node-red-contrib-serial-modbus

A node to read data via Modbus over RS485 serial.

Output or Input of type buffer.

If value is bigger than one register/coil it will continue to the next one

Install

npm install node-red-contrib-serial-modbus

Usage

Config node

Both the read and write nodes share a config node that holds the details of RS485 port used to connect to the bus.

• Device
• Speed
• Data bits
• Parity
• Stop Bits

Read node

The read node takes the following list of inputs

• A list of slaves to poll
• The offset to the first record
• The number of records to read
• The type of record (coil,register)
• A polling interval in seconds

Write node

The write node takes the following inputs

• Slave to send the data to, if the salve is not set then it can be taken from the topic. If the topic has '/' it will take the last element and try and parse a number to use as the slave
• The type of record to write
• The offset to write the data to

Formating data

Both the Read and the Write node work with Buffer objects, these represent the raw data being transfered. To turn this into real values there are a number of approaches that can be taken.

Buffer methods

The Buffer module has a selection of methods that lets you read/write Integer and Floating point values at different lengths and endian modes.

A full list of methods can be found here.

You can use these methods in a Function node to unpack a buffer after a read node or to build a buffer object before a write node.

Node-RED node-red-contrib-binary

The node-red-contrib-binary node allows will automatically convert a JSON object to a buffer and also parse buffers to JSON objects.

The node uses a pattern language to describe the layout of the buffer. Details of language are documented in the packet node