Socket communication error

[LanderKetelbuters]

Hello,

I'm trying to run the example project. I run this inside a Docker container with an Ubuntu 24.04 Image on Windows WSL. TwinCAT is also running on the same hostPc. I connect remotely to the PLC.
A followed the configuration steps, but there is something wrong when the ROS2 control want to setup a Socket communication (see figure 1). To be clear I launch the beckhoff_bot.launch.xml file. Is this the correct one?

Before I got the right configuration (to build up the socket communication), I needed to change this parameter from true to false (see figure 2). This is in the beckhoff_bot.launch.xml file. Changing this value will run the beckhoff_ads_hardware_interface/BeckhoffADSHardwareInterface plugin instead off the mock_components/GenericSystem plugin.
I don't know why this is set to standard, but it fixed that.

The values of the addresses in the URDF can be found in figure 3.

The AmsNetId and IP address of the PLC are the same (see figure 4).

And also the local AmsNetId is set to the same value as the URDF (see figure 5).

I run both programs (Twincat and the ROS2 control ads driver) on the same host pc. I can ping the PLC inside the Docker container and also in the CMD of the host PC.

I don't know at the moment what the problem could be.
Thanks in advance and every feedback could be helpful!

[Nibanovic]

Before I got the right configuration (to build up the socket communication), I needed to change this parameter from true to false (see figure 2). This is in the beckhoff_bot.launch.xml file. Changing this value will run the beckhoff_ads_hardware_interface/BeckhoffADSHardwareInterface plugin instead off the mock_components/GenericSystem plugin.

This was true by default. In latest, changed to false, so it starts the hw interface.

A followed the configuration steps, but there is something wrong when the ROS2 control want to setup a Socket communication (see figure 1). To be clear I launch the beckhoff_bot.launch.xml file. Is this the correct one?

This is the correct launch file. Looking at the logs, it seems you issue is in the underlying ADS library, which is where the logs come from. During instasntiation, the client cannot open a socket to connect to the server in TwinCAT runtime.

So, what could cause this?

What first comes to mind is that there a lot of layers of network isolation between host Windows, WSL, TwinCAT and Docker. Somewhere in that pipeline something is misconfigured and you cannot open a socket for comms. (but pings, which is ICMP protocol, not TCP, can pass through)
This is not specific to ros2 or this hardware interface, but is an issue of networking in your development setup.

I'd try something like this in the docker container, to see verbosely what is the issue when opening the socket.:

nc -zv <YOUR_CONFIGURED_PLC_IP_ADDRESS> 48898

48898 is default ip for TwinCAT TCP/IP connections. If you have some other, set it here
Then continue investigating from there.

In developing this, I configured it the other way around - it was ubuntu 24.04 with docker and Win11 in KVM/QEMU virtual machine, so I cannot help with you specific setup further.