The protocols are fine
Modbus is forty years old and it still works. So does RS485. So does the basic shape of a poll-response register map. The protocols industrial engineers rely on every day are not the problem - they are stable, well understood, and predictable, which is exactly what you want from the layer your plant runs on.
The tools around those protocols are another story.
The tools around them are not
The small utilities every engineer reaches for - Modbus scanners, serial sniffers, register pokers - look and feel like they did fifteen years ago. Cramped dialogs, no keyboard support, no notion of a project file, output you cannot copy. They work, in the narrow sense that they technically function. They are also well below the standard of any other professional software an engineer touches in 2026.
We think that gap is worth closing. Not by reinventing Modbus - the protocol is fine - but by building the diagnostic tools around it to the standard the rest of our software stack hit a decade ago: fast, legible, scriptable, and honest about what is happening on the wire.
What we're doing about it
Coilware is built by working engineers, for working engineers. The first tool is a Modbus client - register tables, a frame inspector, a byte-order decoder, scripted polling - shipped as a single binary with no installer and no telemetry. It is the tool we wanted on the plant laptop and never had.
That is the whole thesis. If it resonates, the beta opens in June 2026 - and we would genuinely like to hear what you think.