What’s the difference between Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII?

  • In ASCII format, the messages are readable
  • In RTU, the messages are in binary coding and cannot be read while monitoring – The trade-off is that the RTU messages are a smaller size, which allows for more data exchange in the same time span
  • All nodes within one MODBUS network must be of the same transmission mode, meaning MODBUS ASCII cannot communicate with MODBUS RTU and vice versa

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