Hi! My smart thermostat only talks Modbus RTU through a physical serial port, and I can’t change that. I recently moved a few sensors to a detached garage, and they’re still wired for RTU. The Modbus hub is already deeply integrated with a bunch of existing automations and dashboards under its current serial setup, so I’d really rather not touch it and risk breaking anything downstream. Is there a way to bridge the sensors over Ethernet without changing the Home Assistant Modbus config at all? I’m thinking something like a serial to Ethernet gateway pair that makes the remote RTU devices look like a local COM port.
Has anyone done this with in practice? What worked well for you?
That sounds quite do-able. It’s been a long time (around the turn of the century :), but I remember using serial-to/from-Ethernet gateway devices to extend COM ports with great success, some even being multi-port / multi-channel. We were mostly doing that across WAN links, for sites many miles apart. Sorry I don’t remember any specific models or such (“Black Box” was a common brand back then). But wanted to let you know that approach does indeed work.