I guess he might mean not working out how to encode EBCDIC into ASN.1 in order to issue command PDUs using modbus-over-IP, or something equally barking...

I can deal with it if it's only an issue of decoding a byte stream with a simple structure in software, though it would be annoying. But I don't want to get into dealing with some obscure industrial protocols that would require me to spend 3+ digit amounts on specifications, or proprietary clients / servers, or - heaven forbid - some industrial hardware for routing or ingesting data.

I don't have anything against those technologies per se - but I'm just a person doing this for a household, not a plant operator, so I don't want anything that's assuming it'll be a part of 5-digit procurement budgets and multi-person installation projects.

EDIT: I've heard of modbus, my impression is that it's accessible for a hobbyist to read/write/work with, so that by itself is not off the table. I suppose I could even deal with OPC UA (I worked with it professionally, and IIRC, there are some open source implementations for client/servers). I don't know much about other protocols used in the industry.

I knew modbus was going to be mentioned. As someone who has written low level modbus software, there's nothing wrong with modbus. The only people who complain about it are people who are bad at data marshaling.