Summit drives support capacitive coupling as an alternative to magnetic coupling for EtherCAT communication over short distances. This feature is particularly advantageous when daisy-chaining multiple drives on the same PCB, offering several benefits at the expense of slightly higher power consumption (around 10 mA per axis):
-
Cost reduction (huge difference compared to magnetics)
-
Simplified design
-
Smaller footprint
-
Reduced complexity
To enable capacitive coupling, a 1 kΩ pull-down resistor must be connected to the \ETHx_LED_LINK pin of each port where capacitive coupling is desired.
Then the TX_P of Port 1 of the first device must be connected to RX_Pof port 0 to the next device using a X7R, 0402, 100 nF ceramic capacitor. The same connection should be done for the following:
-
TX_N_1 with RX_N_0
-
RX_P_1 with TX_P_0
-
RX_N_1 with TX_N_0