Design a monitoring architecture that safely collects, stores, and visualizes performance data from EtherCAT-based 1kHz real-time control loops. Maintain RT determinism while capturing debugging data using Lock-free SPSC Queues and ROS2 topic layering.
We validate with measured data whether PREEMPT_RT kernel and CPU isolation alone can enable 1kHz EtherCAT control on NVIDIA Jetson Orin. Under GPU, Storage, and EtherCAT load conditions, we achieved max latency below 20us.
This article explains the CiA402 profile, the motor control standard for industrial robots based on EtherCAT and CANopen. It covers the state machine, Controlword/Statusword bit structures, and operation modes with practical examples.
Running two servo drives at 1 kHz from a Jetson AGX Orin with the IgH EtherCAT master, the Distributed Clocks (DC) deviation between drives spiked to hundreds of microseconds roughly every 110 seconds. The cause was not the motors, the kernel, or our control code. It was the PTP-TSC hardware lock that NVIDIA's nvpps driver enables at boot. Disabling it with one device tree property cut the maximum DC deviation from 328 µs (300 s with the lock on) to 3.5 µs (20 minutes with it off).