This article is for experienced support persons.
Context
Sometimes it can appear that the operating system or the robot is not stable and reinstalling it from crash can help to solve the problem or eventually confirm a hardware issue.
Reinstalling the operating system of the robot consists of remaking the SD card that is plugged inside the UR controller. This is described in UR article but it is not so well detailed and a client with little experience has a good chance to fail doing things by himself.
This article presents a step-by-step method to prepare an SDcard image for a client while taking care of robot calibration and copying program and URCAP files.
Install a virtual machine with Ubuntu on your PC
The robot operating system is based on Linux. To be able to work with the files of the operating system you need to have an environment with Linux on your PC. The easiest way to do that is to create a virtual machine (VM) with Ubuntu. A virtual machine is like a Linux PC built on top of your Windows PC.
If you already have a PC running with Ubuntu or if you already have a Ubuntu VM that you can use on your PC you can skip this step.
1. Download the latest Ubuntu image - Link
2. Download VMWare player - Link
3. Create a new virtual machine using the downloaded image of Ubuntu
This folder can for example be your downloads folder.
5. Make sure WMware tools are up to date.
6. In my case the shared folder is available at this location:
7. If it does not appear, check the following article to set the shared folder: Link
Make the SD card image
1. Get the latest logs of the client and ask him to install the latest version of polyscope
2. Download the latest version of the Polyscope image available on the UR support website - Link
3. Select the USB type of the SDcard reader in VMware settings in my case USB 3
Use a USB SDcard reader and not the SDcard reader implemented in your machine to make sure you can connect the SD card with your Ubuntu VM (I could not figure out how to mount an SDcard when inserted in the SDcard slot of the PC).
If the type of USB is not correctly selected it won`t be possible to connect the SDcard reader to the Ubuntu VM.
4. Plug an SDcard of 4G or more in the USB SDcard reader and mount it on the VM
5. When you plug in the USB SDcard reader you should see a popup to connect the device
6. Clear the popup and use the VMplayer menu to connect the USB SD card reader.
You should now see SD card partitions mounted on your VM. In my case, I have 4 partitions because this card is an old robot image. If you have a new SDcard you should see only 1 partition.
7. Run disks application
8. Format the SDcard
9. Restore the disk polyscope disk image previously downloaded
10. It is time to get the polyscope image that you have in the shared folder
11. In my case, the path is the following. In your case, it may be slightly different.
12. Eject the drive
13. Remove the SD card reader and plug it again in the SDcard reader. Then connect the SDcard to the Ubuntu VM as we did previously.
You should then see the 4 partitions of the SDcard
Modify SDcard files contents
1. Open datafs partition and open the root folder
2. Check options to see hidden files and folders
Arrange a bit the windows to get the SDcard on the left and the share folder that gives you access to your download folder on the right.
3. In the screen capture here below we can see the SDcard .urcontrol folder on the left and the folder available in the download folder of my Windows PC on the right.
4. Transfert the following files
| SDCard | Files to copy |
|
Where ? datafs partition of the SDcard Path: /root/.urcontrol |
What?
Where ? In clients logs Path: /URControl/URControlConfiguration |
|
Where? datafs partition of the SDcard Path: /programs |
What ?
|
|
Where? datafs partition of the SDcard Path: /root/flightreports |
What ?
Where ? In clients logs Path: /Polyscope/Flightreports |
|
Where? datafs partition of the SDcard Path: /root |
What ?
Where ? In clients logs Path: /Polyscope |
|
Where? datafs partition of the SDcard Path: /root |
What ?
Where ? At the time of this article, ur-serial file is not backup in our logs however we have the folder in which are saved the logs is named with the robot serail number. Example: D:\logs\20185000447\20240410_181928 The robot serial number is 20185000447 Create a file named ur-serial and save the serial number inside it. |
The SD card is now ready to be used.
Create an image of the SDcard
We will make an image of the SD card that we just finalized. It will then be possible to send this image to the client so that he can replicate this SD card and plug it into his machine.
Open the disks application again and create a disk image. Save it in the shared folder.
Send the image to the client
You can now send the image to the client and ask to write the SDcard image on the SDcard using Rufus software : Link
Be aware that making a new SD card means that you are providing support for the robot. Usually, we do not support the robot, in most cases this is the job of the distributor or UR support team. However, it can be useful in cases where nobody is moving and you need to push things ahead.