omar-escalante

We are writting our diagnosys utility for EtherCAT using CAA DEVICES DIAGNOSYS & IODrvEtherCAT libraries.
Our goal is to have good info, find & solve problems.

Today we have info about everything. We can act, ask, restart master / slaves.

But, if during a random power shut down (storm) some remote slave power goes into OFF, the network can not restart.
How can we find the OFF slave? We have some big projects with several distributed slaves. Where is the problem?
If we loose some slave after Master is OPERATIONAL, we can detect. But, after some random shut down, when some distributed protection is down and its slave is off; the Master is not starting and we can't get info about the problem. If we found the off slave and we power it ON, the network starts... But, some times... WHERE is a big problem.

• Some times The MASTER shows as OPERATIONAL, but the BUS is not sending info
• Some other times the MASTER is on INIT state
• Wireshark sniffing shows only few & small packages without relevant info
• The diagnosis info using libraries (CAA DEVICES DIAGNOSYS & IODrvEtherCAT) is not useful because shows everything is OK (may be some previous state)

We suppose we can declare the remote slaves as optional. Then, after rebooting the PLC, we can go slave by slave activating them until we find the problem.
Is there any easier way?

Which would be the main differences between CAA DEVICES DIAGNOSYS & IODrvEtherCAT libraries?
Both provide information and control over the Ethercat network.
When would you use one or other?
Can you share some Example with recommended use?