Typically, the reference clock should be the first DC-capable device on the 
network (often an infrastructure device like a coupler, if present – as in your 
case), because the DC time only flows downstream from that.  It’s unusual for 
it to be your DC-consuming device directly unless you don’t have any others.  
Thus, it’s not usually necessary to call ecrt_master_select_reference_clock 
unless you have special requirements (such as DC synching across multiple 
networks).

Since you’re using ecrt_master_sync_reference_clock_to and you’re saying that 
the DC time doesn’t appear to be advancing, ensure that your code actually does 
advance the time in your realtime loop – that’s your responsibility when you 
use that method rather than the alternatives.

There can be many reasons why a device refuses to transition to SAFEOP (or does 
but then faults back to PREOP).  You’ll need to review the syslog to see what 
error codes it’s reporting, if any.  (But it could just be due to the DC time 
not advancing.)

Try comparing your code against the existing examples such as dc_user, and pay 
close attention to your slave’s documented requirements for 
ecrt_slave_config_dc – in particular note that the SYNC1 time is specified in 
an unusual way.

Gavin Lambert

Software Engineer



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From: Etherlab-users <etherlab-users-boun...@etherlab.org> On Behalf Of 
dabb...@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, 10 February 2025 9:54 pm
To: etherlab-users@etherlab.org
Subject: [Etherlab-users] DC and oversampling with EL2262

Dear Etherlab community,

I have been using the EtherCAT master for a few days. I think I understand more 
or less how to configure the PDOs and domains for one or more slaves, but I'm 
having trouble with the distributed clock (DC).
In particular, my setup is currently as follows:
- master
- Beckhoff EK1100
- Beckhoff EL2262

The latter is a digital output with oversampling capabilities. It can output a 
sample every Sync0, which in turn can be set to trigger faster than the 
application cycle. I used this slave successfully with other EtherCAT masters, 
so I know it is working properly.

In my code I've set the PDOs using "ecrt_slave_config_pdos" and assigned them 
to the domain1 using "ecrt_slave_config_reg_pdo_entry".

Then I've set this slave to be the reference clock using
   ecrt_master_select_reference_clock  (master, sc);   // Set this slave to be 
reference clock
and finally I've set the DC settings (and Sync0/1) using "ecrt_slave_config_dc" 
(by the way, the AssignActivate data is 0x0730 for this slave).

Then, for every application cycle I call, in order:
- ecrt_master_application_time
- ecrt_master_receive
- ecrt_domain_process
- check_domain1_state
- ecrt_master_sync_reference_clock_to
- ecrt_master_sync_slave_clocks
- ecrt_domain_queue
- ecrt_master_send

The problems I see are:
- the outputs are constantly OFF, even if I've set an alternating pattern of ON 
and OFF,
- the slave stops at PREOP,
- if I inspect the master from the cli using "ethercat master -v", I see that 
the reference clock is set to Slave 0, instead of Slave 1. Moreover, the DC 
reference time is set correctly every time I restart the application, but it 
does not update during execution. Conversely, the application time increase as 
expected
- during " check_domain1_state", I see that the wc_state==EC_WC_ZERO (no 
process data exchanged)

I am willing to share my code if it is required.
Thank you for your help and, especially, thank you for providing such powerful 
software as open source.
Best regards,

    Davide
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