Ethercat Slave

[prashant.ec14@gmail.com]

Hello Team,

I have an Ethercat master hardware and I need to connect to slave device.

Can I make my desktop as a slave device without using any 3rd party hardware? 

Thank you supporting.

Prashant 

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

No. An EtherCAT slave device needs specific hardware support that only exists in specialistic network controllers that you need to buy from one of the EtherCAT Technology Group members. It involves specific IP that you can also license from Beckhoff and I believe others to integrate into your own FPGA hardware, if you really are inclined to do so. Each slave interface node contains a licensed component that has to be purchased from the EtherCAT Technology Group or one of its members through a license agreement. There are ready made chips that you can buy where the license cost for that IP is automatically included in the price of the chip itself. Using of other chips to try to circumvent that license cost by some custom made software would almost certainly result in a cease and desist letter with a hefty penalty payment as soon as any member of the EtherCAT Technology Group gets aware of your product. 

Only an EtherCAT Master can be implemented on a normal PC using a normal network interface, although it won't be able to provide the full real-time capabilities that EtherCAT promises.