The EtherCAT bus in general is not designed for that kind of thing. When you have a large PDO domain, it is supposed to be because you have a large number of smaller slaves, not a small number of large slaves.
I'm not sure exactly where the cutoff should be, but most likely any single slave wanting to exchange more than 300 bytes or so should probably be using SDO rather than PDO. (SDO mailboxes can be configured up to 1484 bytes, although that depends on slave implementation too and most only support a much smaller size.) Do you really need that amount of data each and every cycle? The packet-splitting does work - I have systems where each cycle sends three PDO packets - but the largest amount of PDO data in any one slave in my network is about 200 bytes. Most slaves are a lot less. Gavin Lambert Senior Software Developer [cid:logo_compac_5dcf97ef-52f5-498c-8b9b-728410ddffaf.png] [cid:compacicon_82e8a8c7-154a-4a32-9720-a5badb6258e0.png]<http://www.compacsort.com> [cid:facebook_fa85b924-53b9-45cc-8162-0564f64ec3a3.png] <https://www.facebook.com/Compacsort> [cid:linkedin_4ec016ad-84fa-443c-85a3-b9615a4ccef8.png] <https://www.linkedin.com/company/compac-sorting-equipment/> [cid:youtube_32142163-fc27-4aed-b14d-e8a377f98a6d.png] <https://vimeo.com/compacsort> [cid:twitter_d89338d8-98c8-4b65-9a9e-7b1333160b0d.png] <https://twitter.com/compacsort> [cid:insta2_1cd85de9-b3a2-4971-9904-52b2481a7c82.png] <https://www.instagram.com/compacsort/> COMPAC SORTING EQUIPMENT LTD | 4 Henderson Pl | Onehunga | Auckland 1061 | New Zealand Switchboard: +64 96 34 00 88 | tomra.com<http://www.tomra.com> The information contained in this communication and any attachment is confidential and may be legally privileged. It should only be read by the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender and delete the communication. From: Geller, Nir <nir.gel...@servotronix.com> Sent: Friday, 23 April 2021 1:39 am To: Geller, Nir <nir.gel...@servotronix.com>; Gavin Lambert <gavin.lamb...@tomra.com>; Richard Hacker <h...@igh.de>; etherlab-users@etherlab.org Subject: RE: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Hi, In my setup I have 2 ecat slaves with a large PDO data worth of 917 bytes. A LRW datagram is allocated with a payload size of 1830 bytes: [ 56.206673] EtherCAT DEBUG 0: Adding datagram pair with expected WC 6. [ 56.206690] EtherCAT 0: Domain0: Logical address 0x00000000, 1830 byte, expected working counter 6. [ 56.215738] EtherCAT 0: Datagram domain0-0-main: Logical offset 0x00000000, 1830 byte, type LRW at f1c6600c. My suspicion is that in master.c, ec_master_send_datagrams(), the following piece of code // does the current datagram fit in the frame? datagram_size = EC_DATAGRAM_HEADER_SIZE + datagram->data_size + EC_DATAGRAM_FOOTER_SIZE; if (cur_data - frame_data + datagram_size > ETH_DATA_LEN) { more_datagrams_waiting = 1; break; } Gets stuck in an infinite loop because it can't handle a datagram larger than 1500 bytes. Is my assumption correct? Do you happen to have a code fix for this situation? Thanks, Nir. From: Etherlab-users <etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org>> On Behalf Of Geller, Nir Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2021 11:10 AM To: Gavin Lambert <gavin.lamb...@tomra.com<mailto:gavin.lamb...@tomra.com>>; Richard Hacker <h...@igh.de<mailto:h...@igh.de>>; etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org> Subject: Re: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves Hello again, I tried running the ethercat master with a large PDO domain, but with no success. Following https://sourceforge.net/u/uecasm/etherlab-patches/ci/default/tree/#readme<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fu%2Fuecasm%2Fetherlab-patches%2Fci%2Fdefault%2Ftree%2F%23readme&data=04%7C01%7Cgavin.lambert%40tomra.com%7C69c3c87304b241e33b3108d905940454%7C4308d118edd143008a37cfeba8ad5898%7C0%7C0%7C637546955571855490%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=zPIH9KoPnpog%2BVGlqXG2mJ58VWV72Z%2FjzcmO3Uv2dvY%3D&reserved=0> I built the ethercat master with Gavin's patch set. I'm running on a x86 Intel Atom dual core with linux kernel 3.18.48. Ethernet adapter is igb. To achieve a very large PDO volume I created 2 ecat slaves, each with PDO data worth of 917 bytes. When connecting only 1 slave, and running examples/user/ec_user_example I can raise the slave to OP and exchange data between the master and slave over PDO. When connecting 2 slaves the start up process of the ethercat master gets stuck after EtherCAT DEBUG 0-main-0: Checking system time offset. And according to a wireshark capture the communication completely stops even though the application is still running cyclically. Can you please help me setup a functional system? Thanks, Nir. ________________________________ From: Etherlab-users <etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org>> on behalf of Geller, Nir <nir.gel...@servotronix.com<mailto:nir.gel...@servotronix.com>> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 1:48 PM To: Gavin Lambert <gavin.lamb...@tomra.com<mailto:gavin.lamb...@tomra.com>>; Richard Hacker <h...@igh.de<mailto:h...@igh.de>>; etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org> <etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org>> Subject: Re: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves Hi Gavin, This sounds promising. With regard to cyclic real time performance, does fragmentation work properly and efficiently with slaves that support DC? Thanks, Nir. -----Original Message----- From: Gavin Lambert <gavin.lamb...@tomra.com<mailto:gavin.lamb...@tomra.com>> Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2021 9:40 AM To: Geller, Nir <nir.gel...@servotronix.com<mailto:nir.gel...@servotronix.com>>; Richard Hacker <h...@igh.de<mailto:h...@igh.de>>; etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org> Subject: RE: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves Yes, it splits to multiple packets automatically. Just be careful to not use more data than your cycle rate will allow. Note that initialization and configuration of a large number of slaves is very slow by default, as it occurs in series. The unofficial patchset changes this to occur in parallel (for groups at a time rather than the whole network, to avoid creating too many packets at once). Gavin Lambert Senior Software Developer COMPAC SORTING EQUIPMENT LTD | 4 Henderson Pl | Onehunga | Auckland 1061 | New Zealand Switchboard: +49 2630 96520 | https://www.tomra.com The information contained in this communication and any attachment is confidential and may be legally privileged. It should only be read by the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender and delete the communication. -----Original Message----- From: Geller, Nir Sent: Tuesday, 30 March 2021 1:23 am To: Richard Hacker <h...@igh.de<mailto:h...@igh.de>>; etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org> Subject: Re: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves Hi, Thanks for your reply. You mean that in the case of a large amount of PDO data ( > 1500), a single invoke of ecrt_master_send(master) will result several frames sent out 1 after another? Nir. -----Original Message----- From: Etherlab-users <etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org>> On Behalf Of Richard Hacker Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 3:09 PM To: etherlab-users@etherlab.org<mailto:etherlab-users@etherlab.org> Subject: Re: [Etherlab-users] Running a large number of slaves EtherCAT and the master are not limited to the ethernet packet size. EtherCAT frames are automatically divided into smaller ethernet packets as required. As long as you're not exceeding physical limits, (like sending ~1,5kb at a rate of 1kHz), you should be fine. Physically EtherCAT can address ~64k slaves on a network. On 2021-03-29 13:22, Geller, Nir wrote: > Hi There, > > I'm trying to setup one ethercat master with a very large number of > ethercat slaves. > > The first obstacle I'm thinking about is a very large amount of data > sent over PDO each cycle, that will definitely exceed 1500 bytes. > > In order to address this issue I want to understand if it is possible > to send more than one frame each cycle? > > Another method could be using jumbo frames. Does the ethercat master > support that? > > Does anybody have practical experience with such a setup? > > Thanks, > > Nir. > > Mit freundlichem Gruß Richard Hacker -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard Hacker M.Sc. richard.hac...@igh.de<mailto:richard.hac...@igh.de> Tel.: +49 201 / 36014-16 Ingenieurgemeinschaft IgH Gesellschaft für Ingenieurleistungen mbH Nordsternstraße 66 D-45329 Essen Amtsgericht Essen HRB 11500 USt-Id.-Nr.: DE 174 626 722 Geschäftsführung: - Dr.-Ing. 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