Which interface to choose for python programming

Ruben_Speybrouck

Hi! 

I recently took over a position at siemens energy and we have two idle ur5e robots with gripper and wrist camera. I know nearly nothing about them. I have played a bit with the simulator, but nothing more. I am a python programmer and data analyst. 

What I would like to do, is send positions back and forth from the robot to a python program, as well as images from the wrist camera in real time and IO and gripper input/output. I figure I have to connect the robot to a computer or raspberry pi over ethernet cable? 

I see there is an urx python lib, i have heard mention of 'RTDE', i see people using modbus libraries etc. 
What is, in 2021, the recommended approach to achieve what I want? 

bcastets

Maybe you could have a look to the following articles about gripper control and camera image access using python:

• https://dof.robotiq.com/discussion/1382/control-grippers-from-python-using-modbus-rtu#latest
• https://dof.robotiq.com/discussion/2291/send-and-get-data-from-ur-robot-and-control-robotiq-grippers-via-rtde-using-python-3-ur-rtde#latest
  
• https://dof.robotiq.com/discussion/2215/python-gui-to-visualize-the-image-of-a-robotiq-wrist-camera-connected-on-a-ur-robot#latest

The wrist camera is not designed to be use for custom application. If you connect the USB on your PC the wrist camera will work like a webcam with automatic settings. There is no way to control camera settings with a custom program.

Ruben_Speybrouck

Sorry for the slow response, there was an Easter holiday. Thanks a lot for the nice overview of info. The example you wrote in Tkinter seems exactly like what I need! The other examples also seem really well documented. I will be trying your rwcLive script later this week!