@mdturnerphys Unfortunately no. But for example, you will need to create a Server channel on one side (A) select port different than 502 and map your variables to holding/input registers/coils so you can read and write to them from the other (B) side. You can map the variables to Units for example 0-10 (if you need more, just map it as you wish). On the other side just create a custom device on Modbus TCP channel (B), set the IP address and port of the (A). Then on (B) create a read group with starting register 0 and 10 number of registers and map the variables from (A) to data points (create datapoint by right click, assign read group...). Check F1 help of Mervis for 'Modbus' there is a nice explanation. You can also check eg. the Inepro example project from our downloads section.
Thanks for the reply. In short:
Modbus TCP - MQTT: I'll probably just start off simple, by polling the Modbus server and exposing any changes as MQTT events. That way, I can get some feel with the setup and I can dig deeper later on. It's nice to know I can come back here for some assistance :)
the LED strip: tried it the other day, and it just works; I hadn't taken the time before to properly connect them.
DALI: looking forward to hearing more about it; had already seen the thread / python-dali before. Just good to see I'm on the right track here :)