Berlin, December 7th, 2021

Real-time automation with EtherCAT PC slaves

EtherCAT PC slave cards by manufacturer ESD, which have been supported by Kithara RealTime Suite for years, can now also be run under Windows 11 in real time. For instance, with the "ECS-PCIe/FPGA", any regular PC can be utilized via PCIe as EtherCAT slave in real time. The memory area of the EtherCAT slave controller is directly mapped in the PCI Express address space. This way, the benefits of a PC, such as graphical interfaces or enhanced input options, can be integrated into higher-level EtherCAT topologies, thus creating crucial nodes for monitoring and controlling.

Thanks to its support of MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt), the card is suitable for real-time operations with the EtherCAT PC Slave Device Extension. This allows for real-time automation with the Kithara EtherCAT Master to be extended in scalable and flexible fashion.