ABB installation and setup

The setup of Pickit with an ABB robot consists of 4 steps:

Check controller and software compatibility

Pickit is compatible with controllers of version IRC5 and OmniCore with RobotWare 5 or 6 and furthermore. To communicate with Pickit, the following controller modules need to be installed:

For IRC5

  • 616 PC interface (Socket messaging)

  • 623-1 Multitasking

For OmniCore

  • 3119-1 RobotStudio Connect

  • 3114-1 Multitasking

To check this compatibility, open RobotStudio and follow the next steps:

../../_images/abb-check-compatibility-step-1.jpg ../../_images/abb-check-compatibility-step-2.jpg ../../_images/abb-check-compatibility-step-3.jpg

If you don’t have the right software version or module please contact your local ABB distributor.

Setup the network connection

Hardware connection

The Pickit processor has to be connected to the robot controller using an Ethernet cable.

This Ethernet cable should be plugged in:

  • The ROBOT port of the Pickit processor;

  • The WAN port of the robot controller.

IP configuration

Open RobotStudio and follow the next steps:

../../_images/abb-ip-configuration-step-1.jpg ../../_images/abb-ip-configuration-step-2.jpg

Set the IP address of the controller preferably to 169.254.5.182 which is an IP address in the same subnet as the Pickit IP and set the subnet mask to 255.255.0.0.

The IP address of the robot can not be the same as the IP address of Pickit.

After these steps restart from the Flex pendant (assuming you have no write access yet).

../../_images/abb-ip-configuration-step-3.jpg

Load the program files

Download the right files

Download the Pickit ABB files

Upload the files to the robot

Upload these files using File Transfer.

Request write access
  • Manual mode: press ‘Grant’ on the Flex pendant

  • Automatic mode: not necessary

Grant write access on the Flex pendant

Load parameters from controller

Load parameters from controller
  • For an ABB controller with RobotWare 5 select the Pickit SYS RW5.cfg file.

  • For an ABB controller with RobotWare 6 select the Pickit SYS RW6.cfg file.

  • For an ABB controller with RobotWare 7 (e.g. for OmniCore controllers) select the Pickit SYS RW7.cfg file.

  • For the ABB YuMi, select the Pickit SYS YuMi.cfg file.

This will load the required system modules in corresponding tasks.

Select Pickit SYS.cfg

Restart the controller.

Restart the controller

Test robot connection with Pickit

Details on testing this connection can be found on: Testing the Robot to Pickit connection