4. Runtime Instructions

This tutorial summarizes steps required to launch communication between B&R PLC and ROS machine

1. Load POWERLINK driver

Navigate to bin folder of your driver, in this tutorial it was /home/user/openPOWERLINK_V2.5.2/bin/linux/x86_64/oplkdrv_kernelmodule_edrv/ and load Ethernet POWERLINK Driver:

$ sudo ./plkload oplk8111cn.ko

You should see following output:

2. Start your PLC

Plug Compact Flash Card created in previous step into your PLC, turn on the power supply and wait until everything initializes properly.

3. Launch ros_powerlink node

Plug your PC into the POWERLINK network and launch ros_powerlink node compiled in step 2.

$ roslaunch ros_powerlink ros_powerlink.launch

If everything works fine you should see following output:

4. Communication Test

First make sure that both ROS topics are indexed in the ROS topic list:

$ rostopic list

You should see that data_from_plc and data_to_plc are available: