The EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) recently completed its second EtherCAT Interoperability Testing Week. This follows the first event of its kind held at the beginning of the year, which met with a great response, especially in Europe. During the one-week digital event – which was coordinated to the time zones of South, Central and North America – developers of EtherCAT devices improved the interoperability of their products online, boosted their development expertise and found an opportunity for interactive knowledge exchange with the other participants.
The wide acceptance of EtherCAT is reflected in numerous device implementations worldwide. To ensure that these devices can operate in the field without interference and are fully compatible with each other, ETG offers events several times a year that test and improve the compatibility and interoperability of EtherCAT devices, in addition to a defined conformance test process. One such event is the EtherCAT Interoperability Testing Week, with its second virtual edition mainly attracting participants from across the Americas. In addition to several webinar sessions, where attendees participated in online presentations or Q&A sessions, there were also one-on-one expert sessions, where device manufacturers could discuss their EtherCAT implementations directly with ETG representatives in a protected room and address open questions regarding development, interoperability and testing.
Participants from more than 25 registered companies from five countries listened to the presentations on topics such as the EtherCAT Conformance Test Tool (CTT), EtherCAT Slave Stack Code (SSC), EtherCAT Slave Configuration Interface (SCI) or Safety over EtherCAT (FSoE) implementation. Attendees also took part in Q&A sessions and used the expert panels to clarify their individual implementation questions.
Dr. Guido Beckmann, EtherCAT expert and Chairman of the ETG Technical Committee, summarized the event: "The EtherCAT Interoperability Testing Weeks offer device manufacturers a welcome opportunity to improve the interoperability of their implementation without already having the devices in the field. This approach, which has already been successfully supported in the ETG for years by numerous EtherCAT Plug Fests, can fortunately be continued in COVID-19 times through the intensive exchange with the ETG experts in the online sessions."
Following the renewed success of the event, there will soon also be EtherCAT Interoperability Testing Weeks in Japan, China and Korea. All upcoming dates are already published online at www.ethercat.org/events.
