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Control panel

pydobotlab-panel is a desktop control panel for the Magician, built with PySide6. It shows the arm pose live while a script is running, and a script and the panel can control the same arm at the same time through the broker.

PySide6 is installed with the gui extra:

python -m pip install "pydobotlab[gui]"

Windows

Hub. Lists the arms found as Dobot Magician 1, Dobot Magician 2, and so on, numbered in the order they are found; an arm keeps its number while the panel runs. With --dev, each arm's port (COM3, /dev/ttyACM0) is shown after its name, in the hub and in its control panel. Only ports identified as a Dobot Magician (Discovery) are listed as arms; ports that answer otherwise are under Other devices (n), below a line, collapsed until clicked. When no arm is found, the hub says so and why, if known; the ports tried are listed only with --dev. A permission problem is explained in a box above the list. Refresh scans again. Open Control Panel opens a control panel for the selected arm.

The hub and each control panel show the pydobotlab version at the bottom right.

Control panel. One window per arm:

  • Pose readout: X, Y, Z, R and J1 to J4, refreshed at 30 Hz.
  • Jog pads for Cartesian and joint motion. Hold a segment to jog and release to stop. The pads work during an alarm; the arm refuses a jog it cannot make. A joint-limit alarm ends by itself when the joint is jogged back off the limit.
  • Speed slider: the arm's point-to-point and jog speed (motion_params, set_jog_common_params). The speed is stored in the arm, so scripts running on the same arm use it, and the slider follows changes made by scripts. Opening a panel keeps the arm's current speed.
  • JUMP parameters: lift height and Z limit.
  • Home and Clear Alarm buttons. Home works also during an alarm, as in DobotLab: the arm homes without an alarm message, and the alarms are cleared when homing ends. The controls are disabled until homing ends. If an alarm comes back after clearing, Clear Alarm shows the alarm and its remedy, and the alarm stays active.
  • End-effector controls for the suction cup and gripper. They act at once, also while a script moves the arm.
  • Connection indicator: checks the arm every 2 seconds and shows Disconnected, with a Reconnect button, after 3 consecutive failed checks.
  • Alarm banner: one short line per active alarm, saying what happened and what to do. With --dev, the banner and the alarm messages show the alarm names, codes, and remedies, and the raw alarm bytes.

Structure

                        ┌─────────────────┐
                        │   Hub window    │
                        └────────┬────────┘
                                 │ creates one window per arm
        ┌────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┐
        ▼                        ▼                        ▼
 ControlPanel(/dev/A)    ControlPanel(/dev/B)    ControlPanel(/dev/C)
        │                        │                        │
        └─── PoseStreamer ───────┼─── PoseStreamer ───────┘
                                 │
                                 ▼
                          DobotBroker (TCP 127.0.0.1:8765)
                                 │
                       per-port SerialTransport
                                 │
                              the arms

Each ControlPanel has its own Magician and its own PoseStreamer, a QThread that polls get_pose and emits Qt signals. All panels connect through the broker, so scripts can share each arm.

See Running the panel and The DobotBroker.