Introduction
EK1541 EtherCAT coupler with ID switch, POF connection
The EK1541 Coupler connects EtherCAT with the EtherCAT Terminals (ELxxxx). A station consists of an EK1541 coupler, any number of EtherCAT Terminals, an EL9011 bus end cap or an EK1110 EtherCAT extender.
The coupler converts the telegrams from Ethernet 100BASE-FX-POF physics to E-bus signal representation in passing with minimum latency The Polymeric Optical Fiber (POF) connection enables distances of up to 50 m between two couplers. Unlike the glass fiber, the POF fiber is easily wireable in the field. The EK1541 has three hexadecimal ID switches for assigning an ID to a group of EtherCAT components.
The coupler supplies the connected terminals with the necessary E-bus current for communication. The coupler can supply a maximum of 5 V/2 A. Power feed terminals (e.g. EL9410) must be integrated if more current is required.
The device supports the HotConnect procedure, see EtherCAT documentation. The characteristics of the EK1541 in relation to this are:
- ID can be set on the device via three rotary selector switches within the range 0 to 4095 (hexadecimal)
- the ID is readable online by the EtherCAT master via the process data
- if the EtherCAT master supports HotConnect, then an I/O group can be adopted dynamically into the EtherCAT communication. This group can then be located at any position within the EtherCAT network. Variable topologies are therefore easily implementable.