Hi,Strictly speaking Ethercat is not new to Mach either, until recently you would require an extra Ethercat board, the likes of Hicon, Gallil or Mesa in addition to your PC loaded with Mach.,and this solution to Ethercat using Mach as trajectory planner has been around for a decade or so.
What is a fairly new development is the use of Interval Zero's RTOS which makes one or more cores of a PCs CPU genuine realtime devices capable of handling realtime comms like Ethercat.
Kingstar and Interval Zero collaborated and now have a software solution that makes any moderately spec'ed PC into an Ethercat master WITHOUT the need for any extra hardware. You may be correct
that the PC would require a specific Ethernet card, although no mention has been made of it other than you.
This solution was released about 18 months ago.
Automation Technologies sell a Mach4Hobby Ethercat solution. The kit consists of a re-furbished PC of moderate spec, I would guess an ex-lease PC, with the RTX64 and Kingstar plugins/licenses and Mach4Hobby license
pre-loaded for $1600USD.
https://www.automationtechnologiesin...ntrol-computer
Somewhat confusingly the same company sells Mach4 Ethercat kits that use a separate Ethercat communication board, which is to my way a of thinking a lesser solution
and should not be confused with the Kingstar solution.
I compared that with the same moderate spec PC, say $600, plus Mach4Hobby, $200 and an Ethernet SmoothStepper, $190 for a total of $990USD.
So the Ethercat solution is more expensive, about $610USD more than a reasonably capable hobby level system. The price premium may well put many people off but not all. There
are a few respondents on the Mach forum that report good results with this system. This does not include the extra you might pay for Ethercat servos and Ethercat IO nodes, so yes
Ethercat can be expensive, on the other hand it can be scaled beyond any conceivable hobby system.
To date my existing Ethernet SmoothStepper solution is working well for me but should I become IO limited in any way I'll step up to Kingstar/RTX64 Ethercat.
Craig