Slave device not switching to Operational State

[MichaelAivaliotis]

I have a device that generates an error when switched to operational state. How can I begin to debug this problem?

The manufacturer claims it should work since they've tested it with Twincat.

The error message window also gives me no help:

Error data is lost. You may have removed the slave item, closed LabVIEW, or read it from another host.

[Miro_T]

Michael,

EtherCAT protocol defines required but also some optional features which you might not find across every EtherCAT software stack. TwinCAT is a software environment designed for EtherCAT by the people who standardized EtherCAT protocol. You will find all bells and whistles in this environment. NI EtherCAT was designed for the 9144 slave and required support for 3^rd party slaves. Nonetheless our goal is to continue to improve 3^rd party EtherCAT experience as we collect more user cases.
We have also found that some 3^rd party EtherCAT slaves do not conform to EtherCAT specs which can also cause problems. So having expectations set we can move on to problem at hand and see where we get 

Is there any error number associated with the error message? How exactly are you switching to operational mode indirect (cycling scan engine from config to active) or directly in the Online Device State window?

Can you upload slaves ESI file? Also doing wireshark trace between master and slave can help at times. Here is a KB how to captures EtherCAT packets, the most important would be a part when you try to go to operational mode.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/6F063F1A993F6A4786257BB10041EEEA

Thank you

[MichaelAivaliotis]

Well I hope you are wrong about the 3rd party support on the NI cRIO. Because that would mean ditching cRIO.

I'm using the Online Device State Window. Also find attached the ESI file.

Also, the KB article you link to describes a procedure that doesn't work for me. It requires an Ethernet Hub which is impossible to find these days. An ethernet switch won't work (I tried). However I will dig around to see if I can find one.

[Miro_T]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for the xml file. 3rd party cRIO EtherCAT support is pretty solid but there happen to be bumps along the way purely because how EtherCAT protocol is defined and tendency for some manufactures to do their own variantions in the implementation.

Is there an error number associated with the error message? Can you make a screenshot of it? Can you also try following

Create a simple VI which uses some of the PDOs of this slave for example simple read or write. Then attempt to run this VI. Are you getting same error as in the Online Device State window? If the error is different what is it?

I'm suspecting there is something going wrong with the initial master and slave communication. Getting this error or the wireshark trace might get us closer to the problem

Thanks

Miro