MECHATROLINK-II interface

Is there a way to interface the MECHATROLINK-II protocol to Linuxcnc?
Appears to be a RS-485 based protocol from the research I could understand.

Overview
www.mechatrolink.org/en/mechatrolink/feature-m2.html

Data sheet
www.yaskawa.com/pycprd/lookup/getdocumen...4lQfBelWLnCG5aD4X3Dg

I accidently purchased the wrong servopacks from ebay so if they don't sale again on ebay, I will need to find a use for them.

it appears to be an open source protocol , so it should be possible yes
if or not it's totally suitable is of course another matter

Any good threads to reference about writing the drivers or is this something a person trained in programming may need to take on?

i'm trying to hack mectronlink interface, packet structure is known, but sync command not known yet. any process from you contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
i'm going to buy a NT110 mlink-pci interface card to help hacking this closed source protocol.

slightly off topic but mechatronik III which is ethernet based up to 100mb/s , & ii which is rs485 up to 10mb/s
some additional reading :

rs485:
www.omronkft.hu/nostree/pdfs/inverter/a1...ll_tobpc73060050.pdf
ftp://213.61.109.142/Public/PDF_Technica...C880700%2017C%29.pdf

ethernet:
web-material3.yokogawa.com/IM34M06H60-03E.pdf

I asked about Mechatrolink I a while back. All the info is there for Mechatrolink members. You will either have to build the hardware or use a card from Yaskawa certified hardware. Let me know if you make any headway on this or have a programmer interesting in making the driver.

just got it running. the interface seems to be working ok so far using a cannibalized ethernet transformer for rs-485 isolation and off-the-shelf USB cables/connectors. the controller is implemented in a FPGA on one of my SSCNET cards. will probably make Mechatrolink II version soon...

Please contact me in regards to this project. Thank you.

Impressive!
It's a shame I've not visited RE stackexchange for quite a while and therefore I've missed your reply on frontend RE.

Anyway, since the time I asked that question, I built a receiver, captured some data from a live machine, found some helpful leaked docs on chinese sites and managed to write some software to parse the logic analyzer captures automatically. So, now I have some understanding of physical and data link layers.
But the docs for SGDB/M drives I have are somewhat ambiguous on many topics related to mechatrolink commands. And I don't think I understand the motion commandset and the phases (connection init) quite as well. I hope I'll be able to sort it out by capturing some more data for different phases and dissecting it.

Sadly, there's one mechatrolink-unrelated thing I can't understand. I've seen the architecture block diagram in the LinuxCNC developer manual, and it implies that Servo PID loop, Homing and Interpolation are essential parts of the real-time subsystem, i.e. they precede HAL. But yaskawa servopacks have all that built in. Therefore, when using Mechatrolink, all we've to do is send coordinates to the servopacks right after trajectory planning.
I already know that you've been able to make YMTL2P board, therefore this has to be possible. But is it easy? How do I even approach this task?

Btw, I've dropped you an email, have you received it?

hey! nope, i haven't got your email...

all i've done i bought an MP2300 and SDGS drives and snooped on the bus. then it was obvious that it is a manchester encoding with bit stuffing. and some headers in packets. everything else in documented in public yaskawa docs. following your posts on stackexchange i used an ethernet transformer with a diff transceiver. seems to be working fine so far.,,
you're right, you don't have to have a position PID loop in linuxCNC. the drive handles it, i just feed it with a target position.