What is Modbus and How Can You Benefit From it

If you’re looking for an easy to use, open serial communication protocol to implement with your electronic industrial devices, then you must have stumbled upon Modbus, at least once or twice.

Curious about what it is and how you and/or your company can benefit from it? Many companies and developers have grown to love this open serial communication protocol, and use it extensively in programming the electronic industrial devices they work on.

Let’s take a look at what Modbus is, and how you can benefit from it.

What exactly is Modbus?

Modbus was developed in 1979 by Modicon, the company behind the first programmable logic controller. In tech terms, it is a serial communication protocol.

In other words, Modbus is a way for electronic industrial devices communicate with each other. It allows information to be transmitted over serial lines between electronic devices. Devices can request information, as well as supply it.

Devices that request information using Modbus are called Modbus Masters, while those that supply information using Modbus are called Modbus Slaves. Modbus Masters can even write information to the Modbus Slaves.

It should be noted that there can only be one Master per Modbus network, but there can be up to 247 Slaves. Each Slave has their own unique address.

How much does Modbus cost and how is it used?

When Modbus was created, it was released to the public, making it an open protocol. This means that companies and developers are allowed to implement it within their networks and build into their equipment without paying royalties.

This fact has made Modbus the most commonly used way electronic industrial devices are connected. Regardless of the industry, your organization is in, Modbus can be used to help automate network communication.

There are also various versions available of Modbus that are used to address specific needs an organization. For example, Modbus TCP is used for Ethernet, and Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII for serial lines.

How can Modbus help my company?

Modbus is great for any company within the manufacturing industry – regardless of what you manufacture. Your organization can benefit from Modbus, because it allows quick and efficient communication between devices in a network.

A scenario in which Modbus could be used is in transmitting signals from instruments and/or control devices and sending them back to a main control device.

A practical application of this would be an electronic industrial system that measures air pressure and transmits them back to a computer for analysis. Another way that it can be used is connecting a supervisory system to remote terminal units in a supervisory control and data acquisition system.

If your company has a real need for data collection and transmission to a main computer, or if it actively uses a supervisory control and data acquisition system then Modbus is definitely a serial transmission protocol worth exploring.

Those two scenarios are just a fraction of the possibilities that exist when Modbus is used in your company’s network. With Modbus, the possibilities for innovation and simplification are endless.