The max data transfer rate from the Spectroscan is 57600 baud. It works at this rate when connected to a real serial port. I don't know about through a USB/serial adapter. A faster baud rate completes the measurements for large targets at best a minute faster -- out of 45+ minutes with no filter and 1 measurement per patch or 2-3x that with a polarizer.
Ahhh... the bottleneck isn't the comm rate then... 1 minute faster out of 45 minutes... that's definitely good to know and you probably just saved me some time as I'd have probably cobbled together some older hardware to see if I could get things going at a faster rate.
Spectroscans are not made for the man in a hurry. If you are lucky enough to have one of the newer Spectroscans sold as an iProfile bundle (purple for basic, green for full integrated Profilemaker dongle, both have "iProfile" logo on the Lino) these have ~20% faster X-Y movement, making for noticeably shorter measurement times.
I'll have to check to for that. I know it's a purple unit but not sure if it was part of a bundle. Faster would be nice but... it's still slow!
The DB25 to mini din powered adapter is required to run the Lino by itself. Otherwise you need to connect the Lino with a M/F mini din cable to the output on the scan table. The power adapter appears to enable longer cabling runs. As I mentioned above, we have no problems running 100' RS232 cable lengths when the powered adapter is in place, but get consistent communication faults when it is not. A 25' run from computer to Spectroscan works with or without adapter, so it may not be an issue.
I'm only going to be using it with the table so the missing db25 isn't a big deal at all.
Good thought about the two undocumented DIP switches. The next time we need to disassemble a table for maintenance, I'll try to remember to experiment.
The only thing I can think of is that the db-25 connector has a proprietary wiring and is used for factory diagnostics and calibration but that makes absolutely no sense. From the engineering POV the same can be done through the mini-din serial port. It's rare to add something the to BOM, release a product, and then not use that part as it's cutting into the profits.
Have fun with your new toy! The Spectrolino remains the most accurate spectrophotometer X-Rite/GretagMacbeth produced. It pulls data out of printer/paper combinations that render details in heavy shadows where the newer i1 based instruments record noisy variations of black. Having the full filter set allows you to measure a wider variety of substrates than other instruments as well. Speed? Not so much.
Thanks. I've been playing around with the i1 Pro and I'm not sure if what I've run into is a limitation of software or hardware (I suspect it's actually a little bit of both) but shadow detail is one are I'm particular picky about and I haven't been able to build a profile yet that really makes me happy. Argyll CMS does really well in certain areas and falls down in other. Eye One Match... well it's limited. You get what you get. I've done the hack to check the gamut mapping from Colorful to chromatic and classic and there were certain improvements for what I'm trying to do with chromatic but I have a feeling that Eye One Match isn't producing the highest resolution profiles as I can see a fair amount of posterization when soft-proofing it against a granger chart. There's also some strange transitions going on that Argyll does a much better job with when passing the -qu argument to colprof. I've been sending some measurement files over to a friend who is averaging them and building the ICC profiles for me so I'm currently checking out Profile Maker but so far it hasn't gotten me where I want to go. I'd like to check out Monaco Profiler as well to see if it might offer any advantages. Even if the Spectrolino doesn't address some of the issues I'm currently seeing it would certainly be my go to choice for canvases.
Out of curiosity have you guys had any experience with the Barbieri Electronics Spectro Swing? Seems like the only tools I hear about for measuring targets are the iSis, and Spectrolino (and on the consumer side the i1 Pro, ColorMunki and Spyder 3 Print).
Cheers, Joe
