Over 20 Years of EtherCAT® Software Expertise

For more than two decades, acontis has been developing and providing high-performance software products for the EtherCAT® technology.
Whether you are developing EtherCAT MainDevices or EtherCAT SubDevices, or need solutions for troubleshooting, diagnostics and monitoring – we deliver tailored software development kits and professional tools for industrial applications.

EtherCAT MainDevice Development

acontis technologies supports the entire lifecycle of an EtherCAT MainDevice with a perfectly aligned toolchain. EC-Master enables fast and reliable integration of EtherCAT communication during software development. With EC-Engineer, engineers design and configure EtherCAT networks, defining topology, SubDevices and process data with full consistency.

Using EC-Simulator, complex networks, error scenarios, and topology changes can be simulated early, enabling thorough testing and virtual commissioning based on digital twins—long before real hardware is available. During commissioning and operation, EC-Engineer provides powerful diagnostics, process data monitoring, parameter handling, and firmware update capabilities.

Combined, EC-Master, EC-Engineer and EC-Simulator provide a seamless ecosystem for efficient development, reliable commissioning, and long-term operation of EtherCAT-based systems.

acontis offers a coordinated set of software products that support EtherCAT® SubDevice development from early firmware work to testing and production validation. For functional testing and verification, acontis provides the EC-STA (EtherCAT SubDevice Test Application). This ready-to-use test tool is based on the proven EC-Master MainDevice stack and allows developers to test SubDevice firmware under real EtherCAT conditions. With support for state control, process data monitoring, mailbox protocols such as CoE and FoE, EEPROM handling, and object dictionary access, EC-STA enables reliable debugging, validation and automated production tests. The included SDK and source code make it easy to extend the tool with customer-specific test sequences.

To accelerate development even before hardware is available, acontis offers the EC-Simulator, which virtualizes EtherCAT SubDevices and complete networks in software. It allows developers to simulate SubDevice behavior, test error scenarios and run automated tests without physical devices, significantly reducing development time and hardware dependency.

These tools are complemented by EC-Engineer, which supports configuration, diagnostics and analysis of EtherCAT networks and SubDevices. Together, acontis’ products provide a comprehensive, flexible environment that helps SubDevice manufacturers develop faster, test more thoroughly and deliver robust EtherCAT devices with reduced risk and effort.

acontis offers a suite of monitoring and diagnosis software tools designed to help engineers and service teams observe, diagnose, analyze and troubleshoot EtherCAT® networks — from configuration issues to live network behavior.

At the core is EC-Engineer, a full-featured engineering tool that combines network configuration, diagnosis, and live monitoring. It can create/export ENI files, scan the real network, display process data, inspect MainDevice/SubDevice states, access ESC registers and EEPROM and compare actual operation with configuration — supporting both offline planning and online troubleshooting.

For pure EtherCAT diagnosis without configuration risk, EC-Lyser focuses on fault detection and deep network analysis. It retrieves network and error data from the MainDevice stack, visualizes topology with link quality cues, tracks MainDevice/SubDevice status and error counters, enables access to process images, object dictionaries, mailbox activity and FoE transfers — ideal for identifying communication errors and documenting faults.

To help with traffic-level monitoring, EC-Inspector captures and analyzes network frames on a PC independently of the MainDevice. It uses ENI files to decode EtherCAT frames, showing process data trends, state transitions, error counters and protocol details in charts and tables. EC-Inspector also supports offline PCAP playback (Wireshark compatible), making it useful for sporadic or hard-to-capture issues.

Underpinning custom or embedded solutions is the EC-Monitor Library, a C/C++ SDK for passive EtherCAT monitoring. With a network TAP, it captures all bus traffic, decodes it based on ENI configuration. exposes real-time process data, states, mailbox contents and error metrics to custom applications or IIoT/edge systems.

EC-Simulator is a real-time EtherCAT network simulation solution that allows developers to run and test EtherCAT MainDevice software without requiring physical EtherCAT hardware. By simulating complete EtherCAT networks based on standard ENI files, it behaves like real SubDevices and integrates seamlessly with existing development workflows. EC-Simulator supports both Software-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop setups, enabling flexible testing environments from pure software simulations to realistic network tests over Ethernet. It helps teams start development earlier, reduce hardware costs, improve software quality by enabling repeatable tests, fault injection and early validation of normal and error scenarios.