HEXAGON Absolute Arm Feature Packs or Control Packs

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• See also RDS Versions for ROMER Scanners
• See also VTube-LASER ROMER RDS Performance Recommendations

Control Pack Cabling Between Arms and Computers

NEWER ARMS: Two Cables Per Arm

The newer ROMER scanners communicate with the computer using: A TCP/IP connection using an Ethernet cable is used to give feedback from the SCANNER. A power cable You will need one open Ethernet port and one open USB port for the ROMER arm connection.

OLDER ARMS: Three Cables Per Arm

The older ROMER scanners communicate using: A TCP/IP connection using an Ethernet cable is used to give feedback from the SCANNER. A USB cable connection is used to send the ball probe position. A power cable You will need one open Ethernet port and one open USB port for the ROMER arm connection.

About Feature Packs (older arms) or Control Packs (newer arms)

7-Series Arm Feature Pack This is the ROMER Scanning Pack that is attached to the back base of the 7-series arms. It includes ports for power, USB, and Ethernet. If you are using a laser scanner, then the Ethernet cable must be connected and setup with the proper IP address.
Original 8-Series Arm Control Pack This is the HEXAGON Absolute Arm Control Pack that is attached to the back base of the 8-series arms when the 8-series was originally released. It includes ports for power, USB, and Ethernet. If you are using a laser scanner, then the Ethernet cable must be connected. These control packs will automatically serve an IP address to your computer.
2021 (Newer) CP-Series Arm Control Pack This is the HEXAGON Absolute Arm Control Pack that is attached to the back base of the newer 8-series arms. This pack is highly recommended for its simplicity compared to older packs. It includes two ports. One is for power and the other is Ethernet. (There is no more USB port.) This was probably a customer-requested improvement because the competing FARO models only required a single USB cable. HEXAGON recommends that it be connected through the included DEXLAN USB to Ethernet adapter - which seems to work great on our demo arms. So, to the best our knowledge, this is the only scan arm that uses an Ethernet cable to communicate both probe and scanner data to the computer (as of October 2022). These control packs automatically serve an IP address to your computer. The CP-C are cabled control packs. The CP-W are wireless control packs. The CP in the picture is a CP-C.

Older Feature Packs Require that the IP Address Be Manually Fixed in the VTube-LASER Computer

The newer HEXAGON Absolute Arm control packs can automatically serve an IP address to the computer using DHCP. With RDS version 4, we experienced some cases where the DHCP service from RDS to the arm stops all internet browsing through other NIC ports. The way to overcome this is to discover what IP address the ROMER arm prefers for the computer, then FIX the IP to that address. On our test computers the ROMER-preferred address is 19.168.178.11. RDS versions 5 and 6 do not need the IP v4 address to be set. Leave it blank in the Network adapter setup. For customers with active Software Maintenance Plans, if you need help with this, then please contact us and we will be happy to help you set this up.

Other Pages

• Back to VTube-LASER
• See also RDS Versions for ROMER Scanners
• See also VTube-LASER ROMER RDS Performance Recommendations