Handling of IEC 61131-3 data type BYTE

[jmbsps]

Hello,

thanks for providing modbus4j as free software.
Recently I started using modbus4j in a little project feeding some data from our house into rrdtool for long term visualisation.

I was wondering how to handle the IEC 61131-3 data type BYTE which is defined as an 8-bit bit string.
There is no 8-bit data type in modbus4j.

I know that Modbus only defines single bit or register (16-bit) operations. On the slave I can define 8-bit BYTE values and it would be great if there would be a convenience method retrieving it.

Something like the convenience methods for retrieving bit values.

batchRead.addLocator("FirstByteValue", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 256, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 0); //retrieves first byte from register 256
batchRead.addLocator("SecondByteValue", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 256, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 1); //retrieves second byte from register 256

I planned on hacking this into my own modified version of modbus4j.
My plan is to define this as java primitive short since BYTE in IEC 61131-3 is unsigned and there is no unsigned 8-bit value in java.

Is this something of general interest? Since modbus4j is free software I'd like to offer my modifications back to the project.

Regards
jmbsps

[jmbsps]

Hello,

so far getting byte values is working but I'd like some opinions on the byte order.

Should byte 0 be the LSB or MSB?

Modbus being big-endian the first byte in the register (register is a 16-bit word) is the MSB. The second is the LSB.
But in my PLC when I configure the variables the first byte value at a given address is the LSB, the second the MSB.

To summarize:

PLC configuration
BYTE first AT %QB616
BYTE second AT %QB617

MODBUS register 308 (word value)
second | first

modbus4j
should this be
batchRead.addLocator("second", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 308, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 0);
batchRead.addLocator("first", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 308, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 1);
or
batchRead.addLocator("first", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 308, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 0);
batchRead.addLocator("second", slaveId, RegisterRange.INPUT_REGISTER, 308, DataType.BYTE, (byte) 1);

I would prefer the latter.

Regards
jmbsps