I am using AL5A and AL5B robot arm in my experiment. I need to send a pulse from the PLC to the SSC-32 to activate the robot arm to perform a simple insertion task. I will be doing the robot arm movement using Visual Basic 6. I am using PLC OMRON CP1E… Can you help me on how to make the ssc-32 to communicate with PLC?
Can the PLC output ASCII strings? The SSC-32 is controlled by ASCII strings in either an RS-232 or TTL interface. Single or bi-directional. Go to a uP.
Alan KM6VV
my PLC outputs binary codes. so is it possible to make it communicate with the robot arm?
8 bit parallel? Take a UART and convert to RS-232.
Can you bit-bang out to a pin? That could allow you to send ASCII.
Alan KM6VV
Could you possibly provide a link to a data sheet describing how to use the outputs, and how the data is formatted? What PLC is it? Do you mean it only has digital outputs such as 0v to 5v? Or are they relay contacts? Need more information…
what is a bit-bang?
Bit-bang is simulating a hardware UART (serial port) in software. If you can control the timing needed for a serial port, and can turn a bit on and off appropriately, then you can generate a serial bit stream (serial comms) with software. Generally requires conditional and iterative statements (blocks?) to implement. Also a basic bit shift and some sort of array (string) access. What PLC are you using, did you say? Why not use one of the many available canned micro solutions?
A stand-alone UART chip can do the serial comms for you, if you can output a byte (8 bits) at once. Of course, you have to be able to access the bytes (characters) from an array. Again, why not a uP? You can often simulate a PLC with a small uP, but simulating a uP with a PLC is something else…
Alan KM6VV
I saw a “terminal” interface, and RS-232 on at least some of the versions. If it’s meant to talk to a terminal (send messages), then it can also talk to an SSC-32 (with the proper baud rate). The same com port can be used to talk to both.
Alan KM6VV