CAN application protocol over EtherCAT^® (CoE)

EtherCAT^® provides the communication mechanisms known from CANopen:

• Object list
• Process data objects (PDO)
• Service data objects (SDO)

CoE is the most widespread acyclic EtherCAT^® communication.

The object directory of a slave is accessed via SDOs. The master can access the parameters both at startup and during operation.

CoE offers configuration mechanisms of the PDOs (process data objects) for cyclic communication, such as process data length and process data content. This is useful when configuring slaves with variable PDOs, such as gateways and bus couplers.