Feasibility of Using Typhoon HIL as EtherCAT Slave with 100 µs/200 µs Cycle Time external master

Question

Is it feasible to use an EtherCAT master external controller with a 100 µs or 200 µs cycle time, where the EtherCAT slave is implemented within Typhoon HIL? In this setup, Typhoon HIL would act as a slave, sending the inverter’s output voltages and currents to the master, while receiving modulation reference signals from the external controller. Could you please clarify how this can be achieved?

Answer 1

Hi Shamsher,

Typhoon HIL documentation notes that the update rate of the variables in the EtherCAT Slave component is approximately 2 ms.

For clarification, when an EtherCAT Master operates with a 200 µs cycle time, the EtherCAT Slave device still functions correctly. This can be confirmed by the successful transmission and reception of EtherCAT frames and observed in a Wireshark capture.

However, due to limitations of the current hardware platform and the EtherCAT Slave model implementation, the device cannot process all date changes in real time. As a result, the current EtherCAT Slave implementation cannot support updates rates below 2 ms.

BR,
Dusan