How to Start, Stop or Pause program from PLC through MODBUS

Jose

Hi guys,

my communication between PLC and robot is done through MODBUS where robot is a slave. Communication through general purpose registers on address 128-255 works fine. For communication I use functions like write_port_register(), read_port_register(), integer_to_binary_list(<value>) to get the register value as a list of booleans (e.g.[True,False,.....]), or binary_list_to_integer(<list>) to go back.

Problem is that I dont know how to connect some boolean from register with action Start, Stop or Pause program. I want to start program from PLC through MODBUS. How are the posibilities to do it ?

With descrete inputs is no problem because on card Instalation - I/O Setup you can link for example digital_in[0] with action Start program but I dont want to do it in this way.

matthewd92

I’m not aware of any way to control the robot over modbus. However, you can send string commands to the robot over port 29999 such as play, pause, stop

Do you have the ability to send open a socket connection on port 29999 with the robot and send strings?  You will need to send the end of line character as well for the command to execute.  This also gives you the ability to do other things with the robot such as query state, ensure the robot is ready to have the play command sent for instance or load a different program from the PLC

Jose

It looks that we will use dashboard server as you suggested or discrete inputs if there is no option to control robot over the modbus. Thanks for your replay