Issue with UR-10 and host on different subnets

General Application Help: How do I?
1

Hi UR Support Team and Community,
I am looking for help setting up communication between a host device (laptop or cloud compute) and the UR-10 control box within my organization’s network. My understanding is that our network is broken out into several subnets and different kinds of devices connect to the network through one of these subnets based on some criteria. For example, my laptop uses subnet A when it connects to the network. Other non-user devices like the UR-10 control box will come up on subnet B, even if the laptop and the control box are connected to the same hub.

I need to figure out how to make these two talk. Right now I am using RoboDK and I am able to ping the control box’s IP from my laptop but when I press connect nothing happens. Here is the connection log:

Disconnected
Stopped
Starting robot driver: /local/home/user/RoboDK/bin/apiur
Starting...
RoboDK driver for UR v3.9.0
Sending command...
Loading settings: /home/user/.config/RoboDK-Drivers/apiur.ini
MoveJ with Joints: Yes
MoveL with Joints: Yes
MoveL as: movel(...)
Controller Version: 3
Communication Timeout (ms): 1000
Disconnected
Available local IP addresses (IPv4):
10.39.200.193
No subnet found to connect to (subnet mask is 16): 10.147.164.48
Configure Network settings first

In a nutshell, IT says “Tell them the robot and the RoboDK host are on different subnets and you need to be able to configure the robot to point to a specific RoboDK host IP address.”

Other things to note:

  • Robot is UR10 not UR10e
  • Running PolyScope 3 on the teach pendant, I don’t recall the exact version but can verify on monday.

Is this possible? If so, please help me understand how to implement or let me know if you require more information.

Thanks!

2

Here is an image showing the controller info. It’s URSoftware 3.13.0.10253
Also, it says “(Not connected to network!)” but I am able to ping it and it shows as online in our network device management portal-thing.

IMG_20221014_152931
IMG_20221014_1529311920×2560 493 KB

3

Bump. I believe my issue is similar to the one described here on the RoboDK forum. Right now the only way I can see to bring the robot and my Laptop into the same subnet is to setup a router and connect the two independent of my organization’s network. This will prevent me from interacting with other resources I need from the network. Is there a workaround to get the robot and my laptop talking on different subnets?

4

Sounds like you just need to set the subnet mask appropriately to place this in the right subnet, yeah? That would be more of a question for your IT department. Been a while since my networking courses, but I believe the 10.X.X.X like it shows in your print out is a class A IP address, and would result in a subnet mask of 255.0.0.0. This is why you most commonly see 255.255.255.0 on, say, home networks. Because they are class C addresses, fixed at something like 192.168.1.X. Subnets can get tricky because you don’t have to mask the entire octet. And you can do /8, /16, /24, etc on top of this. So only a certain range of the octet is available. Again, it really sounds like your IT department needs to tell you what mask you need to get it right.

EDIT:

Seems like that’s the problem. They should be on the same subnet. Won’t matter if you point it to RoboDK’s IP address if it isn’t in the same subnet

5

Thank you for your response Eric!
I’ve shared your response with IT, let’s see what they say.

Of course, if any one else has thoughts please do share!