Hello Shahbaz, Hello Emanuele, so there are 30000 pdos, 100 slaves on the bus, WOW. If I understand it rightly, those slaves have different updating rates, all the pdos were putted into one domain, and the bus cycle was in 40ms only because some slaves (sensors) need 37ms to update its data. Having those data with a nearly 40ms delay for the processing is unacceptable, so we need to improve it.
I've got an idea. I am not sure if it actually works, but this is my suggestion: The first thing I want to point out, is that the bus cycle and the slave's internal updating cycle are two different things. The bus cycle should not be limited to the slaves' internal cycle. The bus cycle is only limited by two things: the processing time in the while loop of the EtherCAT, and the datagram transmission time. Please correct me if I am wrong. As the 40ms delay is a concern here, I think we should have the bus running faster. Let's say 1ms cycle time, if it allows. So the data would only have a max. 1ms delay for processing. Those pdos would be splitted into different domains, according to their updating frequency. There shall be one EtherCAT thread dealing only with the bus. And if the data processing may cost more time than 1 ms(bus cycle), each domains can have one data processing thread. There shall be two list, one for those domain to be sent, the other one for those domains that have been sent and waits for receiving the answer. The while loop of the EtherCAT thread shall be like this: while(true) { ecrt_master_receive(master_ptr); for (each domain in receiving list) { ecrt_domain_process(domain_ptr); if (answer_is_there) { notify_its_data_process_thread(); delete_itself_from_receiving_list(); } } for (each domain in sending list) { ecrt_domain_queue(domain_ptr); add_itself_to_receving_list(); } ecrt_master_send(master_ptr); wait_for_bus_cycle(); } The data processing thread while loop: while(true) { add_domain_to_sending_list(); wait_for_the_answer(); data_processing(); wait_for_domain_cycle(); } The worst case for datagram transmission is that when all the domains require data update. I don't known how long does it take to transmit all the 30000 pdos in all that different domains. You'll need to find it out for deciding the bus cycle time. And if it too takes too long, well, try to not let that "all domain requiring data" happens. Hope this can help you. Best Regards, Jun YUAN _______________________________________________ etherlab-users mailing list etherlab-users@etherlab.org http://lists.etherlab.org/mailman/listinfo/etherlab-users