# Modbus TCP Factory Interface

## Modbus TCP Data Blocks

The defined data blocks allow you to control where the vision system is reading and writing data to and from the PLC A Programmable Logic Controller is a ruggedized computer that you can use for automating processes or even an entire production line.. For easier application setup, the various control and status bits required for command functionality are grouped into contiguous blocks, which can be processed together.

Block | Byte | Bit 7 | Bit 6 | Bit 5 | Bit 4 | Bit 3 | Bit 2 | Bit 1 | Bit 0
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Vision Control | 0 | Set Offline | Reserved | Execute Command | Inspection Results Ack | Buffer Results Enable | Trigger | Trigger Enable
1 | Reserved
2 | Reserved | Clear Exposure Complete | Clear Error | Initiate String Command | Set User Data
3 | External Event 7 | External Event 6 | External Event 5 | External Event 4 | External Event 3 | External Event 2 | External Event 1 | External Event 0
Vision Status | 0 | Online | Offline Reason | AcqError | Reserved | Trigger Ack | Trigger Ready
1 | Error | Command Failed | Command Completed | Command Executing | Results Valid | Results Buffer Overrun | Inspection Completed | Reserved
2 | Reserved | SystemValidated | Job A job is a user-configured program in In-Sight EasyBuilder consisting of functions and designed for specific applications. You can create and edit jobs using the In-Sight EasyBuilder interface, and load them on a vision system for deployment in a live environment. Pass | Exposure Complete | String Command Error | String Command Ack | Set User Data Ack
3 | External Event Ack 7 | External Event Ack 6 | External Event Ack 5 | External Event Ack 4 | External Event Ack 3 | External Event Ack 2 | External Event Ack 1 | External Event Ack 0

Block | Word | Name
--- | --- | ---
Input | 0 | Command
1 - 2000 | User Data
Output | 0 | Current Job ID
1 | Error Code
2 | Command Result Code
3 | Acquisition Acquisition is the process or result of the vision system acquiring a new image. ID
4 | Inspection ID
5 | Inspection Result Code
6 - 2004 | Inspection Results
String Command | 0 | String Command Length
1 - 960 | String Command
String Command Result | 0 | Result Code
1 | String Command Result Length
2 - 961 | String Command Result

### Vision Control Block

#### Byte 0

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7 | Set Offline | When this bit is set, the In-Sight vision system is taken Offline until the bit is cleared again.
6-5 | Reserved | Unused.
4 | Execute Command | When set, the vision system either loads the job ID specified in the Command field or executes the Job Load by Name command to load the job name given in the User Data buffer. The signal must be held high until the Command Completed signal is toggled. The falling edge of this signal (if prior to Command Complete) is interpreted as an abort request.
3 | Inspection Results Ack | When the Buffer Results Enable bit is set, the Inspection Results Ack bit is set by the PLC to acknowledge that it has received the Inspection Count, Inspection Result Code and Inspection Results data. The next set of inspection results is then sent to the PLC. Clearing the Inspection Results Ack bit causes the vision system to set the Results Valid bit if the buffer is not empty.
2 | Buffer Results Enable | When this bit is set, the Inspection Count, Inspection Result Code and Inspection Results fields are held constant until they are acknowledged by setting the Inspection Results Ack bit. Up to eight inspections are held in the buffer of the In-Sight vision system. The vision system responds to the acknowledgment by clearing the Results Valid bit. Once the Inspection Results Ack bit is cleared and there is a new set of results sent to the PLC, the Results Valid bit is no longer cleared. If the Inspection Results Ack bit is cleared and there are no more results in the buffer of the vision system that are to be sent to the PLC, the Results Valid bit remains cleared.
1 | Trigger | Setting this bit triggers an acquisition when the following conditions are met: The In-Sight vision system is Online. The Trigger Enable bit is set. The Trigger parameter of the AcquireImage function Functions are tools that are available in Spreadsheet for processing and analyzing acquisitions or other results. You can add functions to your Spreadsheet job to create tool chains and produce results for specific applications. is set to External, Network or Industrial Ethernet. Note: Make sure to use the Factory Protocols type when the trigger is coming from a PLC.
0 | Trigger Enable | This field is set to enable triggering through the Trigger bit. Clear this bit to disable the network triggering mechanism.

#### Byte 1

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7-1 | Reserved | Unused.

#### Byte 2

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7-4 | Reserved | Unused.
3 | Clear Exposure Complete | While this signal is High, the Exposure Complete status remains reset. Once this signal is set to Low, the Exposure Complete status is set to High on the next exposure completion.
2 | Clear Error | When this bit is set, it clears the Error and Error Code signals. The Clear Error bit must be held high until the Error bit has been cleared. If an error has been queued, clearing this bit causes the Error and Error Code signals to be set to the next queued error code.
1 | Initiate String Command | When this bit is set, it reads the data from the String Command field and execute the string command. Upon reading the command, the String Cmd Ack bit is set. This bit needs to be held High until the vision system sets the String Cmd Ack bit to ensure that the vision system has received the command.
0 | Set User Data | This command is used by the PLC to indicate to the In-Sight vision system that it needs to transfer the User Data field into a holding buffer for consumption by the vision system.

#### Byte 3

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7 | External Event 7 | Allows Spreadsheet external events to be triggered. Setting any of these bits causes the associated external event in Spreadsheet to be triggered.
6 | External Event 6
5 | External Event 5
4 | External Event 4
3 | External Event 3
2 | External Event 2
1 | External Event 1
0 | External Event 0

### Vision Status Block

#### Byte 0

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7 | Online | This bit is set when the In-Sight vision system is Online, and cleared when the vision system is Offline. When the vision system is Offline, examine the Offline Reason field to determine the reason.
6-4 | Offline Reason | This field is a 3-bit field used to identify the cause of why an In-Sight vision system is Offline:
Offline Reason | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
0 | Online | The vision system is Online.
1 | Programming | The current job is being modified on the vision system.
2 | Discrete Offline | A discrete signal is holding the vision system Offline.
3 | Comm. Offline | A communications protocol is holding the vision system Offline.
Note: It is possible to have multiple devices holding the In-Sight vision system Offline. In this scenario, this field will return the channel with the lowest reason code.
3 | Acq Error | Set when an In-Sight vision system misses an acquisition trigger, regardless how the acquisition was triggered. Cleared when an acquisition is successfully triggered. Note: If the Trigger bit is set, but the vision system is offline, the Acq Error and Trigger Ack bits are both set.
2 | Reserved | Unused.
1 | Trigger Ack | Indicates when an In-Sight vision system has been triggered by the Trigger bit being set. This bit stays set until the Trigger bit is cleared. In addition, the Acquisition ID can be latched to the rising edge of this bit. Note: If the Trigger bit is set, but the vision system is offline, the Acq Error and Trigger Ack bits are both set.
0 | Trigger Ready | Indicates when an In-Sight vision system can accept a new trigger through the Trigger bit. This field is true when the vision system is Online, the Trigger Enable bit is set, the Trigger parameter of the AcquireImage function is set to Network, External or Industrial Ethernet, and the vision system is not currently acquiring an image. The Factory Protocols type must be used when the trigger is coming from a PLC.

#### Byte 1

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7 | Error | This bit is set when an error has occurred, which is defined in the Error Code field.
6 | Command Failed | This bit is set to 1 to indicate that Job Load has failed to run to completion. It is cleared when a new job is loaded by the PLC/HMI. If the job is changed through In-Sight EasyBuilder, this bit does not change. This bit is always set prior to setting the Command Completed bit.
5 | Command Completed | When a Command completes, the Command Executing bit goes low, and if the Execute Command bit is still high, the Command Completed bit is set. If the Command did not successfully complete, the Command Failed bit is also set.
4 | Command Executing | This bit is set to 1 when Job Load is started. The Command Completed and Command Failed bits will be set prior to the falling edge of this bit.
3 | Results Valid | Set when the Inspection Count, Inspection Result Code, Inspection Results and/or Job Pass bits are set. The bit is cleared when the Inspection Results Ack bit is set. Note: If job processing is enabled to occur in overlapped mode, either the Buffer Results Enable bit must be enabled/set, or the Inspection Completed bit must be used to latch the inspection results.
2 | Results Buffer Overrun | This field is set when the Buffer Results Enable bit is set and the In-Sight vision system has discarded a set of inspection results because the PLC has not acknowledged the results by setting the Inspection Results Ack bit. Up to eight inspections are held in the buffer of the vision system. Therefore, this bit is set when the ninth inspection is added to the buffer. The ninth inspection, and all subsequent inspections, are dropped until there is room in the buffer, when the results have been acknowledged out. The bit is not cleared until a valid inspection occurs and a previous inspection is not overwritten.
1 | Inspection Completed | This bit is toggled upon the completion of an inspection. It is guaranteed to be toggled after the Inspection Count, Inspection Result Code, Inspection Results and/or Job Pass bits are sent to the PLC.
0 | Reserved | Unused.

#### Byte 2

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7-6 | Reserved | Unused.
5 | SystemValidated | This bit indicates that the vision system is in a valid state.
4 | Job Pass | This bit is set if the most recent job passed as configured in the Job Pass/Fail Cell Setup dialog. This bit is cleared if the job did not pass. The behavior of the Job Pass bit depends on whether or not results buffering is disabled or enabled:
Buffering Is Disabled | Buffering Is Enabled
--- | ---
Set when an inspection is completed and the Job Pass/Fail cell indicates pass. Otherwise, it remains cleared. The Job Pass bit is valid prior to toggling the Inspection Completed bit. | Set when new results are placed in the InspectionResults attribute and the Job Pass/Fail cell indicated pass for that result set. Otherwise, it remains cleared. The state does not change until the results are acknowledged by setting the InspectionResultsAck attribute to True, at which time the bit is cleared. The Job Pass bit is valid prior to the Results Valid bit being set.
3 | Exposure Complete | This bit is set upon the completion of the In-Sight vision system exposure period, and is reset by the Clear Exposure Complete bit. This bit is held in a reset state if the Clear Exposure Complete signal is set to High.
2 | String Command Error | This bit indicates whether or not the result of the previous string command returned a failure code.
1 | String Command Ack | This bit is set when the vision system completes processing of a command and generates a response to the command. After the vision system has set this bit, the PLC can safely read the string command response data. The bit is reset after the PLC clears the Initiate String Command bit. The PLC must clear the Initiate String Command bit and wait for the String Command Ack bit to return to a Low state before initiating a new command.
0 | Set User Data Ack | This bit is set to acknowledge completion of the Set User Data command.

#### Byte 3

Bit | Name | Description
--- | --- | ---
7 | External Event Ack 7 | These bits are used to indicate that the External Event command was received.
6 | External Event Ack 6
5 | External Event Ack 5
4 | External Event Ack 4
3 | External Event Ack 3
2 | External Event Ack 2
1 | External Event Ack 1
0 | External Event Ack 0

### Output Block

#### Word 0

Name | Description
--- | ---
Current Job ID | A 16-bit integer that denotes the ID number of the currently running job on the vision system, or 65535 if the current job does not have an ID number. This field is updated when the job is changed on the vision system, regardless of method of job change.

#### Word 1

Name | Description
--- | ---
Error Code | A 16-bit numeric representation of the error that has occurred:
Word | ID code | Description
--- | --- | ---
0x0000 | No Error | No error occurred.
0x0100 | Trigger set while disabled | Occurs when the Trigger bit is set while the Trigger Enable bit is cleared and the Trigger parameter of the AcquireImage function is set to External, Network or Industrial Ethernet.
0x0101 | Trigger set while Offline | Occurs when the Trigger bit is set while the vision system is Offline.
0x0400 | Already Executing Error | Occurs when the Execute Command bit is set and the Executing bit is still High.
0x0401 | Job load requested while Online | Occurs when a Job Load command is issued while the vision system is Online.
0x0402 | Job load requested does not exist on the camera | Occurs when a JobID sent in the Command field does not exist as a prefix for any job in the camera file system. For example, if you send Command = 123, but there is no job on the camera which contains 123xxxxx.job.
0x0403 | JobValidation requested when Online | Occurs when ExecuteCommand bit is set while the vision system is online.
0x0404 | JobValidation not configured | Occurs when the ExecuteCommand bit is set high and the vision system does not have a valid Job Validation configuration.
0x0405 | JobValidation is already in progress | Occurs when the vision system is already running Job Validation when ExecuteCommand is set high.

#### Word 2

Name | Description
--- | ---
Command Result Code | This field is used to indicate the reason a command failed to execute successfully (the code is specific to the command executed): 0x0000 = Command succeeded / unknown failure 0x0002 = Bad command 0x208D = Request is incompatible with system state

#### Word 3

Name | Description
--- | ---
Acquisition ID | This ID increments at the beginning of an acquisition and when the Trigger Ack bit is set. This ID can be used to synchronize an acquisition with its Inspection Results.

#### Word 4

Name | Description
--- | ---
Inspection ID | The acquisition ID associated with this set of results.

#### Word 5

Name | Description
--- | ---
Inspection Result Code | The inspection result code is defined by the Result Code parameter of the WriteResultsBuffer function.

#### Word 6 - 2004

Name | Description
--- | ---
Inspection Results | Inspection result data written from the spreadsheet, using the WriteResultsBuffer function.

### Input Block

#### Word 0

Name | Description
--- | ---
Command | This field indicates the command that is executed on the rising edge of the Execute Command bit. This signal must not be changed until the Command Completed bit has been set. 0-0x0fff = Reserved 0x1000-0x1fff = Reserved 0x2002-0xFFFF = Reserved 0x4000 16384 = Load Job by Name 0x0-0x3E7 0-999 = Load Job by ID 0x1007 = Initiates Job Validation Sets Command Executing bit if initiation was successful or Command Failed if job has invalid Job Validation configuration. When Job Validation is completed, Command Completed bit is set and Command Result Code contains Job Validation Result status. SystemValidationFlag is updated with result of Job Validation run.

#### Word 1 - 2000

Name | Description
--- | ---
User Data | Data buffer which can be read into the spreadsheet using the ReadUserDataBuffer function.

### String Command Block

#### Word 0

Name | Description
--- | ---
String Command Length | The length of the Native Mode command. For more information, see Native Mode Commands.

#### Word 1 - 960

Name | Description
--- | ---
String Command | The Native Mode command to be processed by the vision system. For more information, see Native Mode Commands.

### String Command Result Block

#### Word 0

Name | Description
--- | ---
Result Code | The response code for the Native Mode command, which can be used to determine if the command was successful, or failed. Note: Each Native Mode command returns a 1 for a successful execution, while each command has specific error codes for cases of failure. Review the individual Native Mode command sections for more information about the failure codes. For more information, see Native Mode Commands.

#### Word 1

Name | Description
--- | ---
String Command Result Length | The length of the Response Data for the Native Mode command, in bytes.

#### Word 2 - 961

Name | Description
--- | ---
String Command Result | The result string of the Native Mode command, an ASCII string representation of the data returned by the command.

## Modbus TCP Address Map

Note:

- The Vision Control Block, Vision Status Block, Output Block and String Command Result Block are mapped to two separate locations. The reason for this double-mapping is that some PLCs can only access the Holding Register portion of the address space (for example, they only support function codes 3 and 16). The double-mapping allows those PLCs that can only access Holding Registers to successfully access all signals and data. However, PLCs that support the full function code set can access these blocks in their optimal address map locations. Please note that you can access either the optimal block location or the Holding Register location, but not both.
- Natively, the Modbus TCP protocol uses zero based offsets for addressing. The address map diagram below shows the block locations using zero based offset. If your PLC uses Schneider form addressing, simply add the zero based offsets shown in the address map to the base Schneider address. For example, to access the Input Block using Schneider form addressing, you must add the Input Block offset (2000) to the Schneider base address for Holding Registers (400000). Therefore, in Schneider form, the Input Block starts at 402000.

Modbus TCP supports four distinct address spaces. There are 2 bit address space and 2 word (16-bit) address spaces.

- Coil: Bit type address space. Output from PLC, input to vision system
- Discrete Input: Bit type address space. Input to PLC, output from vision system
- Holding Register: Word type address space. Both Input & Output from vision system
- Input Register: Word type address space. Input to PLC, output from vision system

Block Name | Address Space | Offset | Schneider Form Addressing | Quantity
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Vision Control | Coil | 0 | 000000 – 000031 | 1 – 32
Holding Register | 0 | 400000 – 400001 | 1 – 2
Vision Status | Discrete Input | 0 | 100000 – 100031 | 1 – 32
Holding Register | 100 | 400100 – 400101 | 1 – 2
Input | Holding Register | 2000 | 402000 – 404000 | 1 – 2001
Output | Holding Register | 7000 | 407000 – 409004 | 1 – 2005
Input Register | 2000 | 302000 – 304004 | 1 – 2005
String Command | Holding Register | 1000 | 401000 – 401999 | 1 – 1000
String Command Result | Input Register | 1000 | 301000 – 301999 | 1 – 1000
Holding Register | 6000 | 406000 – 406999 | 1 – 1000

Address (000000) Coil Read / Write (0x01 ,0x05, 0x0F) | Address (100000) Discrete Input Read (0x02) | Address (400000) Holding Read / Write (0x03 ,0x10) | Address (300000) Input Register Read (0x04)
--- | --- | --- | ---