Why a HMS IXXAT INpact EIP Slave PCIe card is required when Ethernet/IP is required?

Q&A
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1

Mech-Mind system is communicating directly with the robot controller using TCP/IP. That is how we have the testing robots set up in our tech center. As far as we know, a HMS IXXAT INpact EIP Slave PCIe card was never added to the PC in our test set up.

TCP/IP is a part of the Ethernet/IP protocol. Are you really sure the HMS IXXAT INpact EIP Slave PCIe card is necessary for us if we want to use Ethernet/IP protocol?

2

  1. Mech-Mind products communicate with robot controller using TCP/IP directly. Details about TCP/ip can be found in this link.Transmission Control Protocol - Wikipedia
    So if you only use TCP/IP to communicate with robot controller just as we did in your lab test, HMS IXXAT INpact EIP Slave PCIe card will not be required.

  2. Ethernet/IP (EtherNet/IP - Wikipedia) uses both of the most widely deployed collections of Ethernet standards –the Internet Protocol suite and IEEE 802.3 – to define the features and functions for its transport, network, data link and physical layers. EtherNet/IP performs at level session and above (level 5, 6 and 7) of the OSI model. CIP uses its object-oriented design to provide EtherNet/IP with the services and device profiles needed for real-time control applications and to promote consistent implementation of automation functions across a diverse ecosystem of products. In addition, EtherNet/IP adapts key elements of Ethernet’s standard capabilities and services to the CIP object model framework, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which EtherNet/IP uses to transport I/O messages.

So if you want to use Ethernet/IP, that means you will use
1) Transfer of basic I/O data via User Datagram Protocol (UDP)-based implicit messaging
2) Uploading and downloading of parameters, setpoints, programs and recipes via TCP (i.e., explicit messaging.)

But Mech-Mind’s software does not communicate with robot controller with UDP directly, so HMS IXXAT INpact EIP Slave PCIe card will be required if you want to use all functions of Ethernet/IP.

For details of standard interface communication of Mech-Mind products, see this link:
https://docs.mech-mind.net/en/robot-integration/latest/standard-interface-robot/standard-interface.html