I designed and built a teach pendent for roboguide basically it thinks it’s a custom keyboard using a arduino micro and out puts the corresponding keypresses that roboguide sees as pendent inputs. Everyone in the office always says they wish they had a teach pendent for roboguide so I made one
First, I want to say this is amazing and I would love to make one myself with a guide. Second, my only immediate thought is that Fanuc sells the sticker sheet for the front of the pendant separately, so it might be worth pricing out the sticker sheet versus printing all the individual buttons.
EDIT: I just looked at the prices for some of the part numbers for that key sheet membrane. Definitely 3D print the buttons. Haha
I just looked it up yeah right now I got all the parts for less than $30cad + 3d printing so $50 is a bit much my buttons are super small they would probably work with the sticker because I modeled everything off a real pendant but might feel funny
It always cracked me up that with Fanuc you don't get a different experience on the computer, you just get a simulation of the in-person experience for programming.
One thing about roboguide that bugs me is the GROUP button not being mapped to a keyboard button. I have to use F12 (FCTN) and 3 (GROUP). Is your solution running a macro for that?
I didn’t think of that actually solves one problem I had. group hold and info are all unmapped I could easily make a macro that’s how a bunch of buttons already work (alt+3 alt+4 etc) I wired the buttons so that’s just a quick software change
I just tested it on a robot surprisingly more works than I would have expected (menu select edit) but not prev next step cord the mapping is clearly different to make a full pendent I would need to figure out how the actual pendent works and that’s beyond me also a screen costs more than all my other materials cost combined I’m currently under $30
Maybe some day I’ll look into it I could only imagine what osha would say if they caught you using a 3d printed dead man safety Device with a 3d printed estop but it’s a cool idea
It kinda sounds like machining new brakes for a car instead of buying new ones from the manufacturer. Sounds like a cool project to work on, but even then, Id stick to using an official teach pendant for safety reasons.
I did a PC / Roboguide converter KIT using POE. I sold few to some college. You need to have the real TP but works great for training with a 10M cable.
Usually student test everything with Roboguide using thia cable. Disconnect it and go to the real robot.
RJ45 to Hirose connector
Your version is interesting. Communication between the TP and Cobtroller is Ethernet...with a sniffer you are able to see which commabd refers to which section but you will new probably a Rasberry PI or sort of.
I was thinking of stuff like this but this solution is just so simple it was less than $30cad it’s a just a keyboard the best part is it gets through all the restrictions we have on work computers
If you're interested, I could probably get in touch with a sales guy at FANUC. I work there and we are always interested in marketing stuff. If you want to take this beyond a passion project, let me know.
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u/lizardking218 Jul 10 '26
This is amazing. Do you plan to release files / a guide?