Controller.PowerEnabled Property

Sends a request to either turn on or off high (motor) power to the amplifier. Returns whether high power is on or off.

Controller.PowerEnabled = <boolean_value>
-or-
Controller.PowerEnabled(timeout) = <boolean_value>
-or-
... Controller.PowerEnabled

Prerequisites

Enabling power via this software command is not permitted on Category 3 (CAT-3) safe systems. For Category 3 (CAT-3) systems, a momentary contact, hardware “Enable Power” button must be manually pressed.

Parameters

timeout

An optional numeric value that specifies the maximum time, in seconds, to wait for power to come on. If less than or equal to zero or omitted, this property waits forever.

Remarks

Setting the PowerEnabled property True sends a request to the control system to enable high power to the amplifiers. For non-Category 3 (CAT-3) safe systems, high power will be enabled only if a number of safety conditions are satisfied (e.g. no Hard E-Stop signal is asserted, no fatal system error exists, etc.). This property waits until the power actually comes on, with a time limit determined by the timeout parameter. If this parameter is positive and the power does not come on within the time limit, this property throws an exception that indicates why power did not come on.

Setting the PowerEnabled property False turns off high power to the amplifiers, but the property does not wait until power is actually off. Unlike the Hard E-Stop signal that delays for a fixed period of time before disabling power, turning off PowerEnabled forces all moving robots to completely decelerate to a stop and allows time for the brakes to be set before power to the amplifiers is disabled. Therefore, setting PowerEnabled False allows for a more orderly stopping of motion than does a Hard E-Stop but this operation is consequently somewhat slower.

The PowerEnabled property is automatically set to False by the system if High Power is disabled by any means and is automatically set to True if High Power is enabled.

Examples

Dim bState As Boolean
Controller.PowerEnabled = True       ' Requests high power be enabled
Controller.PowerEnabled(5) = True   ' Requests high power be enabled
                                     	  ' and waits for up to 5 seconds
 
bState = Controller.PowerEnabled     ' bState will be set True if power is
                                     	' enabled, else will be set False.