I believe the ground setup is the issue. I have the ground and each junction marked. ground is going to slot 1, the 3-4 bridge is going to slot 5, 2-3 to 4, 1-2 to 3 and cell 1 lead to 2.

The only difference in the layout of the wires in the tap is the polarity. I tried putting the 3-4 junction into slot 2 last night and that made smoke come from the balancer (fortunately no damage and I balanced all my other packs afterward to verify).

I get most of it I guess what I'm not grasping is how to make them read -v at the tap rather than +v. the balancer recognizes no cells with the +v configuration. short of polarity all packs read voltages in the same tap locations.

I wish I were at home and not work so I could snap a picture.