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 → a unique value that identifies the drive.
Firmware version → the firmware version installed on the drive (see Firmware update for details on how to manage firmware versions).
General/ Axis parameters → 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. The lists are divided into different sections based on the functionalities that each one implements:

Inside each section, you can find all the related registers. Writable registers are displayed in white (rather than being grayed-out) and can be manipulated directly in the drive explorer:

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 certain about the real-time values, make sure to check that register in the Displayor the Scope widgets.

Searching for a register

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 its name (as specified in the Summit register dictionary):

CiA-402 registers and indexes

The Drive explorer only shows OEM registers - you will not be able to find them based on their standard CiA-402 name or index.

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 first opening the Inspector (green square below) and then clicking the register that you want to check (blue rectangle below). This will update the Inspector's view with all the information related to that register (orange rectangle below):

Name → register name (as specified in the Summit register dictionary)
Id → Unique key to identify the register
Address → Hex address of the register
Type → numerical type (float or integer)
Value → the value the register currently holds
Max. Value → the maximum value the register can hold
Min. Value → the minimum value the register can hold
Access → Read Only (RO), Write Only (WO), or Read / Write (RW)
Units → the units of the register value
Representation → whether the value is displayed in decimal or hexadecimal

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.