Setting up the bridge

For live two-way control, digital twin, Live Send / Live Jog, drag-teach, record & playback, Egret talks to your robot through a small helper called the bridge. The good news: you don't install or start it yourself. It ships with the plugin as egret-bridge.exe and the Connect component launches it for you.

Do you even need it? Only for live control. If you're just simulating or generating code to run yourself, skip this whole page, no bridge needed.

Why a bridge?

Egret is a Grasshopper (C#) plugin, but uFactory's robot SDK is Python-only. Rather than reimplement the SDK in C# and chase every firmware change, Egret hands robot communication to a tiny bundled daemon. Grasshopper talks to the bridge over a local socket; the bridge talks to the robot via the xArm SDK. It's frozen into a self-contained egret-bridge.exe, so there's nothing to install.

Step 1, Find your robot's IP

Open uFactory Studio (or the controller's screen), the robot's IP is on the connection/status page (something like 192.168.1.159). Make sure your PC is on the same network as the robot.

Step 2, Drop Connect and Enable it

Drop a Connect component (→ Live).
Leave Host at 127.0.0.1 and Port at 65432.
Set Robot IP to your arm's address from Step 1.
Leave Auto-start on and Allow Motion off.
Wire a Boolean Toggle into Enable; set true.

Connect launches the bridge automatically in read-only (safe) mode and connects, no terminal, no Python. Drop Test Bridge, wire the Connection in, toggle its Tick, read the Panel, a ping reply means you're live.

Now Live State (digital twin) works: wire it + a GH Timer into Stage and watch the real arm mirror in Rhino.

Step 3, Enable motion (when you're ready)

Safety. Past this point the arm can move. Area clear, e-stop in hand, low speed for the first moves.

Flip Connect's Allow Motion to true. Egret restarts the bridge motion-enabled for you (give it a couple seconds to reconnect).
Drop Enable, wire the Connection, trigger it, the arm arms (motors on, position mode).
Home, Live Send, and Live Jog now move the real arm.

Troubleshooting

"connect timed out", leave Host at 127.0.0.1 / Port 65432, confirm Auto-start is on and Robot IP is set, then toggle Enable. A firewall blocking 65432 on localhost can also cause this.
Bridge exits right after starting, usually a wrong Robot IP, or the robot is powered down / on a different subnet than your PC. Double-check the IP in uFactory Studio.
Commands succeed but the arm doesn't move, Allow Motion is still off (bridge is read-only); OR the arm is in manual mode (mode 2); OR uFactory Studio is still connected and holding the mode. Close Studio and re-Enable.