The „EtherCATInterfaceElmo“ is especially designed for the Gold Twitter drives from Elmo. It consists of the following components:

• EtherCatInterfaceElmo.hpp
• EtherCatInterfaceElmo.cpp
• EtherCatInterfaceElmo_config.hpp

The „EtherCATInterfaceElmo.hpp“ declares all methods of the interface. The low level methods ('ll_'-prefix) are at the bottom of the class.

These low level methods read and write individual data objects to/from the stack. Which objects are available and their file type must be read from the documentation of the manufacturer of the EtherCAT slave. Each data object has its own method. These are the only methodes which use the low level get/set methodes from „EtherCATInterfaceBase“.

Where a data object is located in the PDO depends on the ENI file used. These offsets must be read from the ENI file and configured in „EtherCatInterfaceElmo_config.hpp“.

All methods above the low level methods are optional. They contain a certain degree of intelligence and simplify the interface to the user application.

Methods in the interface must never be blocking.

Some advanced functions may take several cycles. They are only completed when they return true. These methods must be called again in each cycle until they return true.

All advanced set functions with a boolean return value have to be called multiple times until they return true. This is because the drives may need to run through multiple state changes and may have to send different commands depending on the state of the drive. Call this methodes every cycle of your control system until it returns true.

This methodes implement additional logic to interpret the data from the EC bus and return a sensible value.

The methodes „getPosition / getPositionAux“ calculates the position difference between the actual position (int32_t) and the position of the last call (int32_t). The difference is added to the stored position (int64_t). This approach prevents an overflow of a 32 bit integer.

These methodes consider a fixed offset as well. The offset may be set with the index pulse (see below).

This functions are implemented for backwards compatibility are probably not used.

These functions provide some basice conversions for ease of use.

This is configuration file has do be adapted depending on the EtherCAT network.

The most important part of this file is the offset definition of all PDO offset. Before you start your application, you have to define all PDO offsets of your network.

Be aware that EtherCATInterface assumes that all drives send the identical variables via PDO. With the current implementation it is not possible to send different variables for different drives.

If a variable is not available, the offset is set to a negative number like '-1'. The methods which would use a unavailable variable will throw an error if called.