EtherCAT with ROS Kinetic [closed]
Hi all :)
how would be the correct way, to control devices via EtherCAT using ROS Kinetic? I found out a lot about SOEM, Orocos, etc. There are so many different packages available and a lot of them seem outdated... I tried many, but I didn't make it work for me... Can anybody provide an up-to-date manual on this topic?
Thanks in advance!
Regards, Philipp
Or is this only possible with ROS Indigo? If so, does anybody have a manual on this?
also, I would prefer, to use Ubuntu 16.04, if possible....
well, SOEM is a library for controlling EtherCAT devices on linux. So yes, you can make this work. SOEM is actually released as a ROS package for kinetic. I've made some ELMO motor controllers work in kinetic using SOEM, but it has been quite some work and hacking. Most importantly, you need to...
understand the concepts behind EtherCAT as a transport layer and whatever command set you are using. In my case this has been CANopen-over-EtherCAT, which has quite a steep leraning curve if you need to learn both.
In the end, getting a device to work with EtherCAT in ROS is doable, but pretty ...
device specific, so it would help to no more about what kind of hardware you want to use.
Thanks! :) I want to use a Beckhoff EtherCAT "Station", which has many digital and analog I/Os. Unfortunately, I don't know the exact type of this station, but I can look it up, as soon, as I'm back in university....
where can I find this SOEM package for kinetic, that you mentioned in your first comment?
sudo apt install ros-kinetic-soem. But note that this simply wraps the soem library as a ROS package. You still have to write the ROS driver for your device yourself.