- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
Modbus is ubiquitous because the protocol is free to anyone who wants to implement it and there is no "governing body" to submit to for approval. Most other "fieldbus" protocols have standards and organizations that maintain them, so implementing requires submitting to those organizations for approval, then paying a licensing fee.
The downside to this is that sometimes the implementers do things that are not the same as how everyone else does it, meaning you can't take anything for granted. That has messed me up several times.
The downside to this is that sometimes the implementers do things that are not the same as how everyone else does it, meaning you can't take anything for granted. That has messed me up several times.