Hello,
We have VC 4.3 Premium that we are using mainly for virtual commisioning and digital twin purposes.
We have worked with FANUC but the next projects will integrate KUKA robots. Our idea is to buy OfficeLite and connect the virtual controller to VC as we did with FANUC Roboguide. Is this enough? What are the connectivity options with OfficeLite.
Regards!
Hi,
I’ve used OPC.UA to connect VC to OfficeLite. Then the Kuka System Software option was called “Kuka.OPC UA”. But I heard that now the OPC.UA would be included in option “Device Connector”.
-k
Hi Keke,
Thanks for your fast reply! It’s good to know that we have OPC UA option in the robots and that it works in OfficeLite.
As KUKA has a very strong relationship with VC, I was expecting a “better” communication option, we experienced very laggy communications when using OPC UA with Roboguide.
Regards!
No there’s no other option for Kuka at the moment. In Kuka.Sim 3.1 there’s this inbuilt channel for OfficeLite but it’s not available on VC products. For me OPC.UA worked quite well with OfficeLite.
-k
hello,can you tell me how to connect FANUC roboguide with VC through the OPC UA server? I have roboguide v9.0,but it seems that it only has the OPC Server?
Hi @killyouz, you should be able to discover the Roboguide OPC UA server on:
opc.tcp://127.0.0.1:4880/FANUC/NanoUaServer
Have a look on this thread:
Regards,
OK,thanks,but I find out that I can’t active this OPC UA server,is there other options that I need to be set up?
I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you, you should contact FANUC.
I just created a new robotic cell in Roboguide and UaExpert went online on the first try.
There are several ways to connect to Visual Components to KUKA, Fanuc, ABB and other robot controllers. For OPC UA, a robot manufacturer will probably adhere to the VDMA companion specification, so expect to find and use same variable names in the OPC UA server.
Latest update for KUKA is the KRC 5 controller is shipped with the KUKA.DeviceConnector (KDC) package which supports OPC UA and MQTT. The KDC requires a license. OPC UA supports pub/sub and MQTT is just for monitoring. I have tested it with KUKA.Sim Pro, KUKA.Sim 4.0.1 and Visual COmponents 4.3. Another option is the open-source UDP server which you can find on GitHub and it is more or less approach of read/write config/system variables of the controller. Other option packages like Ethernet can be used for socket connection, which is easy to do in component script.
I have not noticed any updates done by ABB to its OPC UA server, so this article is still up-to-date. There are several ways to connect to ABB robot controller, so it is matter of choice in a way depending on the project and its requirements.
For Fanuc, the controller needs “HMI Device” option, and if you are using RoboGuide use the latest version if possible. I have not tested this nor do I know the cost of the option, but I will surely follow up on this at the beginning of August. From Fanuc documentation, the OPC UA server seems to only support publishing, so mainly for monitoring and the setup for testing in different networks seems tedious, but that is common when dealing with certs, etc. I will follow up to see if it is like the KDC in which you can use method calls. Someone testing with UA Expert can comment on this now. Note that Visual Component OPC UA connection plugin does not support method calls, but others have worked around this by implementing their own OPC UA client in component script.
I don’t know the plans of other players, but Hyundai’s Hi6 should have OPC UA server.
How to connect VC to Kuka_officelite I have tried using Kukasimpro connection successfully
Hello everyone,
regarding the connectivity options I have one particular question.
Is it possible to connect KUKA.OfficeLite (Virtual Robot Controller) to KUKA.Sim directly as controller and still be able to use OPC-UA functionality in KUKA.Sim for example for sending values to move an imported CAD model or is this disabled as KUKA.Sim is in “view”-only mode.
A different solution would be to use the OPC server from KUKA.OfficeLite right?
Then I could connect the axis values from OfficeLite via OPC and my movement values from a different OPC server.
The idea is to use mxAutomation to program the robot but to also to simulate it with it.
You should be able to connect to KUKA controller and use the OPC-UA connector simultaneously. I haven’t tested this though.
Option 2 where all data comes from OPC-UA will work for sure.
First of all thank you for your fast answer!
Is there any chance you can test the simultaneous connection for me, as I got the information from KUKA that it won’t work but to be honest I’m not really sure.
For the second option it is great to hear that this will work as an alternative.
Thank you!
Unfortunately I don’t have a spare KUKA controller nor office lite so testing is not easy 
I will still try to find you an answer.
Thank you very much! I haven’t found that much yet.
Hi,
My colleague just tested to connect to an OfficeLite with OPC-UA and the OfficeLite connection “view only” which worked fine. Also other connection types like “synchronize” should work fine. So OPC-UA and the native connection interface to OfficeLite are able to be utilized at the same time.
Hello mastu,
thank you so much for that effort! That is a big step forward in my project.
Now I can buy the needed components and try it myself, I will give an update 
hello，William，when i use uaexpert connect officelite via opc-ua,the status code of axis data is BadUserAccessDenied,why is this happening，Looking forward to your reply。
