Drive Explorer

The Drive Explorer is a widget that is used to show all the connected drives to your MotionLab3 GUI and gives you access to some important information:

• Serial number of the drive → for tracking and identification purposes
• Firmware version currently installed → you can use it to update or downgrade according to your needs (more on this here: Firmware update through FTP)
• Full list of all the register objects that the installed firmware version has in its dictionary. These are classified for each axis available with the tag "Axis (n) Parameters", and the shared register objects are listed in the "General Parameters".

Drive parameters

Here you can find all the registers classified by axis and shared registers that the dictionary of the firmware has. Each list is divided into different sections based on the functionalities that each one implements:

Inside each section, you can find all the related registers:

Drive explorer does not show real-time values of the registers

Be aware that the values that the Drive Explorer shows might not be the most updated ones. If you want to be sure and know the real-time values, make sure to check that register in the Display or the Scope widgets.

Searching methods

In order to make searching for registers easier, there is a search bar at the top of the Drive Explorer that allows to search registers based on 2 criteria:

• Register name (based on MCB proprietary protocol)

• Register key (based on MCB proprietary protocol)

CiA-402 registers and indexes

Since the Drive explorer only shows the MCB registers, do not search registers based on their standard CiA-402 name or index because you will not find them under "Drive Parameters".

Using the Drive Explorer with the Inspector widget

The Drive explorer can be used in combination with the Inspector widget in order to get a better understanding of the characteristics of each register that is included in the "Drive parameters" list. This is done by opening first the Inspector (green square below) and then clicking the register that you want to check (blue rectangle below) and this will update the Inspector's view with all the information related to that register (orange rectangle below):

• Owner
• Name
• Key
• Type
• Value
• Access
• Units
• Representation

Storing, saving and loading configuration files

You can also use the drive explorer combined with the inspector in order to be able to load/save/store/restore configuration files and firmware files on your drive. You can learn more about this here: Loading / Saving & Storing / Restoring configurations.