Software Structure of the EASE System¶

The EASE slave supports the exchange of data between the EtherCAT Master and the Mbed board (a.k.a. Base board). The EtherCAT Master reads and writes eight 16-bit integers respectively on the EASE slave via the EtherCAT interface. Correspondingly, the Base board reads the eight 16-bit integers (written by the Master) and writes eight 16-bit integers (read by the Master) on the EASE via the SPI protocol. Thus, the EASE bridges the data packets between the EtherCAT Master and Base board to support seamless high-speed communication.

Therefore, there are two pieces of software that needs to be reviewed in order to understand the chain of communication and data-transfer.

1. Esmacat Master Software for the EtherCAT communication (Master SW as shown above figure)
2. Software for the SPI communication (In this tutorial, it is the EASE_Example, the binary of which is generated using Mbed platform, (SPI SW in above figure))

You can download and buildling Esmacat Master software on Linux by following the document

• Getting Started Esmacat Master Software Linux
• Getting Started Esmacat Master Software Windows

Both the above documents can be found at https://www.esmacat.com/tutorials

More information about the Esmacat Master software example code used along with EASE_Example is provided in wiki link https://os.mbed.com/users/esmacat/code/EASE_Example/wiki/Example-Application-Esmacat-master

More information about EASE_Example code is provided in wiki link https://os.mbed.com/users/esmacat/code/EASE_Example/wiki/EASE_Example