IRC5 Ethernet communication

Lin

I want my IRC5 controller communicate to more than one device through Ethernet.

please guide me. thank you.

Klaus

Hi.

If you use RAB you can add 3 connections but only on can have mastership at the time.

If you whant more you can use a socket connection. You can add severel connections on different portnumber

BR Klaus

gomzy0404

hi there,
Even im looking to network IRC5 Controllers. One way of doin it by first installing PC interface on ur current controller's robotware.,then use OPC or ABB's webware server client option or robot studio online depending upon ur application ..
Dut this approch is expensive. I wonder we can create our applications to network different controller at different or same  time. if it does, can anyone give more information on it please?

RussD

"Network the controllers" is a pretty vague term. What is your goal?

If you want to connect to an externally mounted drive to increase your storage, you can use the option NFS and FTP Client option to do this. Otherwise, if you want to read/write data to controller, you must have the PC Interface option. Access to the robot is via a proprietary communications protocol, if you don't have the option, you can't use it.

gomzy0404

well , im looking for a solution to transfer Prodution data such as,  products made in a shift, machine down time , bad products, over all to say 'shift perfomance'  to a remote computer.
 we have 7 IRC 5 controllers . We would like to enhance our IT capablity at our company. Since we are a small company my boss want to look for cheap solution .
 
Any other way of getting infrom from the robots apart from software option?
 cheers
A Gomes

RussD

What software options does your robot have?

mattdavis

you could write all the information you want to to a file on the controller and access this file via tftp. I have used this (manually, not automatically) to get data from touch sensing etc back onto my computer. But you could probably automate that without too much expense.

gomzy0404

wel ,jst one one controller  have got
Multiple axis positioner, world zones, fixed position events, path recovary, fieldbus command interface, file & serial channel handling, logical signal interrupt, analog signal interrupt advance rapid and Device net.
Rest controllers have : Device net, world zones, fixed position events,path recovary

No PC software FTP option installed on the controllers.

plz help!!

gomzy0404

hi MATT,

Do  u hve FTP software option installed on ur controller?

Regards,
Ashwin Gomes

RussD

Writing data to a file is like Matt described is one option, from RW 5.11 onward, the File and Serial Channel handling option is built into RobotWare, so you theoretically could write out from the serial port perhaps to a serial to ethernet bridge. To make this work well, however, you would want to have the multitasking option.

Have you actually priced the software option? I think you will find that the cost is probably less than the amount of development time you will spend, no matter which approach (other than writing data to a file) you try to use.

mattdavis

No FTP software option, but i do have Multitasking, not sure if its required for this or not.

File writing is pretty simple (example of what i used below)

VAR iodev logfile;

Open "TEMP:" File:= "LOGFILE1.CSV", logfile Write;

Write logfile, ""Pos:=foundpoint2{i}.trans;

Close logfile;

gomzy0404

hi RUSS,

Thanks for the information

I hve Crossed checked all  the controllers. The latest  Robot ware version  we hv is RS 5.10_02.00.2028 on one controller.
Can we upgrade 5.11 with no cost?

We got the quote from ABB , Just for only 
 PC software option its comming around A?4500.
To make  things better and operator  friendly . I have explained my production manager about the benifits  that  multitasking option will provide a month ago. that migg add up to alteast A?6500.

So what will you suggest  me ?

Plz help

Regards
A Gomes

gomzy0404

hi matt,

Thanks for the infromation.
 Now than, How did you transfer infromation to a remote PC. What protol did use?
What  Robot ware version currently  installed on   the controllers?

Regards,
Ashwin Gomes

RussD

I think Matt was saying that he doesn't transfer the files from the robot, he reads them from the flash disks using an FTP client on a PC.

 

The price you quoted was more than I expected, but I'm not in CS so I don't know what the selling price is. Also, I'm not sure what the upgrade policy is; as far as I know you are eligible to upgrade to any released version of RobotWare that your hardware supports.

 

If you can get 5.11 or newer then you should have the file and serial channel option built in to RobotWare, as far as I know it should be installed automatically even if it is not present in your controller keystring (which was generated when F & S Handling was an option).

 

From here, then you could either write files to the flash disk like Matt described or write messages out of the serial port. You could do this without multitasking, its just a little cleaner to separate the serial functionality into a separate task. For instance, you could have a method that writes production data at the end of each cycle, including the opening and closing of the serial port.

 

You might look into serial to Ethernet protocol adapters or some other sort of serial "hub" hardware that allows you to connect multiple serial connections to one device, since your PC will have probably two ports at most. THen you could have a PC application that accepted the input from this device and translated it into some sort of usable format.

 

THis would not be a trivial exercise to implement, but is about the only practival alternative I can think of without purchasing options. Any method beyond manual retrieval of files via FTP will require a fair amount of of effort to implement.

gomzy04

 Hi Russel ,

Thanks for all the information u have given.

I have convienced my supervisor abt the software options. As our business is growing these days , we probably might go  for few more machines later this year.

Know than, I hve two robot studio licenced softwar, I just wonder if i cud simulate my application programm by first creating a small network with two virtual controller on two different computers and a server which has webware installed on it? Does this make any sense to u?

This will allow me to give a demo abt the whole production statistics to my supervisor before we invest on  a pc software option and multitasking.

Regards,

Ashwin Gomes

TriggMeL

I wrote some code that writes cycle time information to a file on the robot then automaticaly moves the file via FTP using TCPIP protocol to an exteranl pc. You need to define pc path in your robots application protocol. It works nicely because you can move the file based on system date or whatever you like and even change the file type (mine is changed from txt to csv). I realize this is a late reply, i was just browsing through some old posts. Hopefully its helpful.

 

  VAR clock ClockCycle_Time;
  VAR num ClipCycleTime;
  VAR iodev CycleTimeTest;
  VAR string CycleTimeFileName;
  PERS string StoredDate;
  PERS string FileName:="CycleTimeTest.txt";

 

!!!  NEW CYCLE TIME COUNTER  !!!
    ClkStop ClockCycle_Time;
    ClipCycleTime:=ClkRead(ClockCycle_Time);
    IF StoredDate="" THEN
      StoredDate:=CDate();
    ENDIF
    IF StoredDate <> CDate() THEN
      CycleTimeFileName:= "pc:/" + StoredDate + ".csv";
      CopyFile "HOME:/CycleTimeTest.txt", CycleTimeFileName;
      Open "HOME:" File:= "CycleTimeTest.txt", CycleTimeTestWrite;
      Write CycleTimeTest, "CycleTime ShapeNumber Date TimeOfDay";
      StoredDate:=CDate();
    ELSE
      Open "HOME:" File:= "CycleTimeTest.txt", CycleTimeTestappend;
    ENDIF
    Write CycleTimeTest, NumToStr(ClipCycleTime,3) + " " + NumToStr(shapeNum,0) + " " + CDate() + " " + CTime();
    Close CycleTimeTest;
    ClkReset ClockCycle_Time;
    ClkStart ClockCycle_Time;
    !!!   END OF CYCLE TIME COUNTER  !!!

Daniel_Sam

Hi all!!!

I'm studying a Robotics and Automation Master at Carlos III University of Madrid.

My partner at me designed and made an automated flexible manufacturing cell for Degree Project.

Now we have designed an vision system using OpenCvA's libraries. We generate integer data type at C code. Then we want to comunicate the PC with the IRC5 controller sending the vision data.

For the comunication we have thought use TCP/IP protocol with sockets. Is it possible? We want to use the Pc like the server-master and the IRC5 like the client-slave. Both the client and the server write and read sockets.

Thanks and greetings to all!!!

wolfino

Hi,

Sure it is possible. You need PC Interface option Installed on your controller.

The code should look some like this:

PROC <?: prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Main()<?: prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

ConnectToInSight ;

MoveL pHome,v1000,.....

GetVisionData;

MoveL Reltool(pVisionPos,nXOffs,nYOffs,0Rz:=nAngle),

         WaitTime 3;

MoveL pHome,v1000,fine,tVision;

SocketClose ComSocket;

ENDPROC

 

PROC GetVisionData()

VAR string XData:="";

VAR string YData:="";

VAR string AngleData:="";

VAR num NumCharacters:=9;

VAR bool bOK;

 

nXOffs:=0;

nYOffs:=0;

nAngle:=0;

 

status := SocketGetStatus(ComSocket);

IF status <> SOCKET_CONNECTD THEN

TPErase;

TPWrite "Vision Sensor Not Connected";

Return;

ENDIF

 

! Instruct In-Sight to Acquire an Image

! and not return until complete

SocketSend ComSocket Str:="sw8";

CheckStatus;

 

SocketReceive ComSocket Str:=stReceived;

 

! Get the value in cell C7

SocketSend ComSocket Str:="gvc007";

CheckStatus;

 

! Read the data

SocketReceive ComSocket Str:=stReceived;

 

! Parse the data string

XData:= StrPart(stReceived, 0, NumCharacters);

YData:= StrPart(stReceived, NumCharacters, NumCharacters);

AngleData:= StrPart(stReceived, 2*NumCharacters, NumCharacters);

 

!Convert String Data To Numerical Data

bOK:=StrToVal(XData,nXOffs);

bOK:=StrToVal(YData,nYOffs);

bOK:=StrToVal(AngleData,nAngle);

ENDPROC

 

 

PROC CheckStatus()

SocketReceive ComSocket Str:=stReceived;

IF stReceived <> "1" THEN

TPErase;

TPWrite "Vision Error!";

Stop;

ENDIF

ENDPROC

 

 

PROC ConnectToInSight()

SocketCreate ComSocket;

SocketConnect ComSocket, "192.168.0.1", 23;

      ENDPROC

 

      good luck