1. Getting Started - step-by-step tutorial

This manual will guide you through the following steps:

  • Hypervisor Hardware/Software setup

  • Assigning an Intel PRO/1000 network adapter for real-time use (connected with EtherCAT slaves).

  • [OPTIONAL]: Scan and configure the EtherCAT network.

  • [OPTIONAL]: Set an EtherCAT network into OPERATIONAL mode.

Hint

sudo is similar to Windows run as administrator and is valid for a single command only.

Hint

sudo -s switches the user to root (administrator), all following commands then will be executed with elevated rights.

1.1. Prerequisites

  • PC/IPC with at least 1 Ethernet adapter.

    • CPU: at least 2 cores. This guide assumes a 4 cores CPU is used.

    • SSD/HDD: at least 10GB. Additional 50GB in case a Windows guest shall be used.

    • One Ethernet adapter to be used for TCP/IP (e.g. to remotely connect to the Hypervisor). This adapter has to be connected with your company network.

    • One additional Intel Gigabit Ethernet adapter (like I210), as some of the shipped demo scripts are preconfigured for this type of network adapter.

  • Several EtherCAT slaves connected with the Intel Gigabit network adapter

Caution

You must disable secure boot in the BIOS, otherwise the RTOSVisor cannot be installed or will not work correctly!

Caution

In this tutorial the Hypervisor will be installed onto the hard disk and all data will be overwritten. Assure required data is saved before installation!

  • Recommended BIOS settings (for real-time operation)

    • USB Legacy mode has to be disabled

    • Hyper-Threading shall be disabled

    • Power saving settings have to be disabled (C-States, Speedstep, …)

1.2. Update EtherCAT package

Caution

This section is only needed if an EtherCAT network will be used!

The hypervisor package contains yet an EtherCAT master package. In rare cases an updated EtherCAT master package is received along this hypervisor package.

The following steps are needed in such a case:

  • Real-time Linux:

    • 32bit: Copy from EC-Master-V3.*.*.**-EC-WinRT-Linux-x86_32Bit-SDK_Protected.tar\Bin\Linux\x86\* to /hv/guests/etc/rt-linux/files/ecat/

    • 64bit: Copy from EC-Master-V3.*.*.**-EC-WinRT-Linux-x86_64Bit-SDK_Protected.tar\Bin\Linux\x64\* to /hv/guests/etc/rt-linux/files/ecat/

  • On Time RTOS-32:

    Copy from EC-Master-V3.*.*.**-RTOS-32-x86_32Bit-SDK_Protected.zip\Bin\RTOS-32\x86\* to /hv/guests/etc/rtos-32/rtfiles/ecmasterdemo/