub-telegrams, each serving a particular memory area of the logical process images that can be up to 4 gigabytes in size.
EtherCAT technology itself is not Open Source. Backed by the standardization of EtherCAT by IEC, ISO and SEMI, access to EtherCAT technology is available to everyone to non-discriminatory terms.
EtherCAT configuration with master redundancy enabled comprises one active (primary) master device and one or several passive (secondary) masters.
To start you need to understand the technology before you can dive into the master. I'd recommend the following three resources.
EtherCAT Technology (Section I)
This is an overview of the technology and definitely where you want to start.
EtherCAT Registers (Section II)
This is a dry read, but a good reference to understand the different registers that are used to communicate between an EtherCAT master and slave.
ET1100 Hardware Data Sheet
Even drier, but this is a datasheet for a common ASIC for building an EtherCAT slave. It can help you understand even more detail about the communication between an EtherCAT master and slave.
To properly implement an EtherCAT master is no easy task and requires a lot of reading. There is more documentation available but it requires a membership to the EtherCAT Technology Group. That's where you can get access to more technical information.
Another EtherCAT master open source project, that I'm familiar with, is IgH
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The best way to go through EtherCAT master is IgH website
http://etherlab.org/en/ethercat/index.php
They also have the source code for the etherCAT master and other software components. download the zip in linux and enjoy EtherCAT
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