MODBUS Software

[SG-1]

Does anybody know if a software program for modbus exists that will allow the user to communicate with different brands of equipment.

Say I have GE, Square D, CH, etc...
must I have different software that is specific for each brand of equipment ?

[jim dungar]

Do you mean communicate as in in "talk" to and get information from, or are you looking to do programming.

MODBUS is simply a communications protocol. There are many software programs that will interrogate Modbus ports.

[SG-1]

Talk to & get information from.

[GeorgeB]

Originally Posted by SG-1

Talk to & get information from.

I believe that most MODBUS host applications will talk to slaves of any manufacturer who properly follows the implementation. Modicon used it (originally) for much of their serial (RS/EIA232, RS/EIA422/485) communications, in particular to operator interfaces and to host computers. There is a theoretical limit of 247 slaves per host.

Back in the late 80's, a friend wrote a Basic application as a host to read and write over Modbus. I misplaced it, darnit.

[jim dungar]

Modbus is probably the most widely used industrial communications protocol. Drivers are available form almost every data collection company.

If you want to write your own driver, go to the modus.org website.

[SG-1]

Thank you, Jim & George.

[petersonra]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Back in the late 80's, a friend wrote a Basic application as a host to read and write over Modbus.

I wrote a program in basic to interrogate Modicon PLCs as well. Back about 1992 or so. It ended up running on a number of machines. I only implemented Modbus ASCII though. RTU was more work than I wanted to do and ASCII has a huge advantage in that the packets are (guess what) ASCII. RTU uses binary packets, making it harder to test and debug.