Changing gripper modbus RTU settings without UI

MattiaHaas 2020-07-14

I am currently trying to integrate a FTS300 and a 2F-85 gripper on our Kuka robot. I only have a single Ethernet cable running to the setup and therefore I am using a Mobus TCP to Modbus RTU gateway. The gateway only has a single output port and therefore I can only communicate with one baudrate and the devices also shouldn't have the same slave ID. I therefore wanted to change the baudrate of the gripper to match the one of the f/t sensor and give the gripper a unique slave ID. Unfortunately I am working on a Linux laptop and it seems as if all of the software packages to change those settings only run on Windows. Furthermore the calibration of the f/t sensor also seems to be only available through the UI.

My question therefore is if there is a way to change the settings on the gripper and calibrate the f/t sensor through writing into the registers using a normal python script?

bcastets 2020-07-14

There is no documented way to change FT300 or gripper settings via script.
Maybe you can run "Robotiq User Interface" software on linux using Wine (https://www.winehq.org/). You could also run it with on a windows VM or find a colleague with a windows PC to make your settings.

MattiaHaas 2020-07-22

I managed to organise a windows machine and to change both the baudrate and the slave Id. If I now try to connect to the gripper and ft sensor over the same network the system still looses connection. I get a connection lost message in both the RUI and the ft sensor demo software. Are there any debugging steps I can try?

bcastets 2020-07-23

Maybe you could find some example in the documentation of your Mobus TCP to Modbus RTU gateway ?
If you share a schematics of your connection, settings for each gripper (ID, baud rate,....) and share reference of your Mobus TCP to Modbus RTU gateway, maybe someone will be able to help ?
You could also share a documented example of connection lose (gripper, FT300 LED status,...).

MattiaHaas 2020-07-23

I figured it out! So the problem probably was that both programs try to open a connection to the device but if the first connection is established then the second can't happen since it is the same network. So what I have done is to write my own script which opens a connection to the serial network and then let's both the force torque sensor class and the gripper base class access the network.

bcastets 2020-07-23

Good to know that you managed to make it works !