EC-Engineer V3.1: New Features

Performance improvements

The EC-Engineer release 3.1 has a completely new ESI handling mechanism which significantly improves the performance on slower devices. That means you will save nearly one minute in connecting to an EtherCAT Master (network with 30 slaves on a Beagle Bone).

ESI Files can be quite large (over 10 MB) because they may contain a lot of different slaves with several revision numbers all within one ESI file. While scanning or connecting to a network, EC-Engineer has to collect some information about the slaves from the ESI Files. On slower machines it takes a long time to open and parse big XML files. The new 3.1 version of EC-Engineer reads the specific ESI file just once, and saves the required information in small binary files for each slave of the network. So the next time you connect or scan, all information is collected from the small binary files.

When an ESI file is updated through the ESI Manager, EC-Engineer now recognizes the update and the corresponding binary files will be deleted automatically.

First access to specific ESI File

Convert ESI to BIN files

Subsequent access to binary file

Support of new IO-Link Gateways

IO-Link is a bidirectional, digital point-to-point standard for wired (or wireless) industrial communication networks over short distances (IEC 61131-9). It is primarily used to connect sensors and actuators to an industrial fieldbus or industrial Ethernet network. More details can be found at www.io-link.com

An IO-Link system consists of an IO-Link Master and one or more IO-Link devices like Sensors or Actuators. The IO-Link Master provides the interface to the higher-level controller (PLC) and controls the communication with the connected IO-Link devices.

Previous EC-Engineer versions already supported the Beckhoff EL6224 IO-Link Gateway. Now EC-Engineer version 3.1 extends the IO-Link support and also newer devices are supported:

  • EP6224-x022: The EP6224 IO-Link module enables connection of up to four IO-Link devices, e.g. actuators, sensors or combinations of both
  • EP6228-0022: The EP6228 IO-Link module enables connection of up to eight IO-Link devices, e.g. IO-Link box modules, actuators, sensors or combinations thereof
  • EPP6228-0022: Supports the EtherCAT P standard

EC-Engineer EtherCAT configuration tool

EC-Engineer EtherCAT configuration tool