Modbus Protocol

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The Barracuda App Server's Modbus TCP client is an Ethernet implementation of the widely supported, widely used Modbus protocol. The Modbus client has specifically been designed to enable bridging of Modbus products to modern IoT devices, HTML5 powered HMIs, and for securely connecting Modbus products to the Internet and to Cloud server providers. In addition, the Modbus client enables application developers to design control logic in the easy-to-learn Lua language. Application developers can now easily design code to control any number of Modbus-enabled products.

Adding Security to Modbus

The Barracuda App Server provides a wealth of ready-to-use secure network protocols such as OPC-UA, HTTPS/REST, MQTT, and WebSockets. These modern and secure protocols enable Modbus powered devices to be securely connected to the Cloud and Web.

Bridge Modbus and OPC-UA with our embedded OPC UA stack.

Supported Embedded Operating Systems and Platforms

The Modbus stack is available for all platforms supported by the Barracuda App Server, including: INTEGRITY, VxWorks, Azure RTOS, RTXC Quadros, QNX, Embedded Linux, Windows CE, embOS, SMX, MQX, and FreeRTOS.

Why Modbus and Lua

Modbus is one of the great grandfathers of industrial automation and still a very popular protocol after all of these years. Modbus' popularity is due to its simplicity, fast learning curve, and ease of integration.

Lua is a high-level language easy to learn, use, and embed into applications. Lua is fast, powerful, portable, embeddable, and a beginner-friendly coding language. Application developers can now easily design code to control any number of Modbus-enabled products in a high-level language that is faster and easier to learn than Structured Text (ST). Many other frameworks also include Lua. For example, Roblox promotes the user-friendliness of Lua as a first language for children. If a child can learn Lua, so can you.

New to Lua?

Get a quick introduction to Lua by following our Online Interactive Lua Tutorials

For more information on our Barracuda App Server's Modbus client, see the Lua Modbus documentation. If you are new to the Lua language and wonder why we provide a Lua Modbus stack with a Lua API, check out the article Lua Fast-Tracks Web Application Development or check out our online interactive Lua tutorial.

In addition, make sure to check out the ready-to-run Mako Server with included Modbus stack.

Industrial Edge-Controller

See the Industrial Edge-Controller page for more information on how the Barracuda Application Server can turn virtually any type of hardware into an advanced Edge Controller and/or IoT Gateway.

The World's Smallest Modbus Gateway

The ESP32 is a complete system on a chip that can be purchased in bulk for $3 apiece. Our easy-to-program Modbus protocol stack runs on the ESP32, and you can easily design an Ethernet to Wi-Fi bridge using this chip. The insecure Modbus protocol connects directly to the Ethernet on the ESP32 as the only connected device, thus creating a secure, physically closed connection. The Modbus protocol can then be bridged over Wi-Fi using any secure protocol, such as MQTT, HTTPS, etc. See our ESP32 port for details.