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:

RobotStudio Controller tab with the Add Controller menu open and One Click Connect selected RobotStudio Properties menu with Controller and System Properties selected RobotStudio Controller Properties with System Properties > Control Module > Options expanded, listing 616-1 PC Interface and 623-1 Multitasking

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 and the robot controller connect via Ethernet. An Ethernet cable should be connected to the WAN port of the robot controller, and to the Pickit processor as described here.

IP configuration

Open RobotStudio and follow the next steps:

RobotStudio Properties menu with Network settings selected RobotStudio Network settings dialog with Use the following IP address selected, IP address 169.254.5.182 and subnet mask 255.255.0.0

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).

ABB FlexPendant main menu with the Restart option circled

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.

RobotStudio File Transfer window with the ABB_Pick-it folder in the PC Explorer and the controller HOME folder in the Controller Explorer

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

  • Automatic mode: not necessary

ABB FlexPendant Request for Write Access dialog from RobotStudio with Grant and Deny buttons

Load parameters from controller

RobotStudio Controller tree with the Configuration context menu open and Load Parameters from Controller selected

  • 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.

RobotStudio open dialog in HOME/ABB_Pick-it with Pickit SYS.cfg selected and Load parameters and replace duplicates enabled

Restart the controller.

RobotStudio Controller tab with the Restart (Warmstart) button tooltip shown

Test robot connection with Pickit

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