CN221784188U

CN221784188U - EtherCAT slave communication system

Info

Publication number: CN221784188U
Application number: CN202322750599.8U
Authority: CN
Inventors: 李娟利; 晏智安
Original assignee: SHANGHAI LAMPEK TECHNOLOGY CO LTD
Current assignee: SHANGHAI LAMPEK TECHNOLOGY CO LTD
Priority date: 2023-10-13
Filing date: 2023-10-13
Publication date: 2024-09-27
Anticipated expiration: 2033-10-13

Abstract

The utility model relates to the field of industrial automation communication, and discloses an EtherCAT slave station communication system which is used for carrying out data interaction with a master station through an EtherCAT bus, wherein the EtherCAT slave station communication system comprises: the slave station controller ESC comprises a microprocessor MCU, a slave station controller ESC, a network transformer and an RJ45 network port connector; the microprocessor MCU is used for controlling the slave station controller ESC; the slave station controller ESC is used for receiving, processing and sending EtherCAT communication data; the slave station controller ESC is connected with the RJ45 network port connector through the network transformer; the slave station controller ESC is connected with the master station and other slave stations through the RJ45 network port connector. Through adopting EtherCAT modular design, each functional module links to each other with the mainboard, has that openness is good, data throughput is big, synchronous superior characteristics, and the wiring is simple, uses in a flexible way, when breaking down, only needs to change EtherCAT communication module, greatly reduced system maintenance degree of difficulty and maintenance cost.

Description

EtherCAT slave station communication system

Technical Field

The utility model relates to the field of industrial automation communication, in particular to an EtherCAT slave station communication system.

Background

In the field of industrial automation communication, the traditional field bus is widely applied, and the defects of the traditional field bus are increasingly obvious, such as CAN, deviceNet, RS and the like, and the traditional field bus has the defects of low transmission speed, small data packet transmitted each time and the like. Industrial applications are increasingly demanding in terms of speed, accuracy, and the evolution from centralized to distributed control, it being evident that these fieldbuses have not been able to meet the actual requirements.

With the rapid development of internet technology, ethernet is the dominant technology in the communication field, and real-time industrial ethernet technologies such as ETHERNETIP, PROFINET, MODBUS/TCP, powerlink, etherCAT, CC-LINK IE are rapidly developed in the automation field, where EtherCAT developed by german beifu is an open real-time ethernet communication protocol, and its instantaneity and flexibility of topology are widely focused, so that the scheme limitation of other ethernet is broken through in communication, and it is not necessary to receive ethernet packets at each connection point, and then decode and copy the ethernet packets into process data. But only needs to be set on the slave station hardware to identify the transmitted data frame and to operate on it accordingly.

At present, most of the EtherCAT communication schemes in the market adopt a mode of integrating EtherCAT slave station controllers in MCU, such as TI, infineon, NXP and other SOC schemes. The integration reduces the number of the whole components, but the flexibility in use is not enough, once the terminal fails on site, the problem of checking is very difficult, because in an industrial automation control system, the equipment is various, different equipment are connected with a control motherboard in different modes, wiring is complex, the control motherboard generally needs to be replaced when the terminal fails, and the whole maintenance cost is high.

Therefore, there is a need for an EtherCAT slave station communication system that can solve the problems of high maintenance cost, high maintenance difficulty and poor flexibility of EtherCAT communication in the prior art.

Disclosure of utility model

The utility model aims to provide an EtherCAT slave station communication system, which is characterized by good openness, large data throughput and superior synchronization performance by adopting EtherCAT modularized design and connecting each functional module with a main board, and has the advantages of simple wiring and flexible use, and when faults occur, only the EtherCAT communication module needs to be replaced, thereby greatly reducing the maintenance difficulty and the maintenance cost of the system.

In order to solve the technical problems, the embodiment of the utility model discloses an EtherCAT slave station communication system, which comprises:

The system comprises a microprocessor MCU, a slave station controller ESC, a network transformer, an RJ45 network port connector and an EEPROM;

The microprocessor MCU is used for controlling the slave station controller ESC;

The slave station controller ESC is used for receiving, processing and sending EtherCAT communication data;

the slave station controller ESC is connected with the RJ45 network port connector through the network transformer;

the slave station controller ESC is connected with the master station and other slave stations through the RJ45 network port connector;

The EEPROM is used for storing configuration and description data of the slave station.

In another preferred embodiment, the method further comprises:

and the power supply module is used for providing 3.3V voltage for the microprocessor MCU and the slave station controller ESC.

In another preferred embodiment, the method further comprises:

A 25MHz crystal oscillator for providing an operating clock for the slave station controller ESC.

In another preferred embodiment, the method further comprises:

And the clock module is used for providing a working clock for the microprocessor MCU.

In another preferred embodiment, the method further comprises:

And the reset module is used for providing a reset circuit for the microprocessor MCU.

In another preferred embodiment, the microprocessor MCU internally integrates network peripherals for performing application layer logic operations, signal processing, and output control.

In another preferred embodiment, the microprocessor MCU integrates an SPI interface for expanding the interface.

In another preferred embodiment, the slave station controller ESC has integrated therein 2 ethernet physical layer interfaces PHY, which together with the network transformer form a network interface that connects the master station and other slave stations through the RJ45 portal connector.

In another preferred embodiment, the slave station controller ESC and the EEPROM communicate via an I2C bus.

In another preferred embodiment, the microprocessor MCU employs a GD32F407VET6 chip, the slave station controller ESC employs a LAN9252-I/PT chip, and the EEPROM employs a 24FC512 chip.

Compared with the prior art, the embodiment of the utility model has the main differences and effects that:

According to the EtherCAT slave station communication system, the EtherCAT modular design is adopted, and each functional module is connected with the main board, so that the EtherCAT slave station communication system has the characteristics of good openness, high data throughput and excellent synchronization performance, is simple in wiring and flexible in use, and only needs to replace the EtherCAT communication module when faults occur, so that the maintenance difficulty and the maintenance cost of the system are greatly reduced.

Furthermore, the EtherCAT slave station communication system is not only beneficial to the improvement of the real-time performance of the whole system, but also beneficial to the realization of remote maintenance, monitoring, diagnosis and management, so that the reliability of the system is greatly enhanced.

Furthermore, the EtherCAT slave station communication system adopts a modularized design, so that the EtherCAT master station and the slave stations can communicate efficiently, and the use is flexible.

Furthermore, the EtherCAT slave station communication system adopts a modularized design, and provides SPI interface to expand other applications such as motors, sensors, expansion IO control and analog quantity digital quantity control.

Furthermore, the EtherCAT slave station communication system adopts the EtherCAT slave station modularized design, and engineers only need to develop one EtherCAT communication module, and can be applied to other projects requiring EtherCAT communication through SPI port expansion, thereby greatly reducing the development time cost.

The numerous technical features described in the description of the present utility model are distributed among the various technical solutions, which can make the description too lengthy if all possible combinations of technical features of the present utility model (i.e., technical solutions) are to be listed. In order to avoid this problem, the technical features disclosed in the above summary of the utility model, the technical features disclosed in the following embodiments and examples, and the technical features disclosed in the drawings may be freely combined with each other to constitute various new technical solutions (these technical solutions are regarded as already described in the present specification) unless such a combination of technical features is technically impossible. For example, in one example, feature a+b+c is disclosed, in another example, feature a+b+d+e is disclosed, and features C and D are equivalent technical means that perform the same function, technically only by alternative use, and may not be adopted simultaneously, feature E may be technically combined with feature C, and then the solution of a+b+c+d should not be considered as already described because of technical impossibility, and the solution of a+b+c+e should be considered as already described.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of an EtherCAT slave station communication system according to an embodiment of the present utility model;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an EtherCAT slave communication system in accordance with an embodiment of the present utility model;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an EtherCAT communication process of an EtherCAT slave communication system in an embodiment of the present utility model;

Fig. 4 is a circuit diagram of an EEPROM interface of an EtherCAT slave communication system in an embodiment of the present utility model.

Detailed Description

In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present application. It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the claimed application may be practiced without these specific details and with various changes and modifications from the embodiments that follow.

For the purpose of making the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present utility model more apparent, embodiments of the present utility model will be described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The first embodiment of the utility model relates to an EtherCAT slave station communication system which is used for carrying out data interaction with a master station through an EtherCAT bus.

Fig. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of the EtherCAT slave station communication system, and fig. 2 is a structural block diagram of the EtherCAT slave station communication system.

Specifically, as shown in fig. 1 and 2, the EtherCAT slave station communication system includes:

In the present application, EEPROM and E2PROM are the same meaning.

The EtherCAT bus establishes a communication bridge between the master station (ETHERCAT MASTER) and the slave stations (ETHERCAT SLAVE) to realize rapid real-time communication between the master station and the slave stations, the master station transmits Ethernet frames to each slave station, and the slave stations respond correspondingly according to the instructions transmitted by the master station.

It should be noted that the EtherCAT bus is based on an open industrial real-time ethernet protocol.

Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of EtherCAT communication process.

As shown in fig. 3, the EtherCAT communication process is as follows:

EtherCAT communication generally adopts a master-slave structure with multiple slaves, a PC is used as a master station, twainCAT software of the Beifu company is adopted as upper computer software to realize the function of the master station, and a slave station is generally designed by a user according to practical application.

The working principle of EtherCAT: the EtherCAT fully utilizes the full duplex characteristic of Ethernet, uses master-slave mode medium access control, the master station sends Ethernet frames to each slave station, the slave stations extract data from the data frames or insert data into the data frames, the master station uses standard Ethernet interface cards, the slave stations use special EtherCAT slave station controllers ESC (ETHERCAT SLAVE controllers), the slave stations can directly process received messages, extract or insert relevant user data from the messages, and then transmit the messages to the next EtherCAT slave station. The last EtherCAT slave station sends back the fully processed message and the first slave station sends the corresponding message to the master station.

The EtherCAT slave station communication system is not only beneficial to the improvement of the real-time performance of the whole system, but also beneficial to the realization of remote maintenance, monitoring, diagnosis and management, and greatly enhances the reliability of the system. Through modular design, the EtherCAT master station and the slave station can realize high-efficiency communication, and the use is flexible.

In this embodiment, preferably, the EtherCAT slave station communication system further includes:

and the power supply module is used for providing a stable voltage of 3.3V for the microprocessor MCU and the slave station controller ESC.

Further, preferably, in the present embodiment,

And the microprocessor MCU is internally integrated with a network peripheral and is used for finishing application layer logic operation, signal processing and output control.

The microprocessor MCU integrates an SPI interface and is used for expanding the interface.

That is, the EtherCAT slave station communication system is provided with an SPI expansion interface through which various applications are expanded, such as: I/O control, servo drive, sensor, analog/digital input/output, etc

In addition, as shown in fig. 1, the microprocessor MCU further has an FSMC (Flexible Static Memory Controller, variable static memory controller) integrated therein. And the microprocessor MCU can exchange data with the slave station controller ESC by way of an Interrupt Request (IRQ).

The EtherCAT slave station communication system adopts a modularized design, and provides SPI interface to expand other applications such as motors, sensors, expansion IO control and analog quantity and digital quantity control.

The slave station controller ESC integrates 2 physical layer interfaces PHY of Ethernet, and the PHY and the network transformer form a network interface together, and the network interface is connected with the master station and other slave stations through the RJ45 network interface connector.

In this embodiment, the number of physical layer interfaces PHY, network transformers and RJ45 network interface connectors corresponding to 2 ethernet networks is also preferably 2.

A parallel port communication is provided between the slave station controller ESC and the FSMC of the microprocessor MCU.

According to the EtherCAT slave station communication system, the EtherCAT slave station is in modularized design, an engineer only needs to develop one EtherCAT communication module, and the EtherCAT slave station communication system can be applied to other projects requiring EtherCAT communication through SPI port expansion, so that the development time cost is greatly reduced.

The slave station controller ESC and EEPROM communicate via I2C bus.

The EEPROM is mainly used for storing configuration and description information of the slave station, and the master station can read the information of the EEPROM after power-on.

Still further, preferably, in the present embodiment,

The microprocessor MCU adopts a GD32F407VET6 chip, the slave station controller ESC adopts a LAN9252-I/PT chip, and the EEPROM adopts a 24FC512 chip.

In summary, the EtherCAT slave station communication system provided by the utility model has the characteristics of good openness, large data throughput and excellent synchronization performance by adopting the EtherCAT modularized design, and the EtherCAT slave station communication system has the characteristics of simple wiring and flexible use, and only needs to replace the EtherCAT communication module when faults occur, so that the system maintenance difficulty and the system maintenance cost are greatly reduced.

In order to better understand the technical solutions of the present disclosure, the following description is given with reference to a preferred embodiment, in which details are mainly listed for the sake of understanding, and are not intended to limit the scope of protection of the present disclosure.

The utility model provides an EtherCAT slave station communication system, which solves the problems of high maintenance difficulty, high cost and poor flexibility in the practical application of EtherCAT communication aiming at the defects of the existing EtherCAT communication scheme in the current market.

The EtherCAT slave station communication system of the utility model performs data interaction through the industrial Ethernet EtherCAT and can be applied to the field of industrial automation communication. The utility model adopts an EtherCAT slave station communication system based on GD32 MCU and EtherCAT slave station controller ESC, comprising: the system comprises a power module, a microprocessor MCU, a slave station controller ESC, a network transformer, an RJ45 network interface connector, an EEPROM and the like.

The main task of the secondary station system is to process the communication network data and control other tasks of the system, and its hardware is mainly composed of the secondary station controller ESC and the secondary station microprocessor MCU. The function of the slave station controller ESC is to complete the processing of communication data, while the slave station microprocessor is responsible for managing the control tasks and communication processes. Besides the two main parts, the system also comprises a physical layer device, a network port device and the like, and the components jointly complete the communication task of the whole system. In the communication process of the EtherCAT system, the slave station controller ESC is responsible for processing network communication data, and the processing of the network data is completed by hardware inside the slave station controller ESC.

The microprocessor MCU adopts a GD32F407VET6 chip.

The EtherCAT slave station controller ESC adopts a LAN9252-I/PT chip.

The E2PROM adopts 24FC512 chips. Fig. 4 is an interface circuit diagram of an EEPROM.

The EtherCAT protocol stack must be transplanted into the microprocessor MCU, the slave station controller ESC integrates almost all functions of EtherCAT data link layer, meanwhile, 2 physical layer interfaces PHY of Ethernet are integrated inside, the master station and other slave stations are connected through RJ45 network interface connectors in an expanding mode, the PHY of the slave station controller ESC and a network transformer form a network interface together, and isolation and impedance matching are the main functions of the network transformer. The microprocessor MCU can be expanded into an SPI interface (SERIAL PERIPHERAL INTERFACE ) to finish application layer logic operation, various signal processing and output control. The communication between the EEPROM and the slave station controller ESC is I2C, and is used for storing relevant information of configuration and description data of the slave station, the power module is mainly used for providing 3.3V stable voltage for the microprocessor MCU and the slave station controller ESC, the 25MHz crystal oscillator is used for providing stable clock for the slave station controller ESC, the reset module is used for providing stable reset circuit for the microprocessor MCU, and the clock module is used for providing stable clock for the microprocessor MCU, so that the microprocessor MCU can work normally.

When the master station scans the slave station equipment, a control command of the master station is transmitted to the slave station equipment through an EtherCAT network, the master station can obtain the description information in the EEPROM preferentially to complete the initial configuration of the slave station, the slave station controller ESC receives a data packet, analyzes the data packet through an internal physical layer and a data link layer, acquires or inserts message information from a data frame, the analyzed data is communicated with the FSMC of the microprocessor MCU through an HBI interface (host bus interface, hot Bus Interface) of the slave station controller ESC, the microprocessor MCU further reads the data written into an EEPROM buffer zone, and outputs the data to an SPI interface after processing, wherein the SPI interface can expand various industrial equipment such as control I/0 control, control servo motor, sensor, analog/digital quantity input and output and the like, and is most commonly applied to an industrial servo driver.

The EtherCAT slave station communication system takes the slave station controller ESC as a core, and the slave station controller ESC finishes the receiving and sending of EtherCAT data. The slave station microprocessor MCU realizes the control of the slave station controller ESC, realizes an application layer protocol, and mainly executes the following tasks:

1. MCU initialization, slave station controller ESC initialization and communication variable initialization;

2. The state machine processes, completes communication initialization, inquires a state controller of the master station, reads related configuration and an EtherCAT slave station register of the industrial Ethernet, and starts or stops related communication service of the slave station;

3. And the program main loop is used for periodic data processing, so that process data communication is realized, and the periodic data and application layer services are processed in a query running state or synchronous mode.

The EtherCAT slave station communication system mainly adopts a modularized design, realizes the high-efficiency communication of the EtherCAT master station and the slave station, is very flexible to use, and provides SPI interface for expanding other applications such as motors, sensors, expanding IO control and controlling analog quantity and digital quantity. If the field fails, only the EtherCAT communication module needs to be replaced, so that the difficulty and cost of system maintenance are greatly reduced.

In addition, the utility model adopts the modular design of the EtherCAT slave station communication system, an engineer only needs to develop one EtherCAT communication device, and the EtherCAT communication device can be applied to other projects needing EtherCAT communication through SPI port expansion, and the EtherCAT communication function does not need to be redeveloped for each project, so that the transplanted workload does not need to be considered if the MCU platform of the application layer is replaced, and the development time cost is greatly reduced.

It should be noted that, in the embodiments of the present utility model, each component or module is a logic module, and in physical aspect, one logic module may be a physical module, or may be a part of a physical module, or may be implemented by a combination of multiple physical modules, where the physical implementation manner of the logic module itself is not the most important, and the combination of functions implemented by the logic modules is the key to solve the technical problem posed by the present utility model. Furthermore, in order to highlight the innovative part of the present utility model, the above-described embodiments of the present utility model do not introduce modules that are less closely related to solving the technical problems posed by the present utility model, which does not indicate that the above-described device embodiments do not have other modules.

It should be noted that in the present patent application, relational terms such as first and second, and the like are used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another entity or action without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. Moreover, the terms "comprises," "comprising," or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. Without further limitation, an element defined by the phrase "comprising" does not exclude the presence of other like elements in a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.

While the utility model has been shown and described with reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the utility model.

Claims

1. An EtherCAT slave station communication system for carrying out data interaction with a master station through an EtherCAT bus, which is characterized by comprising:

the EEPROM is used for storing configuration and description data of the slave station;

2. The EtherCAT slave station communication system of claim 1, further comprising:

3. The EtherCAT slave station communication system of claim 1, further comprising:

4. The EtherCAT slave station communication system of claim 1, further comprising:

5. The EtherCAT slave station communication system of claim 1, further comprising:

6. The EtherCAT slave station communication system according to claim 1, wherein the microprocessor MCU is internally integrated with a network peripheral for performing an application layer logic operation, signal processing and output control.

7. The EtherCAT slave station communication system according to claim 1, wherein the slave station controller ESC has integrated therein 2 ethernet physical layer interfaces PHY, which together with the network transformer form a network interface connecting the master station and the other slave stations through the RJ45 portal connector.

8. The EtherCAT slave station communication system of claim 1, wherein the slave station controller ESC and the EEPROM communicate via an I2C bus.

9. The EtherCAT slave station communication system according to any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the microprocessor MCU is a GD32F407VET6 chip, the slave station controller ESC is a LAN9252-I/PT chip, and the EEPROM is a 24FC512 chip.