EtherCAT driver for a 6 axis robot

"Kinematics, singularys etc. are another chapter....."

I may use RobotDK to work out best use of the axes and "post process" to pre-calculated G-code.  Meca500 kinematics supported.

WIP attached.

Well that's neat.  You can set up to four  "custom dynamic data tables" to be sent to the EtherCAT master such as real-time

joint position
joint torque
3-axis accelerometer
end effector pose (tool or world referenced)

and many others!

I've seen some examples of using a ddt to prepare velocity and acceleration.  Still trying to understand if that's required. What signals need moving around between the motion controller, the pid and the meca500 encoders.  Also to understand if any dataformat comversion needs to take place.

I may need to draw a chart. Requires coffee. Back soon.

Taking a look at linuxcnc-ethercat now

I have forked linuxcnc-ethercat with a view to add Meca500 support

github.com/djsftree/linuxcnc-ethercat/
 

I've been reviewing the other hardware in src

If anyone is able to review the direction i'm going in I would be very grateful.

github.com/djsftree/linuxcnc-ethercat/commits/master