Built for robots and factory floors

Robots, PLCs, and the Buses Between Them
In One Workspace

Your robot speaks SSH. Your PLC speaks Modbus. Your historian wants OPC UA and your sensors chatter over CAN. AidaIDE puts the whole conversation in one window — terminals, serial, file editing, Modbus tooling, and AI agents that have actually seen your logs.

Free forever · Pro (AI suite) from $19/mo · Windows · macOS · Linux
ROS / ROS 2 Modbus RTU / TCP OPC UA CAN bus EtherCAT · PROFINET MQTT RS-485 / Serial

Replaces the commissioning-day tab stack

If bringing up a robot cell means opening all of these, AidaIDE consolidates it.

PuTTY windows for every robot and gateway
WinSCP / FileZilla for config pushes
A standalone Modbus poll/scan utility
Tera Term / RealTerm on the RS-485 adapter
Four terminals of ros2 topic echo
A spreadsheet of robot and PLC IPs
ChatGPT in a browser tab
KeePass for cell-network passwords

Protocol Coverage

The languages of the plant floor and the robot lab — and how AidaIDE fits into each one.

ROS / ROS 2

Noetic, Humble, Jazzy

SSH into robots running ROS, push workspaces over SFTP, and keep ros2 topic echo, colcon build, and journalctl in side-by-side tabs. Fleet view for every robot on the cell network.

Modbus RTU & TCP

Built-in tooling

Poll holding registers, watch coils, and talk to drives and meters over Modbus TCP or RS-485 RTU — without leaving the workspace your SSH sessions live in. See the Modbus/OPC-UA over SSH tutorial.

OPC UA

Servers & gateways

SSH-tunnel to OPC UA servers on the OT network without opening plant firewall ports. Edit gateway bridge configs in place, restart services, and tail the server log from the same window.

CAN bus / CANopen

SocketCAN workflows

Run candump and cansend on your Linux gateway over SSH with timestamped, searchable logging. Bring up CAN interfaces, edit systemd-networkd configs, and script bus tests remotely.

EtherCAT & PROFINET

Realtime fieldbus cells

Manage the Linux controllers and couplers that run your realtime bus — deploy IgH EtherCAT master configs, check cycle diagnostics, and keep every cell controller in one credential-vaulted fleet.

MQTT & Sparkplug B

IIoT northbound

Run your broker on a gateway AidaIDE already manages. Tail Mosquitto logs, edit bridge configs over SFTP, and mosquitto_sub to spot-check topics — the northbound leg of your OT data, handled.

The Industrial Feature Stack

What you actually need when the "server room" is a robot cell or a factory floor.

Tabbed SSH + serial in one window

SSH on the robot controller in one tab, RS-485 serial on the drive in the next, SFTP browser beside both. Commissioning without the window shuffle.

Fleet manager for robot & cell networks

Group devices by cell, line, or site. Push the same script to "all AMRs" in one command. Uptime, IP, and last-seen across the fleet at a glance — no more IP spreadsheet.

Edit configs on the device, in place

Open a launch file, a Modbus gateway map, or daq_bridge.yaml on the device like a local file — syntax highlighted, saved back over SFTP, service restarted from the SSH tab.

OT-safe credential vault

Cell-network passwords and SSH keys encrypted under a master password instead of taped to the cabinet. The built-in scanner flags default-password devices and open ports on your fleet.

Timestamped session & serial logging

Every serial capture and terminal session can be logged with timestamps — the paper trail you want when a commissioning question turns into a warranty question.

Reach machines with no open ports

Plant firewalls don't take inbound SSH kindly. The Cloud Portal gives you outbound-only remote access to enrolled machines — no port forwarding, no VPN faff.

AI agents that read the bus, not just the question

"Why is node 12 dropping off the bus every 40 seconds?" The AI Agent Hierarchy sees your terminal output and configs for context. Ships in Pro ($19/mo) — pricing & access FAQ · product page.

One-click LCOT commands

The flags you re-google at 2 a.m. — candump filters, ros2 bag record incantations, systemctl dances — saved as one-click commands, shared across your sessions.

Built For These Workflows

The shapes of robotics and industrial work AidaIDE is tuned for.

Robot Cells

Cell commissioning & bring-up

New cell, day one: SSH to the robot controller, serial to the safety PLC gateway, Modbus poll on the VFD, notes in the log. One window instead of five tools and a clipboard.

AMR & Drone Fleets

Mobile robot fleet ops

Push ROS workspaces and maps to a fleet of AMRs, tail journalctl across robots in parallel, and jump onto whichever unit is misbehaving — over Wi-Fi or the Cloud Portal when it roams off-network.

PLC Gateways

PLC & drive-side debugging

The Linux box that bridges your PLCs to the world — Modbus maps, OPC UA bridges, protocol converters. Edit its configs in place, poll the registers it serves, and restart it without a site visit.

SCADA Retrofit

Brownfield OT modernization

Legacy equipment meets new gateways. RS-485 fallback for the old serial devices, SSH for the new edge boxes, credential hygiene for both — and a fleet-wide default-password scan before handover.

Edge AI

Jetson vision & inspection rigs

Inspection cameras on Jetsons at the end of the line. Push CUDA builds, watch tegrastats, manage the whole rig set as a fleet — the embedded hub covers the board-level detail.

Field Service

Support without the site visit

Machine down at a customer site? Outbound-only remote access to the enrolled cell PC, logs pulled, config fixed, service restarted — before the flight would have boarded.

A Typical Commissioning Session

Four tabs, one window, no context-switching.

1

SSH to the robot controller

Vault unlocks the key, session resumes where you left it. ros2 topic echo /joint_states in a side pane while you work.

2

Poll the drive over Modbus

Open the Modbus tool on the VFD's registers — confirm the speed reference the PLC is writing matches what the robot thinks it asked for. RTU over the RS-485 adapter or TCP to the gateway.

3

Fix the bridge config in place

The OPC UA bridge is publishing stale tags. Open its YAML on the gateway, fix the mapping, save — pushed back over SFTP — and systemctl restart from the SSH tab.

4

Ask the AI when something breaks

"CAN node 12 drops off the bus every 40 seconds — bus-off counter is climbing. What do I check?" The agent sees your candump output in context and points at termination, not platitudes.

Try It On Your Cell Network

AidaIDE is free — install it, point it at a robot or a gateway, see if it fits your workflow. Pro (the AI suite) is $19/mo whenever you want it.

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Guides: Modbus/OPC-UA over SSH · Pi SSH from Windows · Edit remote files · Cloud Portal (no open ports) · OTA updates