How can I control UArm with Labview?

1

Hi there UArm enthusiast!
I recently just purchased my first UArm in order to do my final engineering project. I would like to control the UArm with labview but I’m not quite sure how to communicate them?
Can you guys give me any advice? Has anyone tried it? Any suggestion will be of great help.

2

Hi,

I’m using NI myRIO instead of Arduino controller to control the uArm. However, I have to rewrite all programs in LabVIEW such as calibration , set position etc.

Good luck!

3

Hi, Stiuidib~ thanks for your passion. Ar you major in Robotics? We didn’t develop the Labview, because it is too professional for a Robotic enthusiast now. If you have interests, we have open a discuss here for this topic :smile:

4

Thanks for your input @Poppy @jchue
I’m currently communicating labview and Arduino through VIsa writing and reading a string. I send a sting from labview to UArm and decode it there and then it sends a feedback with the actual coordinates of the robot. It is a pretty slow communication and I’m trying to get it to go smoothly.
I’ll post my results when it works better

5

Hi, Stiuidib,

This is joey. I wrote the arduino libraries for uarm. So what I recommend is you can write a simple communication protocol for uarm and labview.

The method is that, in uarm, we have moveTo, writeAngles and other functions which can detach and attach uarm in our arduino library. Remember to calibrate uarm first (http://developer.ufactory.cc/quickstart/)

So you can use string to communicate, like if Labview send a “a11” string – made by three char “a” “1” “1”. Arduino will transfer that into the case
"first ‘a’ stands for attach or detach servo" – detach or attach
“second ‘1’ stands for servo 1” – servo angle
“third ‘1’ stands for attach servo”. – 0 means detach
And string “a40” means detach servo 4.

So you can use other method like (m121222) means move uArm to point 12, 12,22.

The only thing you need you be careful is that the ASCII code transfer — if you send char 1 from Labview to Arduino, Arduino may read the ascii code for char 1 - that would be number 49 ! So be careful about that.

You can reference the matlab -arduino communication method to communicate (they use similar communication method) http://cn.mathworks.com/hardware-support/arduino-matlab.html (I have done this once before)

There is another way to do that is to use the Arduino package in Labview, but I am not sure whether it is doable

7

Hi @Stiuidib!
I’m wondering how you used VISA read/write to control the uArm with LabVIEW. I am currently trying to do the same and I’m not having any success. Any code or suggestions you could share would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!