Calculating time taken by sync() function

Technical Questions URScript
1

Hi,

Can someone please suggest like how to calculate the time taken by sync() function?

For example, “sync()” operation takes 8 ms in CB3 whereas it is 2 ms in e-Series.

I couldn’t find relevant details regarding this in the UR script manual?

Thanks,
Sankar

2

Sync() uses up the remaining cycle time on the processor, so the reason why it is 8ms in the CB3 is due to the communication frequency of 125 Hz, and in the E-series the 500 Hz communication frequency, making it 2 ms if used with nothing else.

In a lot of How-Tos, they recommend you to add Wait in a thread if it is only for reading values, like force etc. But the best would be to use the sync() function instead, to take up the rest of the cycle time of the “frame”, 8 ms on CB and 2 on the E-series

But this is basically written in the script manual, with different wording. Also with much more info under 1.8.2 Thread scheduling in the script manual

Edit addition:
An example, if you would use

Thread_1
 Wait 0.003
 sync()

then sync() should take 5 ms and then loop the thread again, having the thread loop every frame (communication cycle), every 8 ms.

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3

Hi,
Thanks a lot for your reply.

I have spawned a thread like this. The code assumes that it is 8 ms for sync() function. It is true only for CB. How do we calculate the exact time taken for sync() call irrespective of the controller that is used?

Thread_1
while(true)
sync()
count = count + 1
if (count == 125)
seconds = seconds + 1
end
end
end

4

Check out the URScript function get_steptime() which returns the step-time of one sync() instruction.

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5

With that function that @jbm wrote, I tried to do a counter from the GUI, and it seems to be fine, here is the auto-generated script

def StepTimeCounter():
 # All the set and URCap functions are removed
  global StepTime=get_steptime()
  global Count=0
  global TimeS=0
  while (True):
    sync()
    global Count=Count+1
    if (Count == (1/StepTime)):
      global TimeS=TimeS+1
      global Count=0
    end
  end
end

Another way is just

def StepTimeTimer():
 global StepTime=get_steptime()
  global Count=0
  global TimeS=0
  while (True):
    sync()
    global TimeS=TimeS+StepTime
  end
end

Which is basically the same as the UR builtin Timer (From version 3.7). Create one of those timers in the GUI and read the script how they have built it, you can see they use the function get_steptime() :slight_smile:

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