At the first North American EtherCat Plug Fest in Austin, Texas, four new master implementations were tested with slave devices from eight different vendors. The goal of the event, hosted by National Instruments (www.ni.com), whose president, CEO and cofounder, Dr. James Truchard, gave the opening speech, was to check the interoperability of EtherCat implementations. The EtherCat Technology Group (www.ethercat.org) is attempting to improve worldwide support and interoperability of EtherCat devices through the Plug Fest events that have been held in North America, Asia and Europe.
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