KPA EtherCAT Master

KPA EtherCAT Master is a comprehensive embedded software product for industrial automation specialists who intend to add EtherCAT communication to their applications and solutions. It is a second generation of EtherCAT Master by koenig-pa, GmbH implementing a new advanced architecture and several unique features that facilitate better integration and performance increase. The maser stack supports various operating systems.

KPA EtherCAT Master
is a software stack, which corresponds to all EtherCAT Technology Group standards and has numerous features, which can be used for developing of cost-optimized and powerful PLC on many hardware platforms (i.e. ARM/ARM64, Intel x86/x64) to control EtherCAT I/O slave devices from various OEM vendors.

Benefits and key features:

  • Conforming to EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) standards
    KPA EtherCAT Master can be delivered as standard or customized feature packages. Two standard packages are available according ETG.1500 standard: Class A (Standard package) and Class B (Basic package). Moreover, koenig-pa GmbH introduces Premium package, which integrates various additional features for creating innovative applications.
  • Available for various operating systems and OS-less systems
    KPA EtherCAT Master is available for numerous operating systems, including Windows, INtime, RTX/RTX64, Linux, Linux+Xenomai, FreeRTOS, Nucleus, QNX, VxWorks, ReWorks, Integrity, as well as OS-less systems. If required, our experts can port the master stack to any other operating system.
  • Hardware extensions for Xilinx/Intel FPGA (Altera) and Texas Instruments PRUSS Sitara CPU
    Availability of IP Cores for Xilinx and for Intel FPGA (Altera) FPGAs, PRUss co-program for Texas Instrument Sitara CPUs (AM47x and AM57x) increases productivity and data processing efficiency. Implementation for AM6x is also available upon request.
  • Auto Configurator for online configuration
    KPA EtherCAT Master can configure bus on the fly without EtherCAT configuration tools. The Auto Configurator module allows a user application to select slave’s configuration and to switch between different configurations of the slave, for example, between position control of a drive and velocity control, or between bus configurations with a different number of slaves.
  • Process image logging for data transferring into analytic tools
    Process image (PI) logger allows to collect real-time data for transferring to other levels without influence on real-time behavior of the control system. Data can be transferred to MATLAB, LabView (TDMS format), and any other analytic tools. Moreover, koenig-pa GmbH has designed a special Python extension, which allows to aggregate data into a file of any format, for example a CSV-file, for its further processing.

KPA EtherCAT Master Stack Architecture

EtherCAT master stack has a modular structure to respond to a challenge of each particular implementation. It makes the master scalable to fit the size of application, portable to different operating systems, adaptable to various hardware platforms and allows developing or customizing each module separately while keeping the functionality of the others intact.

Master’s modules are grouped in the following layers, thereby all functions are clearly separated:

KPA EtherCAT Master Stack Architecture

The Application layer handles interactions with various programming and configuration parameters as well as interactions with other applications and devices. In general, it encapsulates and …

  • ensures access to master’s functions from the side of applications or process tasks
  • allows interaction with the master by means of Remote Procedure Calls service and provides TCP/IP or/and UDP connections, for example, for mailbox communication with slaves via UDP