DCi quickstart guide
Introduction
CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This guide is meant to serve as the initial instruction set to get you going with the DCi robot.
Never hotplug anything. Switch off the robot prior to making any connection.
Switch on and move
- Once you have unpacked your DCi Robot, place it on a level surface, remove all zip-ties and packaging material from the robot arm. Make sure that there is sufficient free space around the robot to operate the arm.
- Connect the Teach Pendant (that is what we call the remote control with the display) to the rear of the robot and tighten the fixing screws of the connector.
- The robot requires a power supply rated for 24V and minimum 4A. A power supply is normally shipped with the DCi robot. Connect it to the back of the robot.
- Connect the power supply to the mains and switch on the robot at the back of the robot.
- The LEDs at the back of the robot will light up and the Teach Pendant will initialise.
- After 20s most of the green LEDs at the back of the robot should be blinking. This indicates that communication has been established to the stepper motor modules and the digital input/output module(s).
- If the red emergency stop button of the Teach Pendant is depressed, disengage it by rotating and pulling upwards at the button.
- Next to a status message, you should see two soft-buttons in the touch display: Reset and Enable. Click Reset, followed by Enable to reset the robot and enable the motors.
- Now there should be a red message in the display saying that the robot is not referenced yet. We will ignore that for now and do the referencing later.
- Push the "Jog" Menu button at the top of the touch display.
- Using the joystick, you should now be able to jog the first, second and third axis to verify their function (slowly rotate the joystick left and right, up-down, left-right).
- Push A5 at the bottom of the screen to gain control of joint 4 and 5. Move it by rotating the joystick left and right, up-down.
Reference
There is a whole section on referencing the robolink robots in this wiki. In short:
- Move the robot close to its reference switch position: each axis has a metal pin in the joint that is used to sense the reference position. Since you are doing this step for the first time and the robot might still be "folded up" for shipping, jog the joints until the robot is in this position (see image on the right).
- On the display, select the "Ref" button at the top to open the referencing dialog.
- Start by pushing "Reference joint 1". Once the joint has stopped moving, continue with joint 2, 3 and so forth.
- After, once the robot has stopped moving, i.e. the referencing has finished, push Reset and Enable the robot again to apply the reference values that have been found during the referencing operation.
Run a program
The DCi robots come with a test program. Once the robot is referenced,
- push the "Play" button at the top of the display to get to the program dialog.
- To run the program press "run". - Ensure that there is sufficient free space around the robot to avoid collisions.
- The robot should play the pre-recorded Program.
Connect the robot to a Windows PC to start recording/writing your own programs
In order to generate your own programs, it is best to connect it to a Laptop or PC running Windows. This will allow you to record/generate a program or path that can later be uploaded to the embedded robot control, so that the laptop is no longer required for operation.
Initially, please install CPRog on your Windows PC as described here
To establish a connection between Linux embedded control and PC, the Network adapter of the PC has to be configured for an IP in the address range 192.168.3.0/24. I usually chose IP address 192.168.3.1 as shown below.
- Power off the robot. Disconnect the power supply from mains power.
- Plug the LAN cable into the right LAN socket at the DCi robot and into your Windows computer on the other end.
- Power on the Robot, disengage emergency stop.
- Wait until the Green LEDs of the stepper motor boards at the back of the robot start blinking.
- Start CPRog and open the correct project file for your robot.
- Connect DCi Robot/TinyCtrl to a Laptop via LAN.
- click Connect, reset, enable. The robot should now be ready for referencing, which can be done via the Teach Pendant. However, since CProg is already running, I would now reference the Robot in CPRog (but that's just personal preference).
Once referenced, you can start recording a program as described shown in the ivdeo below and this article: CPRog Examples.
For details on the available commands, have a look at
- Command Reference EN: CPRog Command Reference
More details regarding general operation can be found here:
- Documentation / Manual EN: robolink User Guide
- Documentation / Manual DE: robolink Bedienungsanleitung
