acontis EoE Gateway Tool for Windows
Many EtherCAT products available on the market today offer support for Ethernet over EtherCAT (EoE). EoE provides a convenient way to setup and configure an EtherCAT device without the need to implement a full EtherCAT network. Many manufacturers of EoE-capable EtherCAT devices offer a software tool for setting up and configuring their products. Some examples include: Bosch Rexroth IndraWorks, Yaskawa SigmaWin+, Elmo Application Studio, and Copley CME2.
For developers and users of acontis’ EtherCAT Master software, EC-Master, the convenience of these manufacturer tools is lost by having to disconnect the master controller running EC-Master from the network in order to connect a Windows computer running the software tool directly to the EtherCAT device. Then after some simple changes via the manufacturer tool, the master controller needs to be reconnected again. To address this issue, acontis has released their EoE Gateway Tool for Windows.
With the EoE Gateway tool, acontis provides a convenient way to keep the master controller connected to the EtherCAT devices, but still utilize the manufacturer’s tool for setup and configuration. This is achieved by tunneling the Ethernet data from the tool through the master controller running EC-Master and onto the EtherCAT network.
This EoE Gateway Tool runs in the Windows System Tray in the background so you can focus on the manufacturer tool like it was directly connected to the EtherCAT device.