QiTech Control is an industrial control panel software for the next generation of QiTech recycling machines built on top of Beckhoff Automation hardware.
Frontend
/electron: Frontend code for the control software built with React and Electron.
Backend
/server: Glue between Beckhoff and Electron. Implements machine logic./stepper-driver: Generic stepper driver for absolute, relative & speed movements with PID controllers./ethercat-hal: Hardware abstraction layer for Beckhoff (and possibly other EtherCat) devices and protocols./ethercat-hal-derive: Macros forethercat-hal/control-core: Core control logic for the server.
Operating System
/nixos: Custom Linux with realtime kernel & preconfigured for touchscreens.
Other
/docs: Documentation for the project.
To interface with Beckhoff and other EtherCAT devices we need an EtherCAY master stoftware. Possibilities are PySOEM (Python), SOEM (C) and Ethercrab (Rust). For realtime operation only C and Rust are suitable. We chose Rust because of safety and confidence in the written code.
SocketIO was chosen for performant event driven communication from the backend to the server. But we still use REST with axum for the communication thet benefits from the request/response model.
We use Smol for EtherCAT IO in the control loop for it's performance and Tokio for server IO because of it's ecosystem and maturity.
We could combine the code of the frontend and backend using Doxius but it lacks good Linux support. We chose Electron with React for it's maturity and ecosystem. For the UI we use Shadcn components and Tailwind for styling. For routing we use TanStack Router.
- Rust stable 1.86^ toolchain (install via rustup)
rust-analyzerextension for VSCode- Set your interface in
server/src/ethercat/init.rslikeen10 - Connect a Beckhoff EK1100 to your interface
- run
cd server && cargo runto start the server (localhost:3001)
- nodejs and npm installed
- run
cd electron && npm i && npm run startto start the frontend
-
- Example Winder V2
-
Electron
- Folder Structure
- Routing with TanStack Router
- Design with Tailwind & Shadcn
- ...
-
Interfacing with Electron/Server
- SocketIO
- Machine Room
- Main Room
- REST
- Machine Mutations
- Write Device Identification
- SocketIO
-
Server
- Control Loop Setup
- Control Loop Thread
- realtime
- Maindevice
- Group
- Extracting Device Identifications
- Identifying Groups
- Validating Machines
- Run Control Loop
- Control Loop Thread
- Control Loop
- Machine/Device Identification
- Machines
- When to create a new Machine?
- Versioning
- Code sharing
- Creating/Validating a Machine
- Validation
- Configuration
- When to create a new Machine?
- Machine Implementation Guide
- Link: How to create a Device
- Link: How to create an Actor
- Link: How to create a Machine
- API (SocketIO + REST)
- Creation/Validation Logic
- Optional/Mandatory Devices
- Validate Devices
- Business Logic
- Link: How to create Machine Abstraction (Like Traverse/Puller/...)
- Forward
actin winder.
- Control Loop Setup
-
Control Core
- Actors
- SocketIO
- Rooms & Caching
- Joining leaving rooms
- RoomId
- Our rooms vs native socketIO rooms
- Caching
- Serverside Caching
- Clientside Caching
- REST
-
Ethercat HAL
-
Operating System
- Why
- How