Ethercat interface to elmo motor controller

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Hi all,

I'd like to drive four Elmo DC Whistle motor controllers via EtherCAT in ROS.

All my four slave controllers are Gold Solo Whistle and connected in a series chain structure, then connected to a master Multi-Axis Controllers, Gold Maestro in its ECAT1 port. The ROS host PC connected with the Gold Maestro in its EtherNET port. And host PC runs Ubuntu 14.04 with ROS Indigo.

I used the mgruhler/soem package and also give the slaveinfo binary root access to socket commands

sudo setcap cap_net_raw+ep bin/slaveinfo

when I ran the slaveinfo binary, I could not get the correct feedback, but with the following information:

SOEM (Simple Open EtherCAT Master)

Slaveinfo 

Starting slaveinfo 

ec_init on eth0 succeeded. 

Ack=-1 

No slaves found! 

End slaveinfo, close socket

End program

I have no idea how to handle this problem. Since I can connect and control all the motors in Windows with the program, I am thinking if I made some wrong configuration.

1. Possible issue and where I could not understand. During the initial procedure, I use the ELMO Application Studio to set the Controllers, I could see there is a TCP/IP address for the master to connect, and I check the windows program and found it use this IP to make a connection. But in ROS, we only use eth0 to make a connection. So, I am afraid this may be one issue or one place I could not understand.

2. Configuration and Communication Protocol. In the ELMO manual, we could find this connection is called as EOE(EtherNet Over EtherCAT). Since I have the Master, Multi-Axis Controllers Gold Maestro, I am not sure if I can still use the SOEM package. Or do I need any special setting in the Master?

3. Package issue. My last thinking may concert about the SOEM package, since in the ROS ANSWERS, @mgruhler said he has lost in SOEM and did use this package. I am also confused.

However, I ended up using SOEM, not ros_ethercat (I was lost on that one)...

I hope anyone who has drive ELMO in ROS successfully could share me with the Configuration and Packages. I am real new in this part.

Thanks!