Over UART¶

The driver inside the gripper has a serial port. It is not the gripper's everyday interface, which is CAN, but it is the way to configure the driver of a self-built gripper and the quickest way to look at what the driver reports when something is wrong.

Reaching the port¶

The UART connector of the driver (JST SH, 4 pins, 3.3 V) is inside the housing, under the coupler plate. Unscrew the plate, plug in the USB-to-serial adapter with the UART cable, and open a terminal at 256000 baud with CR+LF line endings; the gripper's 24 V must be on for anything but reading settings. The serial terminal on the STEPFOC site walks through the terminal setup.

Danger

The port is 3.3 V. A 5 V adapter destroys the driver.

The gripper commands¶

Command	What it does
`#Gripper 1`	gripper mode on (set and saved on every gripper); `#Gripper` prints it
`#Gripcal`	the gripper calibration
`#Gripvel 30`	the speed of the next moves, 0 to 255
`#Gripcur 300`	the current limit of the next moves, mA
`#Grippos 200`	move to the position, 0 open to 255 closed; activates the gripper and starts the move
`#Gripact 1`	the activate flag without moving
`#Gripstop 1`	the E-stop bit
`#Gripinfo`	the gripper's state: calibrated, activated, the setpoints, the object detection, the end stops

Only #Grippos starts a move. A session:

#Clear
#Gripcal
#Gripinfo
#Gripvel 30
#Gripcur 300
#Grippos 200
#Grippos 20

Wait until #Gripinfo reports the gripper calibrated before the first #Grippos: a #Grippos or a #Clear during the calibration ends it. After #Gripstop 1, send #Gripstop 0 before #Clear, or the E-stop error comes straight back.

The UART reference has these and the driver commands a gripper needs; the driver's whole command set is on the STEPFOC site.

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