Interfacing ABB robot with a PC [WebWare SDK]

swagatk

Hi all!



I am new to this group. I have been assigned the task of interfacing ABB IRB140 M2000 robot with pc through RAP/RPC protocol.





The robot documentation CD has two manuals on RAP

1. RAP protocol userguide

2. RAP specifications



Is there any additional documentation that tells how to set up a RPC
client on controller and how to write basic programs using RAP to share
data with PC?





Regards,

swagat

RussD

No, those documents are the only ones I know of from ABB that document the RAP protocol.

Depending on what your application has to do, the fastest and simplest way to implement your solution would likely be to purchase WebWare SDK and use its pre-packaged functionality to handle the various aspects of PC interaction with robots.

These topics include creating/maintaining/monitoring a connection to the robot(s), reading/writing controller data, performing remote commands on the robot, etc.

swagatk

Dear Russel,



Thanks for your reply. Is it absolutely necessary to purchase webware?
Is it not possible to do it with simple RAPID commands and RPC
protocol?



For instance, I am able to communicate between two linux machines using
portmap and rpcgen. Its because both my server and client support
portmap and oncrpc.



However, I don't know how to set up a rpc server on robot controller
using RAPID language. There are no examples in the documentation
manuals. I don't know whether the controller has portmap. Even if it is
there, I don't know how to set it  up.



If you can give me a simple example, regarding how can I set up a rpc
server on the robot controller, things might not be difficult after
that. I will then setup a client on a linux machine and use normal
RPC/XDR commands to read and write data.



Please guide me.



Regards,

swagat

RussD

There is only one instruction in RAPID, SCWrite, that is related to the RAP protocol, so you can't really implement your RAP application in RAPID.

To activate  the RAP server in the robot, all that is necessary is to add an instance of the RAP type to the communications parameters of the controller in the Application Protocol section.Note: your controller must have the RAP or FactoryWare interface option to be able to use it. A document that describes how to do this is available here.

The controller will serve as the portmapper when RAP is configured and running.

RussD2006-9-3 17:15:56