Mesa with Ethercad connection

Hi everyone,
I know this question has come up before, but are there any current plans for an EtherCAT version of a Mesa Card?In my opinion, such a card would be a fantastic addition, especially for setups involving encoders or more complex configurations like Smart Serial connections.

For those retrofitting CNCs, the benefits would be substantial. For example, if you purchase a new spindle servo with EtherCAT, you could simply add a Mesa EtherCAT card and consolidate everything into a single communication line.

The challenge right now is the lack of high-quality, affordable EtherCAT options. Most available solutions are either industrial-grade (and prohibitively expensive) or limited in functionality. As a reference, even used single encoder cards from Beckhoff cost around 100€ or more.

It feels like there’s a real opportunity here, particularly for encoder cards. Personally, I’d love to have the option to integrate linear encoders into my axes with ethercad. And in my opinion it would future proof the mesa cards.

Just wanted to share my thoughts—what do others think PCW?

I've been considering this basically hostmot2/lbp16 over EtherCAT so the driver is pretty much the same
(just using Ethercat for transport)
 

As the OP said, the missing piece in an Ethercat build is affordable encoder inputs for spindles. There are very few options outside of Beckhoff. I have some Beckhoff I/O but have not bought an encoder module.

There are a few I/O modules generally with 16 inputs and 16 outputs. There must be a cheap Ethercat chip they use. Examples from Deiwu and Rtelligent (I have both). Rtelligent includes some PWM outputs.

But lets face it, the main reason one goes with Ethercat is to use Ethercat servo and stepper drives so the Mesa cards with analog and step/dir interfaces are not particularly useful any more.

Using Ethercat drives reduces the need for I/O because most drives have some included I/O for home and limit switches and brakes etc. These can also be used for general I/O.

Whilst using hm2 over Ethercat should  improve network latency issues with Mesa cards due to the more efficient transport layer, adding the additional complexity of Ethercat just for this does not make sense to me.

Perhaps Mesa could look at an Ethercat 7i92 equivalent that supported some existing daughter cards to give I/O, encoder, counters for MPG and analog voltage by adding a THCAD2 with its Calibration data stored in Ethercat registers? Perhaps this card would include some  smart serial interfaces too?

Anyway, I'm gonna go back to fiddling with Ethercat internal homing now...  After a long hiatus, I got my homing lab working last night and homing commenced as it should. I just have to work out why it didn't respond to the homing switch when it came on...

Whilst using hm2 over Ethercat should  improve network latency issues with Mesa cards due to the more efficient transport layer, adding the additional complexity of Ethercat just for this does not make sense to me.

The point is not so much to improve latency but to have open, extensible I/O that interworks with Ethercat servos.
Say you want a BISS absolute encoder interface, MODBUS and RCPWMgens on one low cost EtherCAT compatible card...

Two network interfaces and you can have both Mesa and EtherCAT.

In my opinion it does not make the mesa cards obsolete. yes digital servos don't need the step/dir or analog interfaces of standard mesa cards. But that is not the point. In my opinion mesa cards are not used in professional of the shelf solutions anyway. So it is the hobby and semi professional market mesa is addressing.
When your controller of an old machine breaks do you replace everything? or do you replace the broken parts with new stuff. Here having the option to go with ethercad would be great.
When you build your own machine you most likely will only use a digital spindle servo and not one on all axes to keep the cost down.
When you want to add stuff for automation the ability to add steppers is huge due to the low cost. And everyone has them laying around who works with automation. I once hacked together a system which pneumatically unlocked a clamp and advanced a square profile for the next part with two rubber wheels and two steppers. Cheap and fast.

Right now my main motivation is linear encoders.

I disagre. There are many commercial systems that have been retrofitted using Mesa cards. A friend has a 35 tonne 5 axis machine controlled with Mesa. He uses servos not steppers.

Yes, usually you keep the drives (but often people replace them) and limit switches etc and remove the existing controller and replace with suitable  Mesa cards.
Ethercat is really a relatively new kid on the block for Linuxcnc. Its been around for a long time but it was very difficult to configure until the release of version 2.9

I don't want to say anyting bad about mesa and I can't because those cards are great. What I said is that I have never heard of stock machines which are made with mesa cards except tormach. And that the market is mainly in the retrofit and hobby niches.