Interfacing CADEX C8000 battery tester

[Pankaj_K.]

Hi,

I am trying to interface Cadex C8000 battery tester with LabVIEW but there are no direct DLLs available.

C8000 is provided with a windows based application Battery lab. We can control C8000 using Battery lab i.e. create, execute and log.

C8000 has a SMBus interface which can be used to test SMBus batteries.  Cadex basically creates charging / discharging profiles for SMBus batteries.

Our goal is to:

1. Use LabVIEW to charge discharge SMBus battery using C8000. However there are no DLLs or API available.
2. Log battery data using LabVIEW through SMbus of battery.

In short we need to replace battery lab SW and utilize it as per requirement.

Thanks.

[Queen_Nadine]

Hello Pankaj_K.,

Could you describe your system a little further?  What is your current Hardware setup and how are you connecting tiyr CADEX C8000 to your computer?

I looked into this further and it seems that the NI USB-8451 can provide an interface via SMBus. It sounds like there isn't a specific driver or API for SMBus that comes with this hardware, but that it is instead treated as a subset for I2C.  The manual for the USB-8451 discusses some differences between I2C and SMBus on page 1-5:

NI-845x Hardware and Software Manual

I hope this helps!

[Dennis_Knutson]

If the company is unwilling to release the programming commands for the instrument, you have few options. One is to find a different instrument from a reasonable vendor. Another is to use some snooper software to try and capture the commands sent to the instrument. Of the application software does not have an ActiveX or .NET interface, you can try a program such as AutoIT to control the application.

[Pankaj_K.]

Thanks 🙂

The Application sw does not have any APIs/DLLs to be used. I tried automating it using the windows user32 DLL and controlling Keystrokes. I will look into AutoIT and other snooping SWs.. Thanks.

[Pankaj_K.]

I did look into USB 8451 but we have an alternative to it currently in use.. Cadex as such does not have programmable DLLs or APIs. 😞

Thanks :). Will work around with windows DLLs