Anyone seen this?

If you look at the reddit link, a couple of years ago Ethercat licence (IP Core) for FPGA ethercat was "23k USD for ET1815 or 6k USD plus 3k per 1000 devices for the ET1816"
ET1816 is for small business.
For the development of an EtherCAT device, the ET1816 one-time kick-off charge is required, plus ET1816-1000 royalty for 1000 devices. The royalties for 1000 devices must be paid in advance each time.

So even for 1000 devices, we are looking at $9 USD per device, PLUS cost of the FPGA.

Does not really compete with cost of already available ESC, unless making very large volumes.

For most uses we don't need an FPGA.

RP2040 is attractive because of:
PIO for step generation
Low cost
Availability has been good
(all in theory, I know very little really)

pippin88 wrote:

Unmet needs:
Low cost IO
- example: ethercat IO module on gantry for limit switches, home switches, touch probe. Just need Ethernet cable and power from control box to the gantry
- multiple ethercat esc can do 16 GPIO without any MCU / FPGA
 

That could be done, just depends on what the definition of low cost is. If you made 100 of them and gave them to friends it'd cost you $20ea. If I complied with the ETG stuff, best case is $40 as it would still cost me $20 to make them and I'd have to offload quite a few just to recoup the cost of the CTT stuff.

Lots of IO at reasonable cost - even cheap Chinese undocumented IO are $100+ for 16 IO, compare to Mesa where you get 48 IO
We should be able to have lots of IO for reasonable cost

For "lots of IO" it's a bit trickier. I'd have to think about it You can obviously use an MCU over SPI to the ESC to get the MCU's IO. Maybe those exotic ESCs have something exotic, not sure. Another possible option is to use multiplexors off the ESCs IO, I think that would be a reasonable way to do it.

Low cost HMI

www.bausano.net/images/arduino-easycat/E...FT_display_AN003.pdf

You can do something like that just like that. Wouldn't be too difficult to come up with a better SPI touchscreen and have it all in some enclosure. The problem with that is the "UI" is hardcoded basically and I'm not into writing embedded UIs so not sure how that would work out but hardware wise it's possible....not sure how "low cost" tho.

Step generator. To link existing step/dir servos/steppers into ethercat

The link in the first post the guy has that. They work but he's having issues. hardware wise it's not difficult. Not quite sure what issues he's having or what's wrong with the code. Remora targets STM32 and I think they have good stepgens, not sure if that codes portable or not. Either way If he get the code issues resolved it shouldn't be an issue to use that code in any ethercat project.
 

With a "simple" ethercat slave controller (ESC) such as LAN9252 or AX58100 there are two broad approaches:

1. Separate ESC module and MCU/FPGA module with SPI connection
- advantage that MCU/FPGA module could be used with other SPI options such as RPI or SPI ethernet adaptor. This would increase market size substantially.
- could produce different modules for different needs, e.g. step/gen module, all GPIO module rather than one "jack of all trades" module
- part count might be a bit higher


2. Integrated ESC and MCU/FPGA on one PCB

With both options:
Ideal to have ability to have expansion modules to add more GPIO etc.
?over i2c or SPI

For EtherCat only: The major need I think is for low cost GPIO.
However it would be great to have open source hardware design for general use. Which SPI interfaced hardware might be ideal for versatility of use with EtherCat/Ethernet/on board SPI.
Currently Remora (for example) mainly depends on 'hacking'/repurposing of closed source boards that are subject to change without notice

There is also LAN9255 - EtherCAT Device with integrated Cortex M4F Microcontroller
$17 USD in single part quantity, <$14 in 100 qty.

With a "simple" ethercat slave controller (ESC) such as LAN9252 or AX58100 there are two broad approaches:

1. Separate ESC module and MCU/FPGA module with SPI connection
- advantage that MCU/FPGA module could be used with other SPI options such as RPI or SPI ethernet adaptor. This would increase market size substantially.
- could produce different modules for different needs, e.g. step/gen module, all GPIO module rather than one "jack of all trades" module
- part count might be a bit higher
 

There's about $30-40 involved in even looking at an EtherCAT ESC when it's something that is to be sold. You can buy that chip for $12 and use it all day. Nobody can sell you anything with that chip on it for less than $30-40 as I explained earlier or they're losing money so that's the place where ya start. For what you're  mentioning here if you bought a Mikro Click and an BTT Octopus off Amazon, you're at $100 and that's the best price you could ever get for that combined device...nobody could go near it. Now, do you want to but the $100 thing, or a Mesa card? You'd probably just buy the Mesa card and you'd be better off for it.

You're previous suggestions were a little better. Stuff that makes sense is things that either nobody makes something similar and can withstand the extra cost of EtherCAT, or things that are simple yet so outrageously expensive otherwise like IO modules.

2. Integrated ESC and MCU/FPGA on one PCB

With both options:
Ideal to have ability to have expansion modules to add more GPIO etc.
?over i2c or SPI

For EtherCat only: The major need I think is for low cost GPIO.
However it would be great to have open source hardware design for general use. Which SPI interfaced hardware might be ideal for versatility of use with EtherCat/Ethernet/on board SPI.
Currently Remora (for example) mainly depends on 'hacking'/repurposing of closed source boards that are subject to change without notice
Personally I'm not doing anything with FPGAs, that's not my forte. The open source thing is the link I posted in the very first post when I asked "Why doesn't anyone use stuff like this"....did ya look at it? It sounds like exactly what you're looking for there.

My current project uses a keypad I made with 4 16bit I2C IO expanders. I2C expanders will be a thing with my EtherCAT project.

You mention Remora and you mentioned a plug in "module" well I always thought it would be great if they supported the Teensy 4.1. I think I asked 3 times and never got a response....even after they started supporting the Chinese Ethernet controller that may or may not have the same MCU on it depending on what day of the week it was......Seemed like a good idea to me.

pippin88 wrote:

There is also LAN9255 - EtherCAT Device with integrated Cortex M4F Microcontroller
$17 USD in single part quantity, <$14 in 100 qty.
 

Doesn't really make a difference. A comparable STM32 is $3-6 @qty1. It's good for something tightly integrated, but for something like this it's better to be able to change out the MCU for a bigger/smaller/faster one. It's just saving board space, STM32s only need some caps and a crystal...it's not a big deal.