Ethercat random jitter fix

I think is mostly architectural and organizational reasons, not strictly a license conflict. Both LinuxCNC and the IgH EtherCAT Master are **GPLv2**, so there's no real incompatibility there AFAIK. The separation exists because the EtherCAT master is an independent kernel subsystem, linuxcnc-ethercat is essentially a glue layer between two separate projects. Keeping it out-of-tree also lets it move faster without going through LinuxCNC's core review process. There is one additional wrinkle: the "EtherCAT brand and technology" is owned by Beckhoff, which adds an IP layer on top of the open-source licensing.

To use Ethercat, you need to become a member of The Ethercat Technology Group (ETG). Membership is free. www.ethercat.org/default.htm
But membership is only open to companies or businesses and you need a tax number or equivalent in your country.

Linuxcnc is nothing, just a loose community of users. We don't even have a bank account.

This has been explored by a number of the development team members over the years. Most recently by Steffen Moller who lives in Germany where the ETG and Beckhoff are domiciled. (I may have prodded him in this direction)
I had the opportunity to raise Linuxcnc with Martin Rosten, Chaiman of the ETG when he visited Australia a few years ago. There is no way forward.

But now etherlab have a repository and also host the linuxcnc-ethercat driver and I put that repository into the Linuxcnc installer, there isn't really any need for linuxcnc to get involved. (Except to manage the code base).

I would recommend you and Grandixximo as manufacturers join the ETG.

My company is already part of ETG
We make ethercat hardware and are licensed for it

rodw wrote:

To use Ethercat, you need to become a member of The Ethercat Technology Group (ETG). Membership is free. www.ethercat.org/default.htm
But membership is only open to companies or businesses and you need a tax number or equivalent in your country.

Linuxcnc is nothing, just a loose community of users. We don't even have a bank account.

This has been explored by a number of the development team members over the years. Most recently by Steffen Moller who lives in Germany where the ETG and Beckhoff are domiciled. (I may have prodded him in this direction)
I had the opportunity to raise Linuxcnc with Martin Rosten, Chaiman of the ETG when he visited Australia a few years ago. There is no way forward.

But now etherlab have a repository and also host the linuxcnc-ethercat driver and I put that repository into the Linuxcnc installer, there isn't really any need for linuxcnc to get involved. (Except to manage the code base).

I would recommend you and Grandixximo as manufacturers join the ETG.

Ok, so my inevitable follow up, what is tormach doing? Is it different cause they supply it in an installed state - installer method is irrelevant? OR are they as a company a member of ETG?

I don't currently supply any actual electrical directly. I just point people to linuxcnc for now. We are likely going to try and maintain some sort of guide with our config files to set things up, which will include this new patch. To make things easy and consistent for people.

Oh, and thanks everyone involved for this fix. It really seems to have solve quite a lot of little gremlins in one go.


 

Yes, Tormach Is part of ETG as well.
Are you using my repo's code or sittner's?
The random OP cycling is gone?

@grandixximo: I'd like to test it, but I'd rather wait until your changes and optimizations are incorporated into the official repository.
Until then, I'll stick with refClockSyncCycles="-1" for now.

No worries, I'm just not sure when that's gonna happen, Scott's not been active in the repo since beginning of January... Tried to reach out by email, no reply...

I tried to set this up and i get a 404 error. What have I done wrong?

i followed these instructions:

#remove old linuxcnc-ethercat
sudo apt remove linuxcnc-ethercat

#install pre-requisites
sudo apt-get install golang
sudo apt install build-essential git linuxcnc-uspace-dev ethercat-master libethercat-dev

--- and the line above gives a 404 error.

(remaining instructions:)
#patch download
cd ~
git clone github.com/grandixximo/linuxcnc-ethercat.git linuxcnc-ethercat-patched
cd linuxcnc-ethercat-patched

#patch install
make
sudo make install

ihavenofish wrote:

sudo apt install build-essential git linuxcnc-uspace-dev ethercat-master libethercat-dev

--- and the line above gives a 404 error.


 

That one is pulling from several different sources, could you post the 404 error?

NWE wrote:

ihavenofish wrote:

sudo apt install build-essential git linuxcnc-uspace-dev ethercat-master libethercat-dev

--- and the line above gives a 404 error.


 
That one is pulling from several different sources, could you post the 404 error?
 

this is what i get, thanks

E: Failed to fetch download.opensuse.org/repositories/scien...cc5-1%2b27.1_all.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 195.135.223.226 80]
E: Failed to fetch download.opensuse.org/repositories/scien...5-1%2b27.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 195.135.223.226 80]
E: Failed to fetch download.opensuse.org/repositories/scien...5-1%2b27.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 195.135.223.226 80]
E: Failed to fetch download.opensuse.org/repositories/scien...5-1%2b27.1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 195.135.223.226 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?