Can PC-SDK work with multiple network simultaneously?

Manny Jiang

Does PCSDK work under multiple LANs?

I explain here:

For example we have a company network where everyone's office PC is connected to. But also in our own small lab we have a network set up by a (wireless supported) router, which connects several robot controllers. And that network is totally disconnected from the company network (for security reasons, and also we don't want to occupy too may office network IP addresses).

Then we have a PC that connects to the company network with wired network adapter, and simultaneously connect to the lab network with wireless adapter. The PC runs a software (using PCSDK) that communicates with robot controllers on the lab network and send data to a server on the company network for storage.

I find that PC-SDK in this situation becomes quite "random" in scanning controllers and generating "Controller" objects, that sometimes some controller shows up, and may disappear soon, or sometimes the controllers never show up at all. It is same with RobotStudio's "Add Controllers" function.

 

Has anyone tried with such a scenario before? Any ideas on what is best practise in network settings to use PC-SDK?

DavidLanham

I have seen something like this before with mixing two networks.  In my situation I have one wired network: 192.168.5.?? and one VPN connected Network 192.168.2.??  The only way I could find to get the controllers to show up was:
1. Set all the controllers with Fixed IP address
2. Creat a Initialize routine in my PC SDK App that would loop through all the controllers that were connected and add them to the Network Scanner using this method

  NetworkScanner.AddRemoteController(ipAddress)

In my situation this fixed the problem and would keep the controllers connected. 

Manny Jiang

Thanks David!

I do use AddRemoteController for each IP address (even if that IP address may be on the same subnet of the PC, in which scenario PCSDK should automatically find according to manual).

But my controllers are all acquiring IP addresses automatically from the router, instead of using fixed IP addresses.

I will try fixed IP and see how it works.

John Wiberg

Hi Manny,

You should edit your NetScan files instead, see attached doc. But if it is intermittent then it is probably due to the controller broadcasting being filtered at the router level.

 

Manny Jiang

Thank you David and John for your answers!

The problem is largely solved now. I posted here my observations so far in case others may have similar issues.

The main cause was actually not the subnet, instead it was because we had several robot systems having a same system GUID. The engineer who set up the controllers simply copied the whole controller hard-drive from one controller and use it in all other controllers. This accelerated the set up process, but gave the systems of thosecontrollers a same ID, which causes PCSDK's failure to scan any of them stably.

We changed the set up process so systems are backed-up and restored at different controllers. This generates new system IDs and largely solve the network scan and controller connection issue.

But occationally I still see issues with connecting controllers. For example, I usually got exceptions like following:

 

(here after I scanned and find controller, I was trying to get its operating mode)

ABB.Robotics.GenericControllerException:  No connection with controller.
   at Adapters.Controller.GetOperatingMode()
   at ABB.Robotics.Controllers.Internal.Controller.get_OperatingMode()
   at ABB.Robotics.Controllers.Controller.get_OperatingMode()

(here I was trying to get its Motor on/off state)

ABB.Robotics.GenericControllerException:  No connection with controller.
   at Adapters.Controller.GetState()
   at ABB.Robotics.Controllers.Internal.Controller.get_State()
   at ABB.Robotics.Controllers.Controller.get_State()