EtherCAT - multiple profiles?

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cross mob
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Hi,

Does anyone know, with EtherCAT, whether there is such a concept, of different profiles ?

In other words, allowing TwinCAT3 to chose different sets of data, to read and write ?

The DAVE example project for EtherCAT, has the Slave Stack Code (SSC) issuing a single callback, to process_app(), within main.c.

Within process_app(), one populates the outgoing data, and receives the incoming data.

However, is it possible to have different callbacks, dependent on the EtherCAT Slave Interface (ESI) file, for example XMC_ESC.XML, as placed within the C:\TwinCAT\3.1\Config\Io\EtherCAT\ folder, and used by TwinCAT3 ?

In other words, is it possible to have multiple ESI files, with different filenames, of course, within that folder ? And for the user to select which ESI file they wish to use ? I accept, of course, that a TwinCAT3 restart might be needed, in order to be able to make a different ESI file selection.

If the above is not possible, can a different ESI file be manually placed into that folder, dependent on the data the user wants ? And for the XMC4 application to serve up to TwinCAT3, the data specified by that ESI file ?

If the XMC4 application cannot know what ESI file is in use, and only a single process_app() callback is possible, that must always serve the same outgoing data, and consume the same incoming data, then is it still possible to have multiple ESI files, manually copied into the mentioned folder, and for those ESI files to include either all the data, or just a subset ?

In other words, for ESI files to simply omit, some of the data ?

If so, is there any performance advantage gained, in omitting ?

In terms of EtherCAT comms performance, XMC4 performance, or PC performance, or some combination ?

Or, would it just be a simple case, of ignoring ?

Even just the latter, would be of interest to us, with our project.

I was thinking to try various things, as above. But without knowing what is *supposed* to be possible, it could be difficult to draw conclusions..

I tried a spell of googling the above, but without uncovering anything pertinent..

Many thanks, in advance, if anyone can enlighten me, on any of the above.

Best regards,

David
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