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2 years later nearly and I managed to fix the issue after previously having nearly written the machine off as impossible to rescue.

I simply removed all PDOs that I do not use in my HAL from the EtherCAT XML. Seriously. That was it. `ethercat pdos` lists many entries and my colleague had populated the XML with all of them previously. Turns out, for this hardware, defining the ones you don't plan on using is a mistake.

Along the way I applied countless other fixes too, including changing the I/O control module to a Beckhoff EK unit, so I can't promise the fix wasn't a compound of everything I tried, but removing the PDOs was what made it click in the end. Everything else was way too numerous and way too long ago for me to recount and list here, sadly.

Another thing worth mentioning is that I found an old doc in the original hard drive of the machine that told me the PLL errors I had in dmesg were because of the 60C2 SDO. The slaves would not display its contents for some reason, but I was able to write raw data in it from the XML just fine.

Posting this so that it may potentially help someone in the future that is also dealing with undocumented Chinese hardware.

This is great news. There has been a lot of ethercat related development activity driven by grandixximo on both Linuxcnc and the linuxcnc-ethercat hal driver. When a few more things come together, I will be refreshing my ISO's which will put everything on the one ISO. 

Its great that Grandixximo is now the owner of the  linuxcnc-ethercat repository and he's implemented a number of changes with more in the pipleine. He's also got a PR with LinuxCNC that will provide a "hook" in linuxCNC to allow synchronizing the servo thread with Ethercat before the servo thread starts which should further improve results and perhaps remove that little squeak even..

Thank you for your endorsement of my kernel tuning optimizations. Its very valuable feedback being able to state Trixie (Ddebian 13) is as good as Debian 10 once tuned. Having a system that queries your PC as it is optimised has reduced manually tuned jitter by 50% in my testing. I have never been very rigorous about this testing as it needs to be installed on hardware  and I have to stuff around compiling a wifi driver every times so its easy to loose data but it seems to improve with every iteration as its given me a place to record every new optimisation I unearth.

At risk of upsetting some, you can find out more about my optimisations on my Youtube channel www.youtube.com/@MrRodW or the companion website mrrodw.au/ 

Good morning everyone.
After a few weeks of testing on a station with drives and I/O peripherals, we managed to achieve good results with GRandixximo.
The work done by Grandixximo significantly improves EtherCAT performance, but it must be combined with the kernel optimizations that Rodw has developed.
Using these two optimizations, on the EtherCAT and kernel sides, we are approaching Debian 10 performance.
The Debian 13 solution, when stressed by simultaneously opening multiple browsers and graphical tools, sporadically made noise for a fraction of a second, both with refclocksync -1 and 1, but I'm sure that using a PC more suitable for EtherCAT, stable machines can be achieved.

On Debian 10, the drives do not emit any noise under any conditions.

Grandixximo will now prepare the configuration packages and documentation.
As soon as they are ready, I will be able to test them on a few other machines to confirm everything.

We thank all the participants in this discussion.

www.youtube.com/post/UgkxX0n_N1nVVU5uey0mv18s-GS4xseBWSrb

Yes

 

i want to make them all sinking i think its this?

setp hm2_7i96s.0.7i84.0.0.output_sink 0xffff

setp hm2_7i96s.0.7i84.0.0.output_source 0x0000
 

I think i get it now, but can you double check what you wrote isnt backwards.

From the manual:
"Sinking mode is similarly enabled by setting the corresponding sink bit to ‘1' and source bit to ‘0'

 

Yes, for example to set the first 8 outputs ( 0..7 )  to sink mode
and the last 8 outputs ( 8..15 ) to source mode, you would put:

setp hm2_7i96s.0.7i84.0.0.output_sink      0x00FF  
setp hm2_7i96s.0.7i84.0.0.output_source 0xFF00

In your hal file
 

So I write setp hm2_7i96s.0.7i84.0.0.output_sink in the hal file? 

I really underestimated the complexity of this.

Yes, it's done with a setp command in the  hal file

I don't have the parameter names in front of me, but you can find
them by running:

halcmd show all | grep source

and

halcmd show all | grep sink

when LinuxCNC is running

 

As long as you have updated LinuxCNC, the main thing needed is to
change the 5I25T firmware to support the 7I77

sudo mesaflash --device 5I25T --write 5i25t_7i77x2d.bin --reload

5i25t_7i77x2d.bin is in the 5i25t.zip file (in /configs/hostmot2) available from Mesa's webstore

Hello all, been a long time since I set up anything with Linux CNC and i have forgotten most of it. My last experience was setting up a mesa card with a ethernet configuration with digital steppers. I have picked up a Hurco Hawk 5 with analog steppers and encoders. It had already been set up with  wheezy 2.7 linux cnc. It had a 5i25 with P3 to a 7i77 for the servo, encoders, and a pendant. P2 was connected to a mach3 BOB to control the FVD. the 5i25 is not communicating to the 7i77 due to rodent damage. I Have purchased a 5I25T to replace it.  I have backed up the linuxcnc folder to a thumb drive and the plan is to update to the newest version of linux CNC. What am i looking at to change for the 5I25T to work with it after i reinstall to the new version. I assume it is not just a streight swap of the cards. 

Hello

Looking for help on where I go to change the 7i84U outputs to sink/source. the manual says I need to change the output parameters, is this done in hal?

Thanks

I like to wire E-Stops to power, not enable pins, with as few steps as possible. Soft e-stop can control an enable/disable line, but "real" e-stops I want to pull power from motors. On my machine, it's set up so that the Mesa card is powered separately from the motors/spindle. The Mesa card directly controls the enable lines for the motors, but the power enable signal (to a relay controlling motor power) is also physically routed through the e-stop button such that pressing the button will remove power regardless of what the Mesa card wants. You can get e-stop buttons with multiple switches in them if you want/need multiple circuits being separately switched by one physical button.

I generally also like to wire things such that "power applied" is "enabled", so that a broken wire or loose connection will only disable the machine.

If you've got other safety hazards from just yanking power (eg, a Z axis that could fall), you may need to consider those.

Hi Victo4,

congrats for your project, that is pretty cool.

Your modded vertical Linuxcnc version is available to download?
I can't find it on your github...

Thanks and regards,
Adam