PROFINET Forum

Hello. I have read the ETS_HW_manual document and still cannot figure out if there is a way to synchronise the Embedded Test System's clock with the Windows PC running ART, so that the time stamps as recorded in the Ethernet dumps correspond more or less to the time that the Windows PC's operating system is set.

If there is such a procedure, will be grateful for your advice.

AlfredoAtSherpa wrote: ↑06 Feb 2025, 02:51 Hello. I have read the ETS_HW_manual document and still cannot figure out if there is a way to synchronise the Embedded Test System's clock with the Windows PC running ART, so that the time stamps as recorded in the Ethernet dumps correspond more or less to the time that the Windows PC's operating system is set.

If there is such a procedure, will be grateful for your advice.

No such possibility exists today. Currently, the easiest way is to use the timestamps in the report with the timestamps of the logs.
I will take it as a proposal for the backlog of the TSDG with me.

The main problem for this is actually technical: The application clock (CPU clock) of the ETS is used for synchronizing the network interfaces to a common time understanding, so that the time stamps in the different IF PCAP files are actually synchronized to each other with an accuracy < 100ns.
Introducing e.g. NTP will cause jumps (seconds/milliseconds values are hard adapted, no soft adaption via frequency changes, ...) of the application clock in most of the existing NTP client implementations. So you can only synchronize it at the start of a test case and the hope is, that the clock drift of the ETS over the run of the test case is not too high so the synchronization to the ART is still meaningful at the later stages of a test.

j.rost wrote: ↑06 Feb 2025, 10:08 No such possibility exists today. Currently, the easiest way is to use the timestamps in the report with the timestamps of the logs.
I will take it as a proposal for the backlog of the TSDG with me.

The main problem for this is actually technical: The application clock (CPU clock) of the ETS is used for synchronizing the network interfaces to a common time understanding, so that the time stamps in the different IF PCAP files are actually synchronized to each other with an accuracy < 100ns.
Introducing e.g. NTP will cause jumps (seconds/milliseconds values are hard adapted, no soft adaption via frequency changes, ...) of the application clock in most of the existing NTP client implementations. So you can only synchronize it at the start of a test case and the hope is, that the clock drift of the ETS over the run of the test case is not too high so the synchronization to the ART is still meaningful at the later stages of a test.

Thankyou so much for quick answer. The NTP syncronization just at startup would be more than enough for us.
It is only to facilitate the reading of the Wireshart traces when we are debugging and repeat the same test case over and over. We save the dump with a different filename and after some iterations, there can be quite a few different dumps open on the screen; it can be confusing to see which is which. Anyways, if it is something doable that the PROFINET community would appreciate (not just me) and the task can be scheduled in a normal maintenance for ART in the future, yes, it would be great to have this. Again, thanks very much.