What is EatherCat? and why it could be important?

[Amalinda J' Gamage]

Dear all,

I notice the new beaglebone doesn't have the EtherCat functionality. Im wondering as to what this means. I notice that both have Ethernet so why is this Ethercat important?

thank you so much,

[Gerald Coley]

EtherCAT is an industrial automation protocol over Etherent. http://www.ethercat.org/

EtherCAT is important if you need it.

EtherCAT support is provided by Ethernet PHYs connected to the PRU pins.

These connections are not available on the BBB.

Gerald

--
For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beagleboard...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Mark Lazarewicz]

Look at evm335x it supports this Industrial communication has to do with what's brought out from SOc Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

---

From: Amalinda J' Gamage <amalind...@gmail.com>;
To: <beagl...@googlegroups.com>;
Subject: [beagleboard] What is EatherCat? and why it could be important?
Sent: Fri, Sep 27, 2013 4:33:36 PM

Dear all, I notice the new beaglebone doesn't have the EtherCat functionality. Im wondering as to what this means. I notice that both have Ethernet so why is this Ethercat important? thank you so much,

--

[Andrew Frazer]

Its a real shame that the PRU's PHY ports did'nt make it to the headers.   Not only is it ethercat, its Profinet as well.

TI do have a board  ( the ICE ) that has the two PRU ports avaialble ( but ironically not the ethernet ).     And theres actually two ethernet ports avaialble on teh chip,   and TI has yet another board that has them avaialble. 

It is what it is.

[Gerald Coley]

Not as shame. A decision. The pins were used by other functions. To build a board that could use all functions of the all pins, that would be a very big and very expensive board with hundreds of jumpers.  And the confusion factor would be off the chart. 

As you say, there are those other board that you can buy if you really need it. As it is, this is the about the fourth time someone has asked for the feature.

 Gerald