Has anyone here done this? Is this straight forward?
For example, if I’m using Ethernet/IP, can I send messages directly to the IO-Link component via Ethernet/IP messages to the master or do I have to rely on sending messages to a PLC that then sends messages to the IO-Link component through the IO-Link master?
Hi,
as far as I know it is not possible to directly communicate to another Ethernet/IP Adapter (like an I/O-Link Master probably is) because the UR is “only” an adapter itself. Therefore a PLC would need to act as an Ethernet/IP scanner to exchange the data between UR and I/O-Link Master. But I am not an expert with Ethernet/IP.
If you implement an Ethernet/IP scanner yourself in a daemon service things may be different.
An Ethernet/IP guide is provided here:
https://www.universal-robots.com/how-tos-and-faqs/how-to/ur-how-tos/ethernet-ip-guide-18712/
Some teminology:
- EtherNet/IP Scanner Device (opens connections and initiates data transfers)
- EtherNet/IP Adapter devices (provides data to Scanners)
https://www.rtautomation.com/technologies/ethernetip/
Workaround
We used and MODBUS TCP I/O-Link Master instead. The UR can act both as a MODBUS TCP server or client.
So far we did not use the MODBUS TCP stack provided by UR but used pymodbus in a python daemon to communicate to the I/O-Link Master. This was quiet easy and not much work. For us it was just a demo application. It is not running in production.