OPC UA to Modbus RTU QuickServer Gateway

• Modbus Application Protocol Specification V1.1a
• Modbus Messaging Implementation Guide V1.0a
• Modbus Messaging Implementation Guide V1.0b
• Modbus Serial Line Implementation Guide V1.0
• Modicon Modbus Protocol Reference Guide PI–MBUS–300 Rev. J (Modbus 300)

Reading Vendor Modbus Maps

If you are reading the documentation for sensor blocks, valves, and other devices, you must keep in mind that some vendors may document their hardware in different ways.

According to the Modbus standard, addresses are simply integers from 0 to 65,535 with the different address ranges being referred to as coils, holding registers, etc. However, some vendors will document their hardware using numerical prefixes which are not actually part of the Modbus address. This originated from some models of PLCs which used the Modbus communications protocol, and which also used numerical prefixes in their internal data table. This is similar to using “I”, “Q”, “V”, etc. as address prefixes in IEC type PLCs.

However, it is important to remember that these numerical prefixes are documentation methods and are not part of what the Modbus protocol itself sends as part of the messages. A difference in documentation methods does not affect the compatibility of the protocol itself.

These prefixes are they mentioned anywhere in the Modbus standard, but the following shows how they are typically used in documentation based on this older convention:

• 0xxxx – Coils.
• 1xxxx – Discrete inputs.
• 3xxxx – Input registers.
• 4xxxx – Holding registers.

Note that there is no 2xxxx address prefix.

In addition to numerical prefixes, some documentation will refer to protocol addresses (addresses start at 0), while other documentation will refer to data model addresses (addresses start at 1). That is, the first holding register may be 0 or 1 (or 40000 versus 40001 using prefixes). However, this has no bearing on what gets sent over the wire as a Modbus message. For a Modbus protocol message, the lowest address is always “0”, not “1”.

Scaling in Modbus

Modbus does not provide a method for transporting large or Floating Point numbers or a mechanism for scaling analog values. A 16 bit word can only contain values in the range 0-65535. Only whole numbers are permitted. To work around this many server device manufacturers use multipliers and document them in their manuals. For example, to report a temperature of 58.5 the device reports a value of 585, and makes a note in the manual that the master should scale by 10. This scaling is achieved by adopting a convention between the client and the server.
What about large numbers > 65535
Modbus does not provide a mechanism but 3 important schemes are widely used.

Long Integers – Two consecutive 16 bit words are interpreted as a 32 bit long integer.

MK10 values – Two consecutive words are used. The 1st reports the number of units and the 2nd reports the number of 10,000’s.

Floating Point Numbers – Two consecutive words are used and a scheme. These schemes are conventions and not all servers or clients support them.

The protocol does not identify these big numbers. Only the vendor docs do.
What we mean by this is – if you look at the byte stream in a Modbus message there is no way of telling whether you are looking at two consecutive 16 bit words, or two consecutive words that should be interpreted as floating point, long or MK10 formats. Because of this you always have to look to the vendor docs.

Port Expansion

FieldServer can easily be configured to allows a Modbus RTU client to talk to a ModbusTCP server and vice versa. You do not need to tell the FIeldServer which registers to map from one to the other. You simply configure the FieldServer telling it which port and protocol to use for each node.

In port expansion mode configuration can be moinimal. Tell the gateway which nodes are on which port and set the port settings.

Scaling / Bit Packing

FieldServers can scale data and manipulate values using some binary logic and arithmetic functions. Scaling can be applied to each block of Modbus Data read / served.

• Move to change type : Convert from any FIeldServer Data Type to any other.
• Move to pack/unpack bits and bytes: It’s possible to address each bit in a 8,16 or 32 bit data element by using the packed data types.
• Move to change byte/word order: Handle the endianess of the remote system easily.
• Convert to/from Float, MK10, IEE754, 32 bit, 16 bit, 8 bit numbers
• Move conditionally:
• Perform Arithmetic Operation: + – * div sqrt, sqr ,
• Perform Binary Logic Operation: And, Or, Not, >, >= , <, <=

Most functions can be configured to occur on a configurable period or on update of the data source.

Supported Data Types

Bit

Byte

16 Bit Integer Signed

16 Bit Integer Unsigned

32 Bit Integer Signed

32 Bit Integer Unsugned

32 Bit Packed Bit

8 Bit Packed Bit

4 byte FLoating Point Numbers

Supported Modbus Functions

01 Read Discrete Output Status (0xxxx)
02 Read Discrete Input Status (1xxxx)
03 Read Output Registers (4xxxx)
04 Read Input Registers (3xxxx)
05 Force Single Coil (0xxxx)
06 Preset Single Register (4xxxx)
15 Force Multiple Coils (0xxxx)
16 Preset Multiple Registers (4xxxx)

Flavors of Modbus

RTU:

Common
Binary Protocol.
Active Master-passive Slave
Serial
Supported by FieldServers, QuickServers, CAS gateways

ASCII:

Similar to ModbusRTU but for each byte in an RTU message, there are 2 bytes in an ASCII message. The 2 bytes are the humand readable form of the single hex byte.
Eg RTU byte = 0x03 (Hex). ASCII bytes = ‘0’ and ‘3’ ie 0x30 and 0x33
Active Master-passive Slave
Serial
Supported by FieldServers, QuickServers

Jbus:

Modbus had the limitation of a max of 9999 items of each type. Ie only 9999 holding registers. However the protocol message allows 65k items to be addressed. JBUS allows all 65k items to be read/written. Other than that it is identical to RTU
Active Master-passive Slave
Serial
Supported by FieldServers, QuickServers, CAS gateways

TCP/IP:

Uses TCP/IP connection based Ethernet communications
Encapsulates RTU messages and adds a header.
A single slave can respond to multiple masters
Many slaves ignore the NodeID field in the message.
Supported by FieldServers, QuickServers, CAS gateways

MB Plus:

Proprietary coax networking layer
2 Mbits/sec
Supported by FieldServers, CAS gateways