New Software- ModBus Probe and ModBusKit
Volitans Software has joined a partnership with R Engineering, Inc to create modbusApps. Here is our first press release:
modbusApps is proud to announce modbusProbe, an application for the Apple OS X operating system to poll modbus(R) enabled control system devices. The application can poll either serially via a USB adapter or directly via TCP. There are a number of excellent Windows based programs that provide connectivity to logic solvers, but to date little development has been done with the Apple OS X operating system.
The application includes the ability to poll all four types of registers and display the results in decimal, hexadecimal, binary, or integer format. A help file has been developed to provide a basic understanding of the modbus(R) protocol. Future enhancements include the ability to monitor the data stream to and from the polled device(s) as well as providing the user to write to the device.
In addition to this application, the Cocoa Framework will be offered under the GNU License as a freedownload to give other Mac programmers the basic tools to develop modbus(R) tools for the Apple OS X operating system. The framework modbusKit may also be downloaded from the modbusApps website.
Features
* TCP and serial protocol supported
* Reading of Coils, Discrete Inputs, Holding Registers, and Input Registers supported, writing coming soon
* Uses a connection list with name, type, and device ID (IP address or serial port) for maintaining connections
* Uses zero or one based addressing, with check box for toggling
* Displays data in integer, hexadecimal, decimal, with binary coming soon
* Displays number of polls and successful responses
* Displays register prefix (10000x etc)
* Displays Warning dialog box if it can’t connect to the modbus TCP server
* Checks for updates via Sparke Framework
* Basic application help book for the app and on modbus(R)
* This alpha release expires January 31st, 2008
Pricing and Availability:
modbusProbe is in Alpha release and is a free download. As the application matures, it will become shareware with an expected cost of approximately $100 (USD). Note that this Alpha release has a date stamp expiry.
