I need a way to turn a digital output on/off using feature planes. I realize this can be done in a program using a thread. But, I think this should be an option for a configurable output. I am looking for the output to change state based on position regardless of the program running or not. This could be setup in the installation file.
Ex. If my robot is tending a machine, then I don’t want the machine to run when the robot arm is in a certain vicinity of the machine. I can turn an output on and off in the robot program and give the machine a permissive to run. The only problem with that is a user could jog the robot into the area and the robot would not have changed its output because the program is not running.
I was able to somewhat achieve the operation I wanted by having a feature plane turn reduced mode on and off. Then I configured an output to signal for reduced mode. The problem with this is that I had to make my reduced mode settings the same as the normal settings in order to get enough speed. So, with this solution I sacrificed my actual reduced mode functionality.
I have encountered the need for this functionality a few times as an automation engineer.