The Industrial Raspberry Pi Forum

Dear All

I'm facing a frustrating issue using the following configuration for my motion project.
- EtherCAT as field bus
Six axis plus a remote I/O node

- RevPi CONNECT+ 8GB as controller
with the original, even though updated, OS version

- CODESYS as automation SW solution
CODESYS V3.5 SP17 Patch 1 (64 bit)
CODESYS EtherCAT 4.1.0.0
CODESYS SoftMotion 4.10.0.0
CODESYS Control for Raspberry PI 4.1.0.0
Revolution PI Library for CODESYS 1.1.0.0

The EtherCAT lan is connected to the port eth1 which hasn't got any special configuration about IP address, it is in DHCP mode.

Issue description
Randomly, after minutes or even hours EtherCAT stop working.
The message log error shown is: "Filedbus lost synchronicity"
This kind of error apparently has nothing to do with the solution configuration and tasks cycling neither.
The EtherCAT task execution time is always below the task cycle, and other tasks too.
Furthermore, the EtherCAT task is executed in a separated processor core with priority value 0, the highest one.

The master status counters don't highlight any error.

The attached images shown the entire configuration.

Thank you in advance for your time.
Any suggestion will be very appreciated.

Best regards
Rossano

Hi Rossano,

have you had a look on these threads?

Codesys Forum Runtime

Codesys Forum Motion

In the meantime, we will also look at where the problem is coming from.

Regards

Johannes

Hi Johannes

About the threads you have mentioned, yes I had a look
My motion task is executed in 3ms using a cycle of 5ms; I've attached some pictures to my previous post in order to show how EThercat works
Only jitter time seems a bit high, but as I've already described the solution can work for many minutes and then it loses synchronicity

I've tried to set EtherCAT cycle at 10ms, but nothing changed
I tried to set a static IP address for the network port I'm using (eth1), in order to disable DHCP mode, but nothing changed

I suspect the problem is related to some proces or something like that which is able to hang for a while the ethernet port
Or probaly it is related to CODESYS process priority; here attached you can find ditails about such process

Good morning

I've found the origin of the issue I was observing.
It was due to OPCUA server or something related to.
An application (bad implemented) instead of open the communication channel and keep it open for performing read / write actions on variables values, every one second the application opened the channel did actions on variables and closed the channel.
This kind of behaviour led the EtherCAT master to lose sync.

Currently the application with the unusual behaviour has been changed and the problem during the last Friday did not appear any more.
Even though the problem was caused by this unusual use of OPCUA protocol, I'm not able to recognize a direct cause.

Anyway, the issue I've reported with my first post it's not related to KUNBUS system.
Unless you can recognize something related to the last behaviour described, you can consider it as solved.

I'll try to signalize such kind of topic to CODESYS, just for my knowledge.
During the following days I'll keep the solution observed.

Best regards
Rossano Paris

Hello Rossano, thank you very much for your positive feedback. I find your intention to share your knowledge with the Codesys community respectable. This way we all get ahead and the community benefits, thank you very much.

Hello Dirk,
I agree with you

In the meantime CODESYS probably will answer my post, I'd like to get some information from your side.
My question is:
Under your point of view and based on your knowledge, are there some important settings regarding your hardware, in order to execute a master EtherCAT using RevPi CONNECT+ ?

Thanks
Rossano