Acontis Announces EC-Motion EtherCAT Motion Library for QNX Neutrino RTOS

-- QNX Partner News Release --

WEINGARTEN, February 12, 2013 — Today, Acontis announced its new EC-Motion product is now available for the QNX platform and will be demonstrated for the first time at the embedded world conference 2013 from Feb. 26-28 in Nuremberg, Germany. The demo will showcase the BeagleBone, a credit-card-sized computer based on Sitara™ ARM® AM335x Cortex™-A8 processors from Texas Instruments, Incorporated (TI), running the QNX® Neutrino® real-time operating system (RTOS).

The demo shows a Yaskawa Sigma-5 EtherCAT drive running in cyclic synchronous velocity mode.

EC-Motion provides a simple C/C++ motion control library for EtherCAT drives.

This library supports all the single-axis movement commands that are specified within the PLCopen standard. There is no need for additional costly hardware.

Using this library, it is also possible to implement applications for multi-axis coordinated movements.

The drives can be operated in the cyclic synchronous position mode (CSP) or cyclic synchronous velocity mode (CSV). Usually, the functions of the motion control library run cyclically, for example, once every millisecond. No additional tasks are created. As a result, the integration of the EC-Motion library into custom motion applications as well as into a PLC runtime environment is very simple.

Motion is based on Acontis' industry-proven EC-Master EtherCAT Master stack, which is shipped with a high-speed Ethernet driver for the on-chip Ethernet controller of the Sitara ARM processor. Therefore, cycle times on the TI’s Sitara ARM processors of up to 10 kHz can be achieved.

“We are thrilled to see Acontis demonstrate their motion control library and EtherCAT stack on the QNX Neutrino RTOS, which has a long history in mission-critical industrial systems,” said Linda Campbell, director of strategic alliances at QNX Software Systems. “Their ability to deliver an EtherCAT solution on a low-cost platform like TI’s Sitara AM335x processors can offer real value to industrial developers who want to maximize performance while minimizing system costs.”

“We are pleased to see Acontis and QNX Software Systems create a system solution that makes industrial automation easier and more affordable,” said Srik Gurrapu, business manager for industrial solutions, at TI. “This solution runs on a robust and scalable AM335x processor family that integrates multi-protocol industrial communications, and with tools such as Beaglebone and Industrial Communications Engine (ICE), OEM customers in industrial automation can take advantage of easy-to-use system solutions while keeping costs down.”

Contact:
Stefan Zintgraf
acontis technologies GmbH
Telefon 0751/5603033
eMail: s.zintgraf@acontis.com

Company:
Acontis technologies is a leading provider for EtherCAT Software, Windows real-time software and Real-Time Virtualization/Hypervisor Technology.

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