Christmas Illumination with EtherCAT
11/2010 | The new Christmas illumination in the Swiss town of St. Gallen is networked with EtherCAT. In the current stage of expansion about 640 stars and 330 so called power boxes are EtherCAT slave devices. The network is partitioned in several segments. Along the streets line topologies are used to connect the power boxes, which convert 230VAC into 48VDC. The power boxes are able to provide diagnosis information and feed the DC power into drop lines where 1 to 5 stars are daisy chained. The drop lines are made of hybrid cables with separate power supply and EtherCAT data wires - altogether 7km of hybrid cable is used. Each of the stars - which have a diameter of more than 2 m - is illuminated by 14 LEDs and is controlled in a highly dynamic fashion, forming light patterns along the streets. The engineers originally planned to use other Industrial Ethernet protocols, but found that due to the large number of nodes and the topology constraints of the project only EtherCAT could provide the performance that is needed to provide full freedom for the light designers. Further information in German language can be found here:
www.allerstern.ch
The technical part of 3.8 Million CHF project was completed by ETG members
robonaut in close cooperation with
Peyer Engineering for the light design company
KALUZA + SCHMID.
