EC-Engineer Web V2.2: New Features

The welcome page improves usability and provides easier entrance for new customers:

List of Master Units

Master Units specify the master features. This means that options and dialogs can be restricted to those features which are supported by the control system, e.g. available cycle times, support of scan for MDP modules or DC synchronization.

Supported Master Units:

• EtherCAT Master Unit (Class A)
  • Standard EtherCAT Master Device
• EtherCAT Master Unit (Class B)
  • Minimum EtherCAT Master Device
• EtherCAT Simulator Unit (HiL)
  • EtherCAT Simulator for hardware in the loop

Recent Projects

This feature shows a list of up to 6 of the last used project files. Those can be loaded from the user in one-click for faster access.

Getting Started

This feature helps the user to select the correct mode by indicating the required steps with a red rectangle. This is available for the following use cases:

• Offline Configuration
  • In the office
• Online Configuration
  • Slaves connected to engineering system
• Remote Configuration
  • Slaves connected to target system
• Remote Diagnosis
  • Slaves connected to target system
• Offline Configuration and Simulation
  • Slaves simulated (SiL)
• Offline Diagnosis
  • Slaves captured

In the past it was only possible to assign a specific PDO. In the new version the user has the possibility add, delete, move, or edit the PDOs. This is required to be able to configure more complex slaves like drives.

It is also possible to add, delete, move, or edit PDO entries of a PDO:

The new version has the possibility to use our high performance, hardware specific drivers to improve real-time behavior. This means on Windows our ECAT NDIS Protocol Driver can be used.  It means also that interfaces which are already used from our acontis Ethernet Driver can be used, too.

Our EC-Simulator product is now seamlessly integrated within EC-Engineer Web. This provides the possibility to switch into diagnosis mode without having the real slaves available. It can be also useful to get familiar with online features of EC-Engineer Web without having real slaves. For customers that use the SDK version of EC-Engineer Web, we have also enhanced the “SDK Web View Layer 2” to use the EC-Simulator over REST API.

The EC-Simulator can be easily configured by using the welcome page:

Afterwards the simulator is displayed as an additional linked device, where the user can perform a variety of changes like toggling slave power, changing slave connections, generating CRC errors, or generating lost links:

This feature monitors things like the error counters and reports connection problems in the tree view on the general tab of the specific slave, and in the message window:

As soon as a problem is detected, the user can acknowledge the warnings or press on the help button to see more details: