Using RobotWebServices to access a remote Virtual Controller

Maxim Riabichev

Hello,

WARNING: Performing the steps below allows access to the whole filesystem on the PC that hosts the VC and not only the files in the VC.

To access a remote VC with RWS successfully, please perform the following steps:

On the PC which is hosting the remote VC:
1) If it doesn't already exist, create a file called "vcconf.xml" in "C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\ABB Industrial IT\Robotics IT\RobVC\"
2) Put the following content in it:

<VCConfiguration><RemoteVCConfiguration PublicationEnabled="true" /><hosts><host ip="192.168.125.55"/></hosts>
</VCConfiguration>
3) Change the ip address (bold above) to the ip of the local PC from which you will be accessing the remote VC resources.

That should do it.

You're basically white-listing the IP of the client.

If you don't, you'll get either:
1. "RAPI Unidentified Error" when trying to access resources on the remote VC.
2. "401 Unauthorized" error if trying to access the VC via RWS.

Markus Näslund

Perfect, I was just about to ask why it didn't work remotely! Thanks!

kkNielsen

Is it possible to white list multiple ip addresses?

Maxim Riabichev

Yes, it's possible to white list up to 10 IP's:

<hosts>
<host ip="10.11.125.1" />
<host ip="10.11.125.2" />
<host ip="10.11.125.3" />
...
<host ip="10.11.125.10" />
</hosts>

Wildcards are not supported.

jcalt

Hello Maxim 

I don't have this directory on my PC when RobotStudio is installed ? 
"C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\ABB Industrial IT\Robotics IT\RobVC\"
Neither "C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\ABB Industrial IT\Robotics IT"

Maxim Riabichev

Hello JC,

Yes, if the path doesn't exist, it needs to be created and the missing file put into the necessary folder.

KennyJiang

Hi Maxim,

I followed your instructions and created vcconf.xml under RobVC. Still, the remote VC cannot be found neither by RobotStudio (2021.4 is used) nor by PCSDK. What could possibly be the problem?

Maxim Riabichev

Hard to guess without knowing more details regarding your setup. Firewall maybe? Are you on the same subnet as the VC? Could be many reasons..

cltw666

Hi,

I can get this to work for RW6 but this doesn't work for RW7. I'm getting access denied with https and the VC has error booting up with http.

Help please

matthansen

I'm running with the 6.15 controller, (also tried 6.13 and 6.14), but even with the
vcconf.xml file above (with the correct IP address of course), I'm not able to access the controller remotely, I still get the RAPI Unidentified Error message. I can access the controller from the windows system as localhost, so I know that RWS is running. I've tried rebooting, restarting the controllers, etc.

Please advise if there's anything else I can do.

KennyJiang

Hi Matthansen,

At the beginning of the .xml, add <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> if working on a WINDOWS system. For a LINUX system, use <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> instead.