Does My PXIe Controller/cRIO Support NI-EtherCAT?

Updated Oct 30, 2024

Reported In

Hardware

  • PXI Controller
  • CompactRIO Controller

Driver

  • NI-Industrial Communications for EtherCAT

Issue Details

From NI MAX I have installed NI-EtherCAT to my PXIe Controller, however when I try to configure the Ethernet Port to be in EtherCAT mode, it disappears.
Is my controller supported or not?

Solution

Please consult with the NI-Industrial Communications for EtherCAT Release Notes as your first step.
On that page you will be confronted with a list of devices that support NI-EtherCAT. If your device is not listed there, then it is safe to say that it is not compatible with NI-EtherCAT.

Additional Information

Under certain circumstances you might encounter strange visual behaviour if you choose to install NI-EtherCAT to an unsupported modules.

A few scenarios that you might encounter:
  • Under safe-mode you might be able to set your Ethernet port to EtherCAT.
  • Under runtime mode your secondary Ethernet port disappears.
  • Under runtime, if you connect your PXIe/cRIO to a monitor, it will list NI-EtherCAT as opearion mode for the secondary Ethernet port.
While these scenarios, could indicate that the controller supports NI-EtherCAT, they actually do not. We can confirm that these are just visual bugs.