[Tool] ChromIQ – a macOS and Windows GUI for ArgyllCMS printer profiling (v4.0.0)

[mavtop]

I am completely out of usage limits for now. But maybe try 3.14.2 again meanwhile. Maybe this at least solves a part of this

Edit: seems there is no log file attached

now you would find it in the previous post

 

[itsab1989]

now you would find it in the previous post

Thanks! I will have a look at it later. Sorry for all the inconveniences by the way…

 

[mavtop]

can you make 10 attempts or a value to choose to calibrate the i1pro1 instead of 3 ?

my i1pro1 lamp needs some attempt to finally burn right

 

[itsab1989]

can you make 10 attempts or a value to choose to calibrate the i1pro1 instead of 3 ?

my i1pro1 lamp needs some attempt to finally burn right

It decided to add an option for you in the settings windows beta section. Give the update a while for the finishing touches though.

You can dial it up to a max of 20

Claude also made an answer for you:

# Follow-up reply to mavtop — the log, and your "make it 10" request

Hi mavtop,

Thank you for the log file and for the "make it 10 attempts" idea — both were
exactly what I needed, and together they've settled a lot. Good news on every
front. Let me walk you through what the log showed and what I've changed.

## What your log revealed

Two things jumped straight out:

**1. The app was frozen, and it wasn't your fault.** The log shows the
calibration fail, and then you pressing keys again and again for about a minute
and a half — nothing happened, because ChromIQ was waiting for an answer it never
actually sent to the instrument. So the "press key" screen really was stuck: you
were doing the right thing, the app just wasn't listening. That's a genuine bug
on our side, and it's now fixed — ChromIQ always responds after a failed
calibration instead of hanging.

**2. Your instrument is talking perfectly — it's the reading that failed.** The
exact error in the log is "Measurement misread" during the white-tile
calibration, not "no answer from device". That's an important distinction: your
i1Pro connected fine, reported its white-reference serial number, and accepted
commands. What went wrong was the *quality* of that one calibration reading.

That fits your own theory almost exactly. You said your lamp "needs some attempts
to finally burn right", and a misread on the very first strike — with a good
reading a moment later — is precisely what an ageing lamp (or a USB port that
can't quite deliver the current spike when the lamp fires) produces. Your
instinct about this has been right, and better than my earlier "the hardware is
dying" guess. I'm sorry I doubted the meter.

## Your request: done — and you can go past 10 if you like

You asked for 10 calibration attempts instead of 3. That's now a setting you can
change yourself, so you're not stuck with whatever number I picked:

> **Settings → Beta → "Retry a failed calibration up to: __ times"**

Set it to **10** and ChromIQ will try the calibration up to eleven times in
total (the first attempt plus ten retries), pausing a couple of seconds between
each so the lamp can warm up — which, from what you describe, is exactly what it
needs. You can go higher still if 10 isn't enough (up to 20), or set it to 0 to
turn retries off completely. Each attempt is written to the log, and you don't
need to touch anything while it retries — just leave the instrument on its base.

If every attempt still fails, ChromIQ now reports it cleanly and, where it can,
falls back to ArgyllCMS's own reader so you can still measure — no more frozen
screen.

This is in the next release (v3.14.3). Once you've updated, give it a try at 10
and let me know how many attempts it typically takes to get through — I'm curious,
and it'll help me pick a sensible default for other people with older instruments.

## One honest note

Retrying improves your odds a lot if the lamp usually succeeds within a few
tries — which is what you're seeing. But if the underlying cause is the USB port
not delivering enough power on the lamp strike, the surest fix is still a
**self-powered USB hub** (one with its own mains adapter). Retries and a proper
power supply work well together: the hub makes each attempt more likely to
succeed, and the retries cover the occasional one that still doesn't.

Thanks again — your careful reporting genuinely made ChromIQ better for anyone
still using an older i1Pro.

Best regards

 

[mavtop]

Thanks for the option, but my instrument now doesn't want to calibrate anymore

I don't know what is happening to it, it sometimes works perfectly, while others it doesn't calibrate the white board.

I don't know if it is the usb or the device.

The second device doesn't turn on the lamp so maybe that is broken (i maybe will try to open just to see if power get to the board), the first one instead turn on the light, sometimes it is stronger sometimes it is less strong.

@pharmacist would i buy the chinese spectro ?

I suppose Chromiq doesn't support that device, but i will need to make ICC profiles for my papers if i want to print on them

 

[pharmacist]

Did you try on a Windows machine: maybe it is just a MacOS problem ?

 

[itsab1989]

I just wanted to let you know that since the latest update v3.14.0 ChromIQ saves a small dated report every time you measure a chart, and shows them all together. So you get a history of your printer / paper that you can look at if something seems to feel off.
This was Knut's idea and he tested it extensively.

You find it in the tools menu.

There are 4 trend charts: colour accuracy, paper white, darkest black, and Cube Corners.

Every measurement also gets a simple Pass/Fail against limits you set.
Look at 19 May in the example — all red, and fine again either side of it. That was a partly clogged channel. You spot it in two seconds:

And for any single measurement you get the full detail, with the expected colour next to the measured one:

I attache the full report as a PDF and the example data if you want to click around in it yourself.
Note: that example is simulated by Claude because we needed something to show and test.

 

[mavtop]

Did you try on a Windows machine: maybe it is just a MacOS problem ?

Tomorrow i will try when in my office, i left all there.

Anyway with the chinese spectro, can i use argylcms ? i suppose the answer is no, right ?

 

[pharmacist]

Yes, but only for the profile generating process, not for scanning. That is done with it's own proprietary program and only patch by patch.

 

[rjanowsky]

Thanks. I will go with this target and make some prints afterwards.

@pharmacist

I made a profile with the recommended target set and printed some B&W test images. Visually and measured the prints are nearly dead neutral. For me, it's perfect!