rs-modbus

A pure Rust implementation of MODBUS protocol.

Introduction

rs-modbus is designed as a layered architecture, including the physical layer and the application layer:

Physical layer implements Serial Port, TCP/IP and UDP/IP.
Application layer implements RTU, ASCII and TCP.

rs-modbus provide both client and server.

Features

Full Modbus standard protocol implementation
Support for custom function codes
Support broadcasting
Very lightweight project
Full async/await support via tokio

Supported function codes

Code	Name
01	Read Coils
02	Read Discrete Inputs
03	Read Holding Registers
04	Read Input Registers
05	Write Single Coil
06	Write Single Register
15	Write Multiple Coils
16	Write Multiple Registers
17	Report Server ID
22	Mask Write Register
23	Read/Write Multiple Registers
43/14	Read Device Identification

Supported protocols

Modbus RTU
Modbus ASCII
Modbus TCP/IP
Modbus UDP/IP
Modbus RTU/ASCII Over TCP/IP
Modbus RTU/ASCII Over UDP/IP

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
rs-modbus = "2.0"

For serial port support, enable the serial feature:

[dependencies]
rs-modbus = { version = "2.0", features = ["serial"] }

Examples

Modbus TCP Master

use rs_modbus::layers::application::TcpApplicationLayer;
use rs_modbus::layers::physical::TcpClientPhysicalLayer;
use rs_modbus::master::{ModbusMaster, ModbusMasterOptions};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let physical = TcpClientPhysicalLayer::new();
    let application = TcpApplicationLayer::new(physical.clone());
    let master = ModbusMaster::new(
        application,
        physical,
        ModbusMasterOptions {
            timeout_ms: 5000,
            concurrent: false,
        },
    );

    master.open(None).await?;
    let res = master.read_holding_registers(1, 0, 10, None).await?;
    println!("{:?}", res.map(|r| r.data));
    master.destroy().await;

    Ok(())
}

Modbus TCP Slave

use rs_modbus::layers::application::TcpApplicationLayer;
use rs_modbus::layers::physical::TcpServerPhysicalLayer;
use rs_modbus::slave::{ModbusSlave, ModbusSlaveModel};
use rs_modbus::types::AddressRange;
use async_trait::async_trait;
use std::sync::Arc;

struct SimpleModel;

#[async_trait]
impl ModbusSlaveModel for SimpleModel {
    fn unit(&self) -> u8 { 1 }
    fn address_range(&self) -> AddressRange {
        AddressRange::default()
    }
    async fn read_holding_registers(
        &self, _address: u16, length: u16,
    ) -> Result<Vec<u16>, rs_modbus::error::ModbusError> {
        Ok(vec![0; length as usize])
    }
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let physical = TcpServerPhysicalLayer::new();
    let application = TcpApplicationLayer::new(physical.clone());
    let slave = ModbusSlave::new(application, physical);

    slave.add(Box::new(SimpleModel));
    slave.open(None).await?;

    Ok(())
}

Broadcasts (unit = 0)

Slaves never respond to broadcast requests, so the master's write methods with unit = 0 return as soon as the bytes are flushed to the wire.

If you broadcast over serial (RTU or ASCII), per Modbus over Serial Line V1.02 §2.4.1 you must wait a turnaround delay before sending the next request — slow slaves need time to apply the broadcast write that produced no response. The library does not insert this delay automatically because the right value is workload-specific (fast sensors vs. PLCs writing to flash differ by orders of magnitude). Insert it yourself at the call site:

master.write_single_register(0, 0, 0x1234, None).await?; // broadcast
sleep(Duration::from_millis(100)).await;                   // turnaround — tune per devices
master.write_single_register(1, 0, 0x5678, None).await?; // unicast to next slave

A safe lower bound is the RTU t3.5 inter-frame silence (e.g. ~4 ms at 9600 baud, ~1.75 ms above 19200 baud). Many real-world PLCs need 50–100 ms after a broadcast write. Modbus TCP/UDP do not require this delay (TCP gives synchronous acks; broadcasting on TCP is uncommon anyway).

Related Projects

njs-modbus — The Node.js/TypeScript reference implementation that rs-modbus mirrors in layer architecture and protocol semantics.

rs-modbus 2.0.0