Ethercat CATIO-A setup

Hi;
I've tried to setup an ethercat catio-a for pwm to control a vfd. Initially i followed this post:  forum.linuxcnc.org/ethercat/52997-etherc...module-help?start=10 to get me started. In the cia402.hal i've added "net spindle-pwm => lcec.0.0.PWM-OUT-0" and "net spindle-duty =>  lcec.0.0.DUTY-OUT-0" 

within linuxcnc/ halshow/ watch pins i can set the spindle duty and spindle frequency. The biggest problem is i'm not sure where to go from here for configuration to have a set frequency and pwm tied to spindle rpm. To me, is seems all of the spindle documents don't apply to (CIA402) ethercat io modules.

I should note that i'm a complete lcnc noob so there's more than likely something i've missed along the way. I'm hoping to get some help from someone that's successfully setup something like this in the past. 

cheers

You are kind of out of the ethercat swamp now. It's now all linuxcnc and hal
to set up the spindle.
You will need to know what the spindle expects as input (read the manual)
and what input you need to give to the ethercat unit to produce that (read that manual).

The example here uses the pwmgen component, ethercat does that now so you won't need that.
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/examples/spindle.html
You have the speed in spindle.0.speed-out, you should connect that to the duty cycle but you almost certainly
need to scale the rpms to the duty cycle number. Check example 1 in the doc above how to use the scale component
for that. So you will have the spindle rpm going in to the scale component and the output from
the scale component going to the lcec.0.0.DUTY-OUT-0 pin.

Set the frequency to the spindle's preferred frequency like 1500 (don't know, check manual) if that pin is for the frequency.

Cheers Hakan. I'll have a read through and see what I can come up with.

Edit:
Looks like I need to convert to a U32 unit (for the duty cycle). Hopefully I can get something working within the next few days. 

Yes one often need some type conversion.
Maybe conv_float_u32? linuxcnc.org/docs/html/hal/components.html

again, cheers once again for pointing me in the right direction.

unfortunately i'm still far to green to get a working hal snippet for pwm control, but chatGPT isn't... after a bit of back and forward this was the result:

setp lcec.0.0.PWM-OUT-0 98304000 #sets frequency to 1.5khz

loadrt scale count=1
loadrt conv_float_u32 count=1

addf scale.0 servo-thread
addf conv-float-u32.0 servo-thread

setp scale.0.gain 3.5

net gui-rpm spindle.0.speed-out => scale.0.in
net scaled-rpm scale.0.out => conv-float-u32.0.in
net rpm-u32 conv-float-u32.0.out => lcec.0.0.DUTY-OUT-0


i now have a working PWM out!

i did try outputting to analog out but there seems to be some problem with it, for example 20 000 rpm would output 3v, 10 000rpm would give 5v, 7500 rpm would output 2v. It's not the end of the world, but hopefully i can get it sussed at the very least for others that try this board.

once again,
cheers for the help to get a working PWM out!

After some back and forward i have an analog output. the scale gain is suited for 18k rpm. The rpm limiting needed to be added otherwise an incorrect value, say M3S30000 could be input with 0v output on the pin. Unfortunately this doesn't limit the gui rpm.

# Load required components
loadrt limit2 count=1
loadrt scale count=1
loadrt conv_float_u32 count=1

# Add functions to servo-thread
addf limit2.0 servo-thread
addf scale.0 servo-thread
addf conv-float-u32.0 servo-thread

# Configure RPM limit range
setp limit2.0.min 0
setp limit2.0.max 18000

# Connect motion RPM output to limit2 input
net gui-rpm spindle.0.speed-out => limit2.0.in

# Output from limiter feeds scale
net clamped-rpm limit2.0.out => scale.0.in

# Scale: gain = 1 / 18000 = 0.22
setp scale.0.gain 0.22
setp scale.0.offset 0

# Connect to float→U32 converter
net scaled-float scale.0.out => conv-float-u32.0.in
net final-u32 conv-float-u32.0.out => lcec.0.0.Analog-Output-0