YARP CiA-402 EtherCAT Device

Table of Contents

• Overview
  • Key features
• Documentation sections
• Getting started
  • Prerequisites
  • Build
  • Quick run
• License

Overview

This repository provides a YARP device plugin for EtherCAT CiA-402 drives, built on top of SOEM.

It exposes standard YARP motor-control interfaces (IPositionControl, IVelocityControl, ITorqueControl, ICurrentControl, IEncodersTimed, …) while communicating with drives that implement the CiA-402 (IEC 61800-7-201) profile over EtherCAT (CoE).

Key features

• CiA-402 state machine — automatic power-stage transitions (Shutdown → SwitchedOn → OperationEnabled) with fault handling.
• Multiple control modes — Profile Position (PP), Cyclic Synchronous Position (CSP), Cyclic Synchronous Velocity (CSV), and Cyclic Synchronous Torque (CST).
• Dual-encoder support — configurable feedback selection between up to two encoders per axis, with automatic shaft transformations.
• Simple PID tuning — optional joint-side PID gains automatically converted to drive units.
• Home-position utility — standalone tool to set and persist homing parameters on the drive's non-volatile memory.
• Calibration check utility — read-only diagnostic that compares live encoder readings against a reference TOML snapshot and produces a Markdown report.

Documentation sections

Page	Description
EtherCAT protocol map (PDOs and SDOs)	PDOs, SDOs, unit conversions — the single source of truth for all EtherCAT objects used by the driver.
Control modes and set‑point paths	How YARP control modes map to CiA-402 operation modes and which targets are written.
Dual-encoder handling (CiA‑402 EtherCAT device)	Encoder mounting semantics, feedback selection, and shaft transformations.
yarp::dev::CiA402MotionControl	Main device driver API reference.
CiA402::EthercatManager	Low-level EtherCAT master (SOEM wrapper).
CiA402::StoreHome37	Home-position persistence utility.
Check Encoder Calibration	Encoder calibration check utility — compare live readings vs. reference TOML.
CiA402::CheckEncoderCalibration	Calibration-check utility API reference.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• CMake ≥ 3.8
• YARP
• SOEM
• toml++ (TOML parser for C++)
• Linux (tested; raw-socket access required for EtherCAT)

Build

git clone https://github.com/gbionics/yarp-device-ethercat-cia402.git
cd yarp-device-ethercat-cia402
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Quick run

# Ensure YARP can find the plugin
export YARP_DATA_DIRS=/path/to/install/share/yarp:$YARP_DATA_DIRS
 
# Grant raw-socket capabilities
sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+ep $(which yarprobotinterface)
 
# Launch
yarprobotinterface --config config/robot/template_1_motor/config.xml

License

BSD-3-Clause — see LICENSE.