Real-time automation under Windows with EtherCAT

Hardware dependent programming in real-time is the new demand of many sectors of industry, who are changing from legacy field bus protocols to flexible real-time Ethernet solutions. Kithara Software supports engineers and developers with the »EtherCAT Master«.

The new »EtherCAT Master« of the collection »RealTime Suite« of the Berlin company Kithara Software is the optimal tool for diverse automation solutions under Windows and supplies all necessary mechanisms for realizing flexible control applications based on EtherCAT fast and at reasonable prices.

The software provides users - besides essential functions like highly precise timers and the necessary real-time network driver - further mechanisms, such as hardware access to PCI cards or USB devices and serial interfaces.

PC-based realization of industrial control applications is an enormous simplification of automation technology. But Windows operating systems are not able to deliver hard real-time offhand. This is addressed by a product range of Kithara, which is containing the »EtherCAT Master« too. The user can program his real-time control application in the usual and well-known development environment in C/C++ or Delphi.

It is not necessary anymore for programmers to manage and transmit data telegrams by their own. Advantages are a high usability, a small practicing effort and therefore the reduction of time and costs.

Features are:

• automatic scan of the EtherCAT slaves
• management of the EtherCAT slave states
• process data communication (cyclic I/O data exchange) in real-time
• mailbox communication
• CANopen over EtherCAT (CoE)
• Distributed Clock (DC)
• Ethernet over EtherCAT (EoE)
• File Access over EtherCAT (FoE)
• Operating systems: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (x86)
• Programming languages: C/C++, Delphi
• Network adapters: based on Intel Pro/100, RealTek 8139 or Intel Pro/1000
• Cycle times down to 50 µs