Modbus is an industrial protocol standard that has been in use for many years. Modbus ASCII and Modbus RTU are relatively simple serial protocols that use EIA-232 or EIA-485 to transmit data packets. The protocol defines function codes and the encoding scheme for transferring data as either single points (1-bit, coils) or as 16-bit data registers. This basic data packet is then encapsulated according to the protocol specifications for Modbus ASCII, RTU, or TCP.

Modbus protocol is defined as a master/slave protocol, meaning a device operating as a master will poll one or more devices operating as a slave. This means a slave device cannot volunteer information; it must wait to be asked for it. The master will write data to a slave device’s registers, and read data from a slave device’s registers. A register address or register reference is always in the context of the slave’s registers.