Hello everyone!

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 received your crowdfunding order, you should receive 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.

Meanwhile, here are a few reminders when running applications with EASE.

EASE Usage Tips

• The EtherCAT master software that runs on both Windows and Linux is available for free on our website's software page. We have some tutorials to help get started with our software. If in the future, you would like an EtherCAT master device with fine-tuned real-time performance, we have some EtherCAT masters available for sale on our website.
• EASE runs on PoE (Power over Ethernet) so a PoE Injector is needed. We offer 24 V PoE Injectors but any sort of PoE Injector can be used as long as the voltage does not exceed 24 V since EASE is rated for 24 V. The beauty of PoE as seen in our example projects is that not only does the PoE injector transmit data between the EtherCAT master and slaves but also powers the connected EtherCAT slaves as well. EASE also powers the connected base board through Vin so there is no need to power the base board externally! Users may connect up to 5 EASE per PoE Injector since there is a voltage drop after that but if you would like to connect more EASE or EtherCAT slaves, simply connect another PoE injector after the 5th EASE. EASE can also be powered through the 24V pin header.
• If you are using a different EtherCAT master and would like EASE's ESI file, please see our EASE website page where we have the ESI file located at the bottom of the page.
• We developed plenty of supporting material to help get started with an EASE application. We have tutorials on our website as well as our Hackster.io page.
• EASE communicates with the base board through SPI so if your base board does not have an Arduino Uno form factor, connect the following EASE pins to your base board:
  • SPI CS (9 or 10 depending on the jumper header)
  • SPI SCK (13 or ICSP-3)
  • SPI MOSI (11 or ICSP-4)
  • SPI MISO (12 or ICSP-1)
  • GND
  • VIN (if you would like to power your board with PoE power connect to VIN on base board)
  • IOREF (connect to voltage level of base board I/O voltage level, i.e. 5V for Arduino Uno, 3.3V for Arduino Due, etc.)
• We have an Arduino and Mbed library available on our website. We created this for easy use with the Arduino and Mbed IDE. See our examples for help with the libraries.
• We can customize EASE for projects if you contact us with an inquiry on our website. EASE may need to be ordered in larger quantities depending on customization.
• We created an FAQ list for EASE if you have a general question. If you still have a lingering question, we are more than happy to answer any questions on Crowd Supply or on our website.

We are very excited to see what you all can create with EASE! Please send us any links, photos, videos, etc. of your project so we can see them and possibly share them on our website or social channels!

The Esmacat Team