Send email through cobot

Technical Questions URScript
1

Is it possible to natively send an email through the UR5e? What I’m looking to do is whenever the cobot has finished running whatever job it is currently on, it will send out an email to everyone who needs to know so that they are aware that the cobot is in an inactive state and requires human intervention before it can continue. I don’t know if there is a way to do this through script, or if it will require an external python program or the like. I assume it is not possible to do it natively, but I wanted to ask first.

2

I don’t recall any URScripts commands that will do anything related to an email. Some possible approaches:

  • You have a server, to which the robot can connect to notify its state, either through TCP or XML-RPC. This server has a bot that will send the email when getting the notification.
  • You don’t have a server but you want to use the previous approach. Then you can make your own little server with the bot sending out the email in Python/C++ by making your own URCap and installing it on the robot controller. Be aware that this approach will have to be done twice (1 for earlier versions of Polyscope 6, and 1 for Polyscope 6), since Polyscope 6 has backwards URCaps compatibility.
  • If you are using ROS to control the robot, create the bot as a Node, and create a topic where the robot publishes its state and the bot is the suscriber.
3

Good answer above, just wanted to add my five cents.

The easiest way to send an email is by using a cloud service like Sendgrid or Mailgun. To send emails through these you need to send an HTTP request. A couple of options:

  1. Implement the HTTP protocol in URScript (using TCP sockets) and send from there. [Very hard]
  2. Write your own URCap and implement the web request daemon there. You would then signal the URCap daemon from URScript using something like a TCP socket or IO (probably easiest).
  3. Deploy a service (probably written in Python) on an external PC and have this service poll the Dashboard service for the necessary alert-conditions. Once the conditions are met you send the HTTP request. You could probably deploy this type of service through the URCap route but not as straightforward.

It’s a bit like killing a fly with a sledge hammer but Olis Connect can also do this out of the box. There is a lower-priced tier that might work for you.