CSS Electronics CL1000 CAN Bus Logger & USB Interface

The 8GB SD card offers significant capacity. While storage space usage varies depending on the application, 8GB is sufficient for continuously logged data over many weeks. As most vehicles do not drive continuously, this typically equates to months of data.

If you need to log data over a very long period of time, you can either upgrade to a 32 GB SD card or pre-log your data at a lower frequency (e.g. only log every 10th or 100th message). finally, you can add filtering to limit your logging to specific CAN IDs or J1939 PGNs. Please refer to the manual for more details.

The CLX000 series can log data from any high-speed CAN bus application (ISO 11898-2). In practice, this includes raw data from almost all vehicles (cars, trucks, tractors, forklifts, buses, motorbikes, ...) - as well as various production machines, EV batteries and more. Most aeroplanes and boats also use the CAN bus. In terms of protocols, this includes J1939, CANopen, NMEA, FMS, OBD2 and more.

For the specific case of OBD2, the CLX000 can send up to 20 customised CAN messages periodically, which means it can be used as an OBD2 data logger. Note, however, that you need to check whether your car uses CAN as the basis for OBD2 communication (this is the case for all US cars manufactured after 2008, for example). Also note that all cars differ in the number of OBD2 parameters supported - and of course the CLX000 can only record the supported data.

The CLX000 series can be supplied with power via the CAN bus. This means that you simply connect the device via the DB9 connector to supply it with power. In cars, you normally need a DB9-OBD2 adapter, while for trucks, for example, you can use a DB9-J1939 adapter.

Once the connection is established, the CLX000 starts recording data - and due to its extremely low power consumption, you can simply leave it in the vehicle. In most vehicles, the CLX000 switches off when the vehicle is switched off. If this is not the case, the power consumption of the logger itself is still not a problem in terms of battery consumption. However, if you request OBD2 data in this scenario, for example, the request may activate the vehicle's control units. In this case, you should avoid leaving the CLX000 switched on in an unused car for more than a few days.

Note that the CLX000 can also be powered via USB when it switches to "mass storage device mode" - so you can configure the logger on your PC without a separate power source.