Getting devices to talk to each other is half the battle in industrial automation. A PLC, HMI, drive, and sensor can all be perfectly functional in isolation — and still leave you with a system that doesn't work because the communication layer hasn't been set up correctly. We configure and troubleshoot the software side of Modbus, serial, and Ethernet-based industrial communication so everything on your network speaks the same language.
What We Offer
- Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP setup and troubleshooting — register mapping, addressing, polling configuration, and fault-finding across HMI, PLC, and peripheral devices
- RS232/RS485 serial communication configuration — baud rate, parity, stop bits, cable topology, and multi-drop network setup
- Ethernet/IP and EtherCAT basic configuration — device addressing, network parameter setup, and connection diagnostics
- Protocol bridging and gateway configuration — setting up converters and gateways to allow devices using different protocols to communicate with one another
- Communication diagnostics and fault-finding (software-side) — identifying mismatched settings, addressing conflicts, polling errors, and intermittent communication failures
Why Communication Configuration Matters
Industrial communication failures are one of the most frustrating and time-consuming problems in automation. The symptoms are often indirect — an HMI showing stale data, a drive that won't respond to commands, alarms that trigger without cause, or a system that works intermittently and fails under load. The root cause is almost always a misconfiguration that would be straightforward to fix once correctly identified.
Modbus in particular is deceptively simple in concept but demands precise alignment between devices. Slave addresses, register offsets, function codes, data types, byte order, and polling rates all have to be consistent end to end. A single digit out of place in a register address, or a mismatch between a 16-bit unsigned value on the PLC and a signed integer on the HMI, will produce results ranging from incorrect readings to complete communication failure — and standard diagnostic tools won't tell you which device is wrong.
Serial communication adds another layer: physical layer settings like baud rate, parity, and stop bits must match on every device on the network, and RS485 multi-drop networks have additional constraints around termination, biasing, and cable length that affect reliability at anything beyond trivial distances. We work through these systematically, from the physical layer up, rather than guessing at settings.
For Ethernet-based protocols, the challenges shift to network configuration — IP addressing, subnet masks, port conflicts, and the specific connection parameters each protocol requires. Where a gateway or protocol converter is involved, the configuration work doubles: both sides of the bridge need to be set up correctly and consistently, which requires a clear picture of what each device expects to send and receive.