Installation

Required setup : Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Installing EtherLab

The proposed development builds upon the IgH EtherCAT Master. Installation steps are summarized here:

  • Verify that you can run unsigned kernel modules

Etherlab is a kernel module that is not signed by default. To allow the kernel to load unsigned modules, you need to disable secure boot.

Verify if secure boot is enabled (you need to install ‘’mokutil’’ first):
$ sudo apt-get install mokutil
$ mokutil --sb-state
it should print:
SecureBoot disabled
if it prints:
SecureBoot enabled

Then you need to disable secure boot. To do so:

  1. reboot your computer and enter the BIOS settings.

  2. In the security tab, disable secure boot.

  3. Save and exit.

  • Install required tools:

    $ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install git autoconf libtool pkg-config make build-essential net-tools

  • Setup sources for the EtherCAT Master:

    $ git clone https://gitlab.com/etherlab.org/ethercat.git
$ cd ethercat
$ git checkout stable-1.5
$ sudo rm /usr/bin/ethercat
$ sudo rm /etc/init.d/ethercat
$ ./bootstrap  # to create the configure script

  • Configure, build and install libs and kernel modules:

    $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/etherlab  --disable-8139too --disable-eoe --enable-generic

$ make all modules
$ sudo make modules_install install
$ sudo depmod

  • Configure system:

    $ sudo ln -s /usr/local/etherlab/bin/ethercat /usr/bin/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/etherlab/etc/init.d/ethercat /etc/init.d/ethercat
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/sysconfig
$ sudo cp /usr/local/etherlab/etc/sysconfig/ethercat /etc/sysconfig/ethercat

    Note

    These 4 steps may be needed every time the Linux kernel is updated. Before re-doing the 4 steps, you can try the following lighter steps:

    Go in the folder where the ethercat project was cloned, from step 2 (Setup sources) do:

    cd ethercat
sudo rm /usr/bin/ethercat /etc/init.d/ethercat
./bootstrap

    Do integrally step 3 (Configure, build and install …) From Step 4 (Configure system)

    sudo ln -s /usr/local/etherlab/bin/ethercat /usr/bin/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etherlab/etc/init.d/ethercat /etc/init.d/ethercat

  • Create a new udev rule:

    $ sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-EtherCAT.rules

    containing:

    KERNEL=="EtherCAT[0-9]*", MODE="0666"

  • Configure the network adapter for EtherCAT:

    $ sudo gedit /etc/sysconfig/ethercat

    In the configuration file specify the mac address of the network card to be used and its driver

    MASTER0_DEVICE="ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff"  # mac address
DEVICE_MODULES="generic"

Now you can start the EtherCAT master:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ethercat start

it should print

Starting EtherCAT master 1.5.2  done

You can check connected slaves:

$ ethercat slaves

It should print information of connected slave device:

<id>  <alias>:<position>  <device_state>  +  <device_name>

Example:

0  0:0  PREOP  +  <device_0_name>
0  0:1  PREOP  +  <device_1_name>

Building ethercat_driver_ros2

  1. Install ROS2 packages. The current development is based of ros2 humble. Installation steps are described in the ROS2 Humble Documentation.

  2. Source your ROS2` environment:

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

Note

The ROS2 environment needs to be sources in every used terminal. If only one distribution of ROS2 is used, it can be added to the ~/.bashrc file.

  1. Install colcon and its extensions :

sudo apt install python3-colcon-common-extensions

  1. Create a new ROS2 workspace:

mkdir ~/ros2_ws/src

  1. Pull relevant packages, install dependencies, compile, and source the workspace by using:

cd ~/ros2_ws
git clone https://github.com/ICube-Robotics/ethercat_driver_ros2.git src/ethercat_driver_ros2
rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths . -y -r
colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash