Tool Communications Interface (TCI) RS485 communications with external tool MCU

Technical Questions Robot Communication
1

We have a microcontroller inside an end effector tool that we want to communicate with using the TCI. We have enabled the TCI from the Installation Tab. We have an RS485 adapter in the tool that we can connect the TCI RS485+ / RS485- wire pair to. The adapter will then be connected to an MCU that will control the tool functions.

I have read through the discussions about RS485 communications but can’t put together a complete plan to connect up the parts and send a simple high/low message to the microcontroller from the robot controller.

Can someone point me to the first step as a starting point or refer me to a super genius who can implement this for us?

2

@jmb I see that you have written on this topic but I still don’t know how to get a communications test message to go from the Robot Controller to a device connected at the Tool I/O. Can you help with a simple step-by-step procedure starting from enabling the communication in the Installation tab through executing the command that sends the message such as “hello world” or 0 changing to 1?

3

I have used RS485 to communicate with device on the Tool via Modbus RTU. Communication was made from daemon written in C++. If such communication would be helpful for you and you have questions about this topis, let me know :slight_smile:

4

Hello, can you please elaborate on how you wrote that C++ daemon? Ive only ever seen URcaps written in Java, and I am much more familiar with C++, so if I could write something in C++ for RS485 communication that would definitely be preferable. I am working on a UR5e

5

Hi @ben.hamlen,

Welcome to the UR community! All URCaps are written in Java, but they can contain a daemon process that you can write in the language you prefer. For the tool communication you can take a look at this sample URCap Sample: Tool Modbus RTU URCap. It contains a small Python daemon that takes care of the tool communication.

Best regards
Ebbe

6

I hope my answer in another issue thread can help you start in setting things up and ready from the robot side. Establish rs485 connection with Tool - #6 by aswathamang