C++ Application Tutorials

This series teaches you how to write real-time EtherCAT applications with the LXMASTER C++ library. It is built around two ideas that, once they click, make the rest of the API obvious:

• Facades — the typed handles (Axis, IoModule, Encoder, GenericDevice) your application uses to command and read devices, without ever touching PDOs, CoE objects, or the EtherCAT state machine.
• Device profiles — the components behind each facade that know how a particular device works: its process-data layout and its state machine. The library picks a profile for every slave on the bus and hands you the matching facade.

Instead of walking through every demo, each tutorial introduces one concept, illustrates it with a small piece of code (often drawn from a matching example project), and builds on the tutorials before it. The series ends by teaching you how to write your own device profile so LXMASTER can drive hardware it has never seen before.

Who this is for

You are comfortable with modern C++ and want to control EtherCAT drives, I/O, or custom devices from a Linux host. No prior EtherCAT experience is required — every page that needs it includes a short EtherCAT background section and links to the EtherCAT Basics reference for more depth.

Before you start

You will need:

1. A valid license — a demo, developer, or device license is required to run LXMASTER. Contact license@lynxtechs.com to request a demo license. See the license tutorial for activation steps.
2. LXMASTER installed on your machine (find_package(lxmaster CONFIG REQUIRED) must resolve). See Getting Started.
3. A configured host — run lxmaster host setup once so the EtherCAT interface name is published to the environment. See the host tutorial.
4. An ENI file describing your bus. Generate one with lxmaster scan + lxmaster eni gen.

Every example in this series uses the same skeleton to build against the installed package:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(my_app CXX)

find_package(lxmaster CONFIG REQUIRED)

add_executable(my_app main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_app PRIVATE lxmaster::lxmaster)

#include <lxmaster/lxmaster.hpp>

That single header exposes the whole application API through the flat lxmaster:: namespace — you never include internal headers for a normal control application.

Learning path

Basics

1. Your first application — the network lifecycle, building, and running your first bring-up.
2. Errors, logging, and debugging — how to see what the library is doing and diagnose failures.
3. Facades: talking to devices — the core concept: typed handles for the devices on your bus.
4. Device profiles: how a device becomes a facade — the core concept behind the handles, and how the library chooses one per slave.

Intermediate

5. Motion operating modes — CSP / CSV / CST and switching between them at runtime.
6. Working with I/O — reading and writing digital and analog channels through IoModule.
7. Faults and safe shutdown — detecting drive faults and shutting the bus down cleanly.
8. Multiple devices on one bus — coordinating several facades in a single control loop.

Advanced

9. Real-time behavior and timing — RT scheduling, synchronization, and the built-in timing diagnostics.
10. Detecting and handling bus faults — reacting to a cable pull or a slave dropping off the bus.
11. Extending a built-in profile — customize an existing drive profile while keeping the Axis API.
12. Writing your own device profile — support any EtherCAT device, even one LXMASTER has never seen.