Sensor Electronics SEC 3000, Instruction And Operation Manual

Page: 362 / 489

SEC 3120 16-bit Modbus Manual Page 23 Of 46 Sensor Electronics Corporation
For Version 1.2 and above December 2012 P/N 1580282, Rev. 1, 20121228
Following the last transmitted character, a silent interval of at least 3.5 character
times marks the end of the message. A new message can begin after this interval.
The entire message frame must be transmitted as a continuous stream. If a silent
interval of more than 1.5 character times occurs before completion of the frame, the
receiving device flushes the incomplete message and assumes that the next byte will be
the address field of a new message.
Similarly, if a new message begins earlier than 3.5 character times following a
previous message, the receiving device will consider it a continuation of the previous
message. This will set an error, as the value in the final CRC field will not be valid for
the combined messages. A typical message is shown below:
Table 5: RTU Message Frame
Start Address Function Data CRC Check End
T1-T2-T3-T4 8 Bits 8 Bits n x Bits
(high byte
to low byte)
16 Bits
(low byte then
high byte) T1-T2-T3-T4
The address field of a message frame contains eight bits (RTU). Valid slave
devices are assigned addresses in the range of 1–247 (if only SEC 3120 devices are on
this bus slave addressed may go up to 254). A master addresses a slave by placing the
slave address in the address field of the message. When the slave sends its response, it
places its own address in the address field of the response to let the master know which
slave is responding.
Address 0 is used for the broadcast address, which all slave devices recognize.
The function code field of a message frame contains eight bits (RTU). For the
SEC 3120, valid codes are 1, 3, 5, 6, 15 and 16 (although holding register ranges are
currently only established for codes 3, 6, and 16).
When a message is sent from a master to a slave device, the function code field
tells the slave what kind of action to perform. When the slave responds to the master, it
uses the function code field to indicate either a normal (error-free) response or that some
kind of error occurred (called an exception response). For a normal response, the slave
simply echoes the original function code. For an exception response, the slave returns a
code that is equivalent to the original function code with its most significant bit set to
logic 1.
In addition to its modification of the function code for an exception response, the
slave places a unique code into the data field of the response message. This tells the
master what kind of error occurred or the reason for the exception.
The master device’s application program has the responsibility of handling
exception responses. Typical responses are to post subsequent retries of the message, to
try diagnostic messages to the slave and to notify operators.