Portpilot Logger is a tool for reading and outputting data from the Portpilot USB Logger on Linux. The official software, unfortunately, only supports Windows and OS X. However, the device was fortunately very easy to reverse engineer.

The Portpilot exports a HID device and it is this device that data is read from. Thanks to the fact that the official software supports printing the raw USB packet, figuring out the data structure was fairly straight forward. A description is found in portpilot_logger.h (struct portpilot_pkt).

In default mode, Portpilot Logger will dynamically detect any Portpilot-device (also those connected while application is running) and start reading data from them. This makes it possible to easily log the power at multiple places simultaneously. One use we had for this feature was to check if a USB hub delievered the promised power.

Portpilot Logger depends on libusb and is compiled using cmake. Portpilot Logger must be run as root in order to work.

Portpilot Logger supports the following command line parameters:

• -r X : Stop after X number of packets have been read. Default is infinite.
• -i X : Only output data after X ms. The output is an average of all data that has been received in the specified interval.
• -d X : Only read data from interface with serial number X. The default is to read from all available devices.
• -v : Verbose mode. Print the raw USB packet.
• -c : Print CSV instead of a more verbose output to console.
• -f X : Write CSV to file X.

The development of Portpilot Logger was funded by the EU-funded research-project MONROE.