Getting CellLog8 Data Out

I've been helping a contact with getting the CellLog8s to transmit data to a PC and thought that the info might be useful to anyone else trying to get the slightly quirky data transfer to the slightly quirky German LogView software to work.

First thing to note about the CellLog8s and PC connections is that the USB port on the logger is not isolated from the PC and is not isolated from the battery pack being monitored.

The CellLog8s should have opto-isolated data lines to USB.  But they also wanted to be able to power the thingy from USB so that means a connection to the PC...  The later product (PowerLog) comes with a cludge of a solution in that it has a USB cable with the power pins not connected!  Rubbish solution, as immediately you'll loose the original "isolated" cable and use a normal one and BOOM!

I know about the issue and have from my own experience blown up a hand-held oscilloscope by running it from the DC-DC converter on the solar system instead of the internal batteries only.

I get away with plugging the CellLog8s USB into my little laptop because I make damn sure that I only run the laptop on batteries and not plugged into ANYTHING else (even use wi-fi for network connection).  It's all good if the PC is running on internal power and is not connected to anything where the solar battery power can escape back to itself in a loop and... BOOM!

That's why all the data interfaces on the Morningstar charge controllers are opto-isolated.

Next is that you need to install the Junsi serial port driver that came with the device on a mini CD.  Do not just plug the CellLog8s into the PC as Windows 7 will find the device and install a built-in USB serial port driver that does not work.  Install the Junsi one first and then plug the device into the USB port and check that the Windows USB notification says it has found and successfully configured the Junsi driver.

Also note that you must be using a non-64 bit version of Windows.  Windows 7 comes in 32 and 64 bit flavours and the Junsi drivers do not work with 64 bit Windows.  This is not because they don't work but because Windows 7 64 bit enforces a "no install" security policy for unsigned 3rd party drivers.  The 32 bit editions do not enforce this.  They'll complain that the driver is unsigned but allow you to install it anyway.

I've managed to get the LogView thing to work without problem.  I don't log continuously but have managed to download the CellLog8 on-board log file with no trouble.  I'm using v2.7.3.481 (which came on the CD with the CellLog8).  You don't need to mess about with the device file.  Go to the Device> Choose Devices and Ports menu.  In there, use the drop down lists to choose Junsi and CellLog8.  It even shows a picture of the device when you select it.

Then all I did was tick the "Automatic start recording" option and select the COM port to talk to it over in the "RS232 Seriel" drop down list.  The CellLog8 driver you installed earlier (you did install the supplied driver, not rely on the Windows one?) will be listed as "Junsi something or other COM x".  You have to have the CellLog8 connected to the PC via the USB cable before starting LogView for it to find the Com port that gets discovered and enabled by Windows as soon as you plug the CellLog8 in.  If you don't plug the logger into the USB before starting LogView, it won't find the serial port.

The "Automatic start recording" option means that whenever you start LogView, it tries to connect to the port used last time for the CellLog8 and it opens the recorder session in LogView (ready to receive any data).  If CellLog8 is in logging mode it will transmit individual data every 2 seconds (or whatever you set in CellLog8).  If you are not logging, it will still open the channel but have nothing to receive.  When you then go to the logfiles menu on the CellLog8 and select "transmit", the file will be broadcast on the serial port and LogView will be listening for it and will save it in the PC memory (which you can then save to disk).

If you do not put the "Automatic start recording" option on then you have to press the record button on the LogView panel BEFORE hitting "Transmit" on the CellLog8 (otherwise LogView won't be listening for the broadcast).

Transmission of a big log file (say 30,000 entries) can take a few minutes!  You will see NOTHING on LogView while this is happening (apart from the green communication lights on LogView flashing).  You WILL see CellLog8 counting though the log entries to show progress of the BROADCAST.

When the transmission is completed, the CellLog8s will beep and then LogView will draw the graph of the data received.  At this point the data is only in memory and you should save the data from the File > Save As menu option in LogView before messing about with the data.

Make Windows 98 See Vista / Win7 Shares

Sneaky Micro$oft...  In the move to Vista and Windows 7, they broke connectivity to Windows 98 clients without telling anyone.

When you install your file shares on a new Vista or Windows 7 machine you'll discover a weird error message on your Windows 98 machines when trying to connect to file shares on the new machines.  It just keeps saying that the password for a share called IPC$ is no good.

My charge controller data logger is a Windows 98SE Toshiba laptop that can't be upgraded to XP. Although I could use a newer machine, I like the Tosh because it only uses 11W of power to do its work and doesn't need a fan to keep cool so it will work quietly in the corner of the living room.

Fear not.  I've found out how to get around the problem.

The basic problem is that after XP, MS changed the logon authentication method to improve security.  Windows 98 uses LM authentication.  XP uses NTLM1 and LM authentication so it was backwards compatible.  Vista only uses NTLM2 authentication (but it was ok because XP machines got upgraded automatically to NTLM2 by automatic update).  Poor old Win98 got left behind.

However, what you need is the Directory Services Client package from the Windows 2000 Server (from a server or the server CD or as a download from Microsoft).  This allows Win98 machines to log on to Windows 2000 domains but also includes the updates to support NTLM2 authentication.  Download DSClient.exe and install the package by running it.  Make sure you get the Win9x version (there was a NT4 version with the same file name).

That's the first step.  After installing it you need to enable NTLM2 on the Win98 machine.  To do this you need to edit the registry to add a new value to a key.

Run regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA

Add a new value called LMCompatibility of type DWORD and value 3

Setting this value to 3 tells Windows to use NTLM2 authentication.  Reboot.

Now, Windows 98 can't log on to shares using a different user name (XP introduced the "connect using different user credentials" option) so you need to make sure your Win98 user and password is the same as a local account on the Vista machine that you've given permission to use the shared folder.  This is the same as normal share set-up.

On the Vista machine you also need to edit the registry to change the hashing of LM credentials.  Otherwise, you'll be able to see the share but not be able to access any file from the Win98 machine (if you try, you'll wait for a few minutes and Windows 98 will say something like "the network resource is no longer available").

Run regedit on the Vista machine and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA 

There should already be a value called nolmhash set to a value of 1.  Change it to 0.

This will make Vista file shares less secure but only to the same degree that XP was.

The final step is that on the Vista machine you have to reset the password for the local user account that you will be using on the Win98 machine to access the share.  You can set the new password to be the same as the old one but by going through the change process, it changes the way the new password is decoded by Vista (to the old method used by XP).  Now you should be able to browse the network neighbourhood to the Vista machine from the Win98 machine and access files on the share. 

I still had some weirdness after this in that I could write new files and rename existing files on the share but not open existing files for reading or copy a file from the share to my Win98 local disk.  Some kind of permissions problem on the Vista machine but in my case I only needed to write logged data to the share and rename yesterday's file (and I could do this) so I wasn't going to fret too much about not being able to read/copy files.

There were some bugs in the Win9x DSClient package originally and these did apparently get fixed in a Windows 2000 Server service pack but you can't download this updated DSClient package separately for some reason (unless you have a Windows 2000 Server and get it in the service pack).

So for now (at least), my Windows 98 laptop lives on to fight another day!