Mario Becroft (mailing list) wrote:
I am thinking of buying this device so I am curious to know exactly what the problem with the switch is and whether it will in fact be possible to use this device directly with Argyll CMS.
The DTP22 is rather an old instrument, and is not very suitable for measuring the large number of patches needed to make output device profiles. It's not something I'd recommend buying, unless it's going for a song, and you don't mind trading lots of work every time you want to profile, for not spending much on an instrument.
Elsewhere on the web people have mentioned that a password may have to be sent to the DTP-22 before it will respond with the spectral data. Is this a problem and should I check whether the DTP-22 device has such a password before buying it? Presumably without knowing the password it would not be possible to use the device.
If you go looking on the X-Rite web site, you will find that X-Rite have made about half a dozen versions of the DTP22. Some are intended for particular OEM use, and (as seems to be typical), they've keyed some models to make them non-interchangeable. They don't publish particular models passwords, they're buried in their software. Although it's marked "DTP22" on the base, the instrument I have access to (and possibly a model that's more common out there) is actually the "Digital Swatchbook" model of the DTP22, and it's the only one I can be sure will work directly with Argyll.
I did have a quick look a the Argyll CMS source code, but could find no mention of the DTP-22. Perhaps this feature is too new to be in the release version.
It's work in progress. I'm in the process of adding support for a number of different instruments. Supporting a switch activated instrument requires making more intrusive changes to some of the applications. I'm not sure when I'll be done with these changes - probably a few months. As Mike Russell points out, there are other ways of using foreign instruments with Argyll, it's just not as flexible or convenient as when an instrument is directly supported. I'll think about making a "Development Source Code" release a bit earlier, for those keen to play with new stuff. Graeme Gill.