Communication issues EtherCAT cRIO 9039

[EtherCAT_slave]

hi,

We are trying to connect a third party EtherCAT slave device to our cRIO 9039, which is configured as an etherCAT master. Problems arise when we try to activate the scan engine of the cRIO. The following error message appears: (see attached). Therefore the scan engine is pretty much stuck in its 'Init'  state and the cRIO is unable to communicate I/O data. We have been able to resolve the issue by replacing the cRIO 9039 with a Beckhoff PLC, suggesting that the third party hardware and .XML file are not at fault.  

Other things we tried to solve the problem include: install the correct Labview version (2018 SP1), device drivers (NI RIO 18.5) and industrial communication EtherCAT package (18.5). Unfortunately this did not resolve the issue.

All suggestions are much appreciated! 😄  

[RMowatt]

Some more info on how the cRIO is setup would be useful, such as screenshots from MAX

Have you looked at this link and followed some of the steps on setup?

http://www.ni.com/product-documentation/10555/en/

[bbean]

I worked on some Ethercat issue a few years back and remember that at the time the cRIO doesn't support Beckhoff array datatypes and we had to make individual IO variables for each item in the array on the Beckhoff side.  Were you able to import the XML file OK into the LabVIEW project?

[Michael Aivaliotis]

Is this error message coming from a VI that you are running on the RT target?

Have you tried using the NI Distributed System Manager? I use that to debug Ethercat issues. When you switch to Active mode using NI DSM, it works pretty consistently. Unfortunately the NI Ethercat driver is a load of poop. Soft reboot of the controller usually fixes things up.