We have been seeing an intermittent issue on one of our printers where the EtherCAT shuts down during operation. We have even seen it happen when running RapidSetup. Our working hypothesis is that some servo or other node on the EtherCAT is going offline, bringing down the network. If we manually force a node offline we see similar behaviour.
My question is when the EtherCAT goes down unexpectedly is there a way to determine which node went rogue?
Hi patrick,
I would start my investigation by looking at NetworkLogMessageCountGet and NetworkLogMessageGet for details about it going wrong. If you see a working counter issue, the mismatch can help you find which nodes is going down for a specific topology.
Additionally, look at each node and dig into their own diagnostics. Their manuals should cover the details. If they are complaining about the network going down, timeouts, or synchronization, it indicates the issue is on another nodes.
Jacob,
Thanks, I will investigate those functions.
Also, is there any kind of event generated when the EtherCAT shuts down? It would help us gracefully handle the error.
Pinging again on the event for EtherCAT shutdown. RapidSetup detects shutdown but is it doing so by polling?
Hello Patrick,
Yes, RapidSetup has a polling thread that calls MotionController.NetworkStateGet() cyclically and acts accordingly.