LaForge

Thank you borg! photron, while learning more about M-Bus I think that the quickest way for me to build something that works is to use an off-the-shelf Modbus to M-Bus interface, so I bought a Hiquel converter. It's based on a Texas Instrument MSP430F1611 mixed signal micro controller. By using a USB to RS485 interface I have already configured this converter to read values off my Kamstrup 401 meter and I can display them with the provided configuration software. Now I want to connect the converter to my existing Tinkerforge Modbus setup. I have been looking at your APIs, is there a way to issue Modbus commands (at application layer level) in order to read the registers of the converter or is Modbus communication achieved in the firmware of your master bricks?

Many thanks for your post photron, I will need to look into it in more details. Does the Voltage/Current Bricklet use I2C to communicate with a master brick?

With my setup I can read two temperature bricklets remotely connected over Modbus RTU using RS485 master extensions bricks and I would like to grab consumption readings off a Kamstrup m-bus meter installed at the same location. I was wondering whether the good chaps at Tinkerforge could give me any pointers on how to interface Modbus to m-bus. The m-bus serial protocol also uses master/slave architecture where the master communicates using voltage modulation and the slaves reply using current modulation. Could I perhaps use a Voltage/Current bricklet to achieve this?

I have downloaded the source code for the Brick Viewer software as I thought it would be a good starting point for me to create my own application. I am re-approcching Python after 9 years, so I'm a bit rusty. I'm using Eclipse with a Python plug-in as IDE but can anyone suggest if there's a better development environment I can use (free or commercial)? I would be interested to know what the clever chaps at Tinkerforge use themselves. Also, I can't find a project file in the downloaded Brick Viewer code, what's the procedure to view the application in its entirety with all its dependencies and perhaps compile it from scratch?