EtherCAT diagnosis and error detection tool
EC-Lyser is a diagnosis application specifically developed to analyze EtherCAT bus systems that are controlled by the acontis EC-Master Stack. Automated control systems usually require high availability of the whole system. Due to the rough industrial environment this is often hardly to achieve. Possible reasons for failure are:
- bad cables or plugs
- vibrations
- system degradation (temperature, oxidation, mechanic failure, …)
- electromagnetic fields
- ...
If high availability shall be guaranteed for a automated control system it is important to verify and maintain the field bus. Using EC-Lyser it is possible to take a look into the "health" of the EtherCAT system. Detection of signs of system degradation prior to running into a system failure will be of great benefit. In that case it is possible to exchange the problematic components (cables, slave devices).
Many aspects of diagnosis are covered by the EC-Lyser:
- Useful for setting up the system
- System analyzation and maintenance
- Error detection
- Documentation
Base functions
View and change the state of an individual slave or the whole network. Get the values for connected slaves, transmitted frames, lost frames and more.
Edit process image variables
View inputs and force outputs in process image.
Edit ESC register values
View and modify register values of EtherCAT Slave Controller (ESC).
Edit values in slave controllers EEPROM
Edit EEPROM values (like “Configured Station Alias”) or update complete EEPROM.
CAN application protocol over EtherCAT (CoE)
Read CoE (CAN application protocol over EtherCAT) Object Dictionary and change values.
File access over EtherCAT (FoE)
Download firmware via FoE (File accees over EtherCAT) while slave is in Bootstrap state, or up- and download any other file if supported by slave.
ADS over EtherCAT (AoE)
Show target NetId and read/write AoE (ADS over EtherCAT) values..
Network topology view
Grafical topology view of the complete network (displays the connection quality in terms of color, which will help you to find and exchange defect hardware as soon as possible).
Connectivity and Frame corruption diagnostics
The Extended Diagnosis is showing the Lost Link counters, Frame Error counters and Physical Layer Error counters for all implemented ports for the selected slave. Beside this EC-Lyser provides functions to reset the counters for a specific slave or for the whole network at once.
Technology
All data required by the EC-Lyser to display the topology view and provide system diagnosis will be directly transferred from the ETherCAT Master Stack (EC-Master) to the EC-Lyser diagnosis tool. As the EC-Master master stack provides a TCP/IP remote interface this can be accomplished by simply connecting the EC-Lyser with this interface. System analysis therefore will not require additional traffic on the EtherCAT bus. All information are directly taken from the EtherCAT master.
More information
Data sheets and evaluation versions are available in the download area.