What the 1015 alarm means

No KRL program is selected as the active program at startup or mode change, so START does nothing. This is a routine repair in our workshop for KUKA KRC2 / KRC4 / KRC5 (KSS) systems, and we normally pin it down during the first site check.

Most common causes

  • Controller rebooted without auto-selecting CELL.SRC
  • The selected program was deleted or its path changed
  • SPS auto-select logic disabled or failing
  • Corrupted user-group or selection settings
Field note: Begin with the first item in the list; it has a far higher on-machine occurrence rate than the others.

Step-by-step field fix

  1. Manually select the intended program on the SmartPad (Navigator → Program)
  2. Verify CELL.SRC exists and is the configured submit interpreter program
  3. Check the SPS auto-select logic if the cell relies on it
  4. Restart the controller and confirm the program is selected within seconds of boot
Safety first: For KUKA 1015, the risk on this family is not injury but data: lose the program, parameters and calibration data and weeks of teaching work start over. What you can check yourself first is Manually select the intended program on the SmartPad (Navigator → Program); program and calibration data handling is not a DIY job.

How we diagnose system alarms on site

KUKA 1015 belongs to the system & program family. On KUKA 1015 the failing stage is KSS (KUKA System Software) (KRC2 / KRC4 / KRC5) on the KRC2 / KRC4 / KRC5 - the software layer: corrupted program or parameter files, boot failures, version mismatch, memory and storage media. We start reading KUKA 1015 at the smartPAD message window (KSS message numbers: 1xxx operator, 2xxxx drive) with KPP/KSP module LEDs.

The chain involved in KUKA 1015 runs: storage media (CF / flash / disk) -> system software and firmware -> parameters and calibration data -> user programs -> runtime.

KUKA 1015 is a system-family alarm, and our iron rule is: On system alarms we have an iron rule: however urgent the customer is, we take a complete backup first - programs, parameters, calibration data, tool and work-object frames, all of it. The reason is arithmetic: losing the live state here usually means weeks of teaching done again, which costs far more than a few hours of downtime. Only after the backup do we decide restart, restore or reinstall. If the storage media is already throwing errors we pull the data read-only first.

Field notes on this page cover KUKA 1015 (No Program Selected); written by the Henghuan repair team, updated 2026-10-01.

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Related System & Program alarms

1004 — File System Error 1020 — Pending Message Not Acknowledged ($CONF_MESS) 1030 — External Start Missing ($EXT_START) 15102 — SmartPad (Teach Pendant) Fault
Same family: this code belongs to the System & program alarms family - the page collects all System & program-family codes we have handled, with the common inspection order and spares.
Other brands: we also keep field-fix libraries for ABB · Yaskawa · Universal Robots and more — see the complete alarm code hub.

Frequently asked questions

QWhat does the KUKA 1015 alarm mean?

No KRL program is selected as the active program at startup or mode change, so START does nothing. This is a routine repair in our workshop for KUKA KRC2 / KRC4 / KRC5 (KSS) systems, and we normally pin it down during the first site check. KUKA 1015 sits in the system & program family; on our work orders the highest-frequency trigger for this code is "Controller rebooted without auto-selecting CELL.SRC".

QCan I clear a KUKA 1015 alarm myself?

Whether KUKA 1015 clears on its own depends on the outcome of "Manually select the intended program on the SmartPad (Navigator → Program)". Finish the flow with "Restart the controller and confirm the program is selected within seconds of boot" to confirm KUKA 1015 - do not skip it. If that step is clean, the second most frequent cause on KUKA 1015 is "The selected program was deleted or its path changed". Two attempts and still there means stop: KUKA 1015 involves program and calibration data, and running KUKA 1015 on can turn a repairable fault into a replacement.

QWhen you handle KUKA 1015, will my programs and frames get lost?

The commonest causes we see on KUKA 1015 are "Controller rebooted without auto-selecting CELL.SRC, The selected program was deleted or its path changed, SPS auto-select logic disabled or failing", so we stock the van against those. For KUKA 1015 specifically, we carry recovery media and common storage media, but on this family the backup matters more than the spare. For KUKA 1015, on system alarms the first move is backup; we can walk the customer through preserving data remotely before anything else. Before we roll, tell us what KUKA 1015 shows on the smartPAD message window (KSS message numbers: 1xxx operator, 2xxxx drive) with KPP/KSP module LEDs and what the machine was doing - phone or video triage is free.

This page on KUKA 1015 is based on the field experience of the Henghuan Robotics repair team. Alarm explanations are our own summary for troubleshooting reference and may differ across controller and software versions — if unsure, verify against KUKA documentation or reach out to us. Henghuan is an independent service provider with no affiliation or endorsement by KUKA.