EtherCAT communication with CU320/S120 from PXI

[samuelNI24]

Hi everyone, 

I am trying to control siemens drives through a labview project, over etherCAT. I have in my possession a CU320 equipped with the S120 Robox card, to interface with etherCAT comms. I have worked with Siemens people on it, it should work but it doesn't. 

I have found the xml ESI file describing the S120 on their website. I have opened it in TwinCAT software to modify it, as explained here https://support.industry.siemens.com/forum/fr/en/posts/exporting-ethercat-xml-file-config-from-start... , and exported the way it is explained there, to make it readable on the NI side. 

I am able to import the new EtherCAT slave device in my LabVIEW project, on the host PC and on the target. I can see the defined communications as global EtherCAT variables. EtherCAT master and slave parameters get deployed without error when connected to the target. But I am then unable to switch the Scan Engine mode to Active. 

I get the following error message when trying to get it to Active Mode: NI Industrial Com. for EtherCAT : telegram is timeout. (cf attached picture)

I am also unable to see info on the online state of the slave device, the page says "Cannot display selected Category page".

This happened when connected physically to the S120 card. The ethernet card used on the PXI is defined as EtherCAT in NI MAX (that's my EtherCAT Master). 

I was working with Siemens people and they had configured the S120 card to be used in etherCAT communications through their STARTER software. It seems to us that a first communications has passed, kind of a configuration of the I/O declared in the xml file and so in the device profile used in lb, and those I/O have been transmitted and declared on the STARTER side. But nothing else and the eth cable seems to have no life. 

I have some ideas to check to try to understand what is going wrong : sync parameters on master and on slave sides. 

Bad configuration of the XML file, maybe bad identification of the device ? I attached it to this message as a txt file (couldnt join an xml) for what its worth.

But if you have any other ideas on what I am not understanding or doing wrong, let me know. Thanks. 

Using LabVIEW 2022Q3 with NI Ind Com for EtherCAT 2023Q3, PXIe 8881.

[samuelNI24]

I made some progress, 

It seems that no custom xml file is needed but just the original one, unlike mentioned in the question I linked. 

Using the general XML file, the etherCAT master is able to "recognize" and import the connected slave device. 

But there is a mismatch between what's imported and created under the master in the labview project and what was configured on the siemens software side. 

Working on it