ethercat config how and why?

now i have an ethercat driver (thinkvo ac servo), i want to play it with linuxcnc.
first i follow the wiki , and the config doc
i can see it by: ethercat slaves.
now it came to xml config and i got lost.
i have download some success config xml(see attachments) and study them but can not get through it.
would some tell what the config xml is actually for? and which is the the right parameter needed?

take ethercat_config_estun.xml for example:
1. refClockSyncCycles is 5, but in other xml,it is not 5, where the value come from?
1.it have some sdoConfig at first, <sdoConfig idx="6098" subIdx="0">,<sdoConfig idx="6099" subIdx="1"> etc.
why you should have this? ethercat_config_n.xml don't have such things.

3. in pdoEntry list like <pdoEntry idx="6040" subIdx="00" bitLen="16" halPin="drivecontrol" halType="bit"/>
they all define for halPin of drivecontrol,poscommand,speedcommand in common, but there have difference halPIn,like opmode vs signalcontrol,
i want to know what those halPIn for and how to know which one is needed?

newbie questions, all clue is welcome :laugh:

dbskccc wrote: now i have an ethercat driver (thinkvo ac servo), i want to play it with linuxcnc.
first i follow the wiki , and the config doc
i can see it by: ethercat slaves.
now it came to xml config and i got lost.
i have download some success config xml(see attachments) and study them but can not get through it.
would some tell what the config xml is actually for? and which is the the right parameter needed?

If you work with a generic slave as Sascha Ittner [ github.com/sittner/linuxcnc-ethercat ] defines it, then you need a config xml file.
See also github.com/koppi/mk/blob/daa3fd64a0b2b61...mai-Thinkpad-X200.md .

take ethercat_config_estun.xml for example:
1. refClockSyncCycles is 5, but in other xml,it is not 5, where the value come from?

To my mind, slave synchronization - especially in case of slaves from different vendors - is not trivial.

1.it have some sdoConfig at first, <sdoConfig idx="6098" subIdx="0">,<sdoConfig idx="6099" subIdx="1"> etc.
why you should have this? ethercat_config_n.xml don't have such things.

Suppose, you have to configure free PDO mapping on a CoE slave, then you have to do it with SDO commands in the preoperational phase of the master.
However, you do not necessarily need the raw SDO commands as Ittner proposes.
You can do the same from the commandline as shown here www.iram.fr/~blanchet/ethercat/akd/examples/
in the bash example.

There is also another approach: wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Etherlab .
However, this example is not complete and it uses spinlocks instead of mutexes.
I adopted this example for Xenomai github.com/sirop/EtherCAT_HAL/blob/master/pdort2dc.comp , but made the error of using Xenomai Native API directly
instead of doing the detour over LinuxCNC/MAchinekit RTAPI.
I'll change this either at the weekend or at the beginning of the next week.

thanks for your info, i would try [ github.com/koppi/mk/blob/daa3fd64a0b2b61...mai-Thinkpad-X200.md ],
now i should learn more about linuxcnc ethercat and canopen dsp 402.

Just pushed a pure RTAPI version of an EtherCAT HAL component
for Copley AEM-090-14:
github.com/sirop/EtherCAT_HAL