Interfacing With an Existing EtherCAT Robotic System
For this update, we would like to show off an example in which EASE is used with a complex, EtherCAT-based robotic system called Harmony SHR. Hopefully this will demonstrate how quick and easy it is to add EASE to any EtherCAT project (or even to incorporate EtherCAT into a project that's not yet using it!) Read the full update.
Arduino IDE Library Manager Support
The Arduino library we developed for simple interfacing between EASE and an Arduino board can now be found on the Arduino IDE Library Manager. This update describes the steps you can take to get your EASE project started. Read the full update.
Shipping Update & Tips List
Thank you for your patience during these unfortunate times. We are working with Crowd Supply to get these boards out to you as quickly as possible, and we are happy to report that some EASE boards have finally begun shipping. If you have not yet recieved your crowdfunding order, you should recieve it soon. For the time being, we are pushing the estimated ship date back by two weeks, but we expect the remaining crowdfunding orders to go out well before that. Pre-orders and stock purchases will ship as soon as all crowdfunding orders have been filled. This update also includes a list of tips for running applications with EASE. Read the full update.
Boards Have Arrived & New Tutorials
For this update, we have some exciting news for our backers! We are also proud to introduce some tutorials and demos we developed to show off EASE's compatibility with CODESYS! Read the full update.
Manufacturing Delays & Limited Availability of Previous-Generation EASE Boards
As a result of manufacturing delays in China, our latest order has been pushed back by at least a month. We now expect those boards to ship in late-April or early-May. However, we have six previous-generation EASE boards (v1p12) that we could ship out in March. The only difference is a lack of support for SPI communication through the ICSP pins. Because of this, the v1p12 revision only works with Arduino Uno MCU boards. If you're interested, let us know using the "Ask...a technical question" form on Crowd Supply. (And please include your order number.) Read the full update.
Deploying Esmacat Master Code; Funding Goal Reduction
In this update, we will demonstrate how simple it is to build and execute the Esmacat Master software for EASE. You can think of this software as a way for multiple EASE boards (and other EtherCAT slaves) to communicate with one another by reading values from one slave and writing to another. Any EtherCAT master software will work with EASE, but we are focusing here on our own free and open source code. Read the full update.
Frequently Asked Questions & Clarifications
This week's update looks to address a number of questions asked by our beta testers and by several potential backers. If you have your own questions, please ask them, and we'll make sure they get added to the list! Read the full update.
A Few of Our Tutorials
As we mentioned in our launch announcement, we are striving to provide our future users with strong supporting material to showcase EASE's capability, versatility, and usability for anything from hobbyist projects to automation industry prototypes and beyond. In this week's update, we are highlighting three examples tutorials found on our Hackster.io page. Read the full update.
Our Campaign is Live!
We have been looking forward to this day for a few months now, and we couldn't be more excited about sending our EtherCAT Arduino Shield by Esmacat (EASE) into the world. Read on to learn more about EASE and about how we plan to show it off over the coming weeks. Read the full update.