Git updates: v1.7.0

I'm not planning on sending out announcements every time a new minor release goes out, but I thought I'd mention this one.  I just released v1.7.0 of the linuxcnc-ethercat driver.  New .debs should appear in the Opensuse build server soon, if they haven't already.

This release includes a lot of minor changes to the digital input and digital output drivers (el1xxx, el2xxx, el1252, el1859, and ep23xx, specifically).  I refactored the code in all of these to use a common core (in lcec_class_din.c and lcec_class_dout.c ), which should make supporting simple digital in and digital out devices much less complex in the future.  However, changes bring the risk of breaking things.  I've verified that it works with several assorted input, output, and combo devices, but that doesn't mean that I didn't manage to break something somewhere. 

If you depend on Beckhoff digital I/O devices, then verifying that things still work and filing bugs would be appreciated.
 

Also, as of this release, I'm semi-automatically testing the following devices:

• EL1008 (digital in)
• EL1859 (digital in + digital out)
• EL2008 (digital out)
• EL3068 (analog in)
• EL3204 (temperature/resistance in)
• EL3403 (AC current/voltage measurement)
• EL4032 (analog out)

They're wired together in various ways, with tests to verify that turning on (for example) pin 1 the EL2008 at slave #3 will cause pin #1 on the EL1008 at slave #1 to go 'true'.  See tests/haltest.sh for the current test script.

I have an EL7041 and a stepper wired up; they'll probably be next to be added to the testing.  After that I'll add an EP23* module, a few more random EL1* and EL2* devices, and then move on to adding a RPi 4 with an EK1814 (new in v1.7.0) and a few more EL1xxx and EL2xxx devices.  I bought a literal boxload of them off of eBay a few years back, and there's no point in having them sit on the shelf.

 

You probably want to skip 1.7.0 and go straight to 1.7.1. There are a couple impressively dumb bugs in 1.7.0.