ColorCNC Colorlight 5A-75E/5A-75B as FPGA controller board

Right, for multiple cards it makes a difference. With two rv901t (or one rv901t and one 5a-75) it would be possible to use one for input and one for output. This way no modification to the hardware would be needed.
Regarding EtherCat, it looks like it is harder to implement on the host side, it would at least need raw sockets. The colorlight hardware should be able to handle it.

I have a question regarding the HAL configuration. How do you generate it? Write it from scratch by hand? Or modify a mesa config? Do you already run your machine on Litex-CNC?

Linuxcnc already has an ethercat driver, so we don't need to implement a master, just the slave

romanetz wrote:

Linuxcnc already has an ethercat driver, so we don't need to implement a master, just the slave

 

nice. With the 2 ports of the colorlights it would even be possible to cut out the switch when chaining.

sensille wrote:

Right, for multiple cards it makes a difference. With two rv901t (or one rv901t and one 5a-75) it would be possible to use one for input and one for output. This way no modification to the hardware would be needed.
Regarding EtherCat, it looks like it is harder to implement on the host side, it would at least need raw sockets. The colorlight hardware should be able to handle it.

I have a question regarding the HAL configuration. How do you generate it? Write it from scratch by hand? Or modify a mesa config? Do you already run your machine on Litex-CNC?
 

At this moment I do that by hand, but have included some stubs for the HAL-file here on the forum and also partly on the GitHub-repo. At this moment I am producing the boards. In that repository I also put examples on how to do wire these boards in the HAL.

Today something to celebrate: the first two boards (PCB) have been sent for prototype production.
 

In the past I have asked litex guys info about an option to daisy-chain boards running litex,
this could open possibilities with current drivers and litex, the response was positive but the problem
seem to be the effort to put in this new feature was not a priority back then:
github.com/enjoy-digital/liteeth/issues/103
Unfortunately I don't have much time and knowledge to help in this regard.
 

sensille wrote:

Regarding EtherCat, it looks like it is harder to implement on the host side, it would at least need raw sockets. The colorlight hardware should be able to handle it.
 

NO it won't becuse ethercat is subject to licensing so you'd need to embed a LAN2952 chip which has the appropriate licensing, have a company, and become a member of the ethercat society.

You might be able to use an ethercat click module but it would likely be a pretty big development project.

Well, it seems to me that nobody can forbid me to learn the technology and make an open-source implementation without having to obtain the ethercat membership?

romanetz wrote:

Well, it seems to me that nobody can forbid me to learn the technology and make an open-source implementation without having to obtain the ethercat membership?

Well you would be in breach of licence agreements and copyright and you would be exposed to legal action by a large well resourced gobal  organisation. It could become expensive....

An independent slave implementation should not violate any copyrights,
but it would certainly violate EtherCAT patents.

Note that the Primary EtherCAT patents will expire soon (in the next few years)

Let us focus in this thread to the development of a LinuxCNC dirver for the Etherbone protocol and not deviate into grey areas .

At this moment I've developed three BOBs for the HUB-75 ports:

• Sinking input (GPIO in, slow encoders)
• Sourcing output (GPIO out, PWM)
• Differential stepgen (up to 400 kHz step frequency)

From the repository one can download all KiCad schematics and production files (Gerber). For people from Western Europe I also included a list where all parts can be ordered (Reichtelt, non-affiliate).When you decide to build the boards yourself and use Mouser or DigiKey, please share your list with me, so other users can benefit from it as well.

For these boards I have some questions:

• any suggestions on functions? At this moment I'm looking into a BOB for a fast encoder (up to 1 MHz) and a BOB for a bit more heavy GPIO out, which can be used for a heatbed or extruder like component.
• I was considering to put these boards on PcbWay, which would be an affiliate link. Has anybody experience with this, and would it be acceptable within this community. One is always free to upload the production files to any PCB-producer of their liking.