The README carried a fragment, which is enough to show the shape but not
enough to flash. These are complete configs:
wiredsensor.yaml one node, every measurement and diagnostic register
wiredsensor-node.yaml one node as a reusable package, parameterised by address
bus-of-nodes.yaml three nodes on one segment, via that package
All three validate against ESPHome 2026.7, and the expanded config was
checked register by register rather than only for schema validity — a
wrong address or value_type validates perfectly and then reports a
plausible but wrong temperature, which is the failure mode worth
guarding against.
Two things the fragment in the README was missing and a real config
cannot be:
flow_control_pin on the modbus component. Without it the ESP32 never
asserts DE, so nothing reaches the segment and the node looks dead. The
generated fragment now carries it too.
The read/holding split for diagnostics. ESPHome merges adjacent registers
of one register_type into a single command, and a read overlapping
0x0000..0x0004 is refused when the sensor has never produced a reading —
so diagnostics merged into the measurement command go unavailable exactly
when they are needed. Asking for them as `holding` puts them in their own
command.
Serials are text_sensors with raw_encode: HEXBYTES rather than numeric
sensors, because Home Assistant stores states as float32 and 24 bits of
mantissa cannot hold a 32-bit serial. Uptime has the same limit and is
left numeric with a note; quantising past 194 days does not matter for
spotting a reboot.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
ESPHome only has built-in support for Modbus RTU over RS485, so the
application layer moves to it. The transport already conformed: the CRC
was CRC-16/MODBUS, the line rate 19200 8N1, the delimiter a 3.5-character
idle gap pinned at 1750 us above 19200, and the address space 1..247 with
broadcast never answered. Only the bytes between the address and the CRC
change, and no external crate is needed for a read-only server.
frame.rs drops the explicit LEN byte, which RTU does not have — a
request's length is implied by its function code. The parser gets simpler
and MAX_FRAME grows to the RTU limit of 256. The CRC is now the only
integrity check there is, so a truncated frame fails it rather than a
length comparison; a test asserts every single-bit corruption is still
caught, and another pins our encoding against the published example
01 03 00 6B 00 03 74 17.
proto.rs becomes a Modbus server: function codes 0x03 and 0x04 over one
19-register table, 0x08 sub-function 0x0000 as the link test that
replaces PING, and the four standard exception codes. Registers are
big-endian with 32-bit values high word first, which is what masters and
ESPHome's S_DWORD assume. Snapshot::registers renders the whole map and
reads slice it, so a range read cannot disagree with a single-register
read of the same address — the alternative, assembling only the requested
registers per read, has no such guarantee.
Both read function codes serve the same table. That is not only for
masters that implement just 0x03: a read overlapping the measurement
block is refused with SERVER_DEVICE_FAILURE when the sensor has never
produced a reading, and ESPHome coalesces adjacent registers of one type
into a single command, so diagnostic entities merged into that command
would go unavailable along with the measurement they were meant to
explain. Requesting them under the other function code puts them in their
own command. The generated ESPHome config does this.
The firmware barely changes, because dispatch's signature does not: flags
widen to u16, buffers follow MAX_FRAME, and comments name registers
rather than commands. Now ~35 KiB flash and ~2.6 KiB RAM.
tools/wiredsensor.py is rewritten and grows from 15 checks to 21, adding
agreement between the two function codes, sub-range consistency, and a
per-code assertion for every exception. It stays a hand-written Modbus
implementation rather than moving to pymodbus: half these checks inject
deliberately malformed frames, and a conforming client library exists
precisely to make those unconstructable. It also keeps the wire format
independent of wiredsensor-core, so a shared bug cannot cancel itself
out.
Not yet exercised on hardware — the host tests and register-map
cross-checks pass, but the timing-dependent behaviour needs
`wiredsensor.py test` against a real bus.
This replaces the old protocol rather than joining it; command codes
0x01..0x04 are all valid Modbus function codes, so the two cannot share a
segment. PROTOCOL_VERSION is 2.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Makes end-to-end verification of the bus possible with a spare RP2040 and
no dedicated RS485 dongle.
bridge/ turns a second Pico into a transparent USB-to-RS485 bridge. It is
deliberately protocol-agnostic: bytes from USB go out on the pair, bytes
from the pair go back up USB, and it knows nothing about frames,
addresses or CRCs. A protocol-aware bridge could have a bug that happens
to agree with the node's own, which would defeat the point of using it as
a test instrument. It also needs no register-level code — it never has to
delimit a frame, and the one thing it does need, knowing that the final
stop bit has cleared the shifter before releasing DE, rp2040-hal exposes
as uart_is_busy().
tools/wiredsensor.py is an independent implementation of the wire format,
written from the specification in README.md rather than sharing code with
wiredsensor-core. Shared code would let a framing or CRC bug cancel out
and every test pass regardless. Cross-checked: it reproduces the
CRC-16/MODBUS catalogue vector and builds byte-identical frames to the
Rust side for all five documented examples.
Its `test` subcommand covers what host tests structurally cannot, all of
it timing-dependent: that malformed and mis-addressed frames leave the
node silent rather than colliding with whoever was actually addressed,
that the driver-enable turnaround leaves replies intact, and that no
state leaks between back-to-back frames.
Uses one wiring diagram for both boards, since the bridge mirrors the
node's GPIO0/1/2 assignment. Frames must fit one 64-byte USB packet, as
each host write becomes exactly one DE-bracketed transmission; every real
command is at most 21 bytes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver Walter