EtherCAT is an industrial fieldbus widely used in industrial automation. It is an Ethernet-based protocol, standardized in IEC 61158, and suitable for both hard and soft Real-Time.
On EtherCAT, there are master and slave devices. Often our customers need to implement master functionality using our computer on modules, thus requiring only a software stack.
If slave functionality is required, compatible EtherCAT Slave Controller hardware is also needed due to hard real-time requirements.
Toradex does not support EtherCAT on its embedded Linux offerings out-of-the-box.
We have partners who provide EtherCAT master functionality for our modules, presented below.
acontis Technologies provides several EtherCAT solutions, such as the EC-Master software stack, among other solutions.
The CODESYS Software PLC Solution offers an EtherCAT master software stack.
You can evaluate CODESYS on Torizon with the Partner Demo Container - Codesys.
Our software partners for EtherCAT, such as BE.services, Triadem and Happiest Minds can help you to implement the best solution for your use case.
While open source solutions exist and you can consider integrating an open-source library such as Simple Open EtherCAT Master (SOEM), we recommend that you use a proven solution from our partners.
