Knitting Machine Hack - Knittington hack

Knittington

https://github.com/stg/knittington

This hack is done with a modified FTDI cable using the knitting machine original computer. Before you would upload your pattern using a floppy disc on a Tandy computer. Here we can use our modern computer instead and send a .png picture that will be stocked in the knitting machines memory. The modified FTDI cable goes in the original 4×4 pin port found on the back of the machine and the other end is a USB which goes to the computer.

You will need :

• FTDI TTL-232R-5V USB‑to‑serial converter cable.
• Molex connector part no 90142‑0008.
• A computer with Linux or Windows (Linux users will need to get hand on a Windows computer at some point just to programme the FTDI cable using FT_PROG.)

Hardware

You will need to modify the FTDI cable you can follow a tutorial here:

• http://www.ladyada.net/wiki/tutorials/knittingmachine/ftdicable.html
• http://daviworks.com/knitting/cable_tutorial.html#connector

Tested on:

• Ubuntu 34bit & 64 bit
• Windows XP
• Brother Electroknit kh 930 – kh 940 – kh950

Software

Download Knittington https://github.com/stg/knittington and follow instructions. Once it’s installed:

1. Follow the knittington instructions.
2. Load your pattern
3. Turn your knitting machine on
4. Clic on “start emulator”
5. Choose your serial port
6. You will then see “emulator is running you can now load pattern data in the machine”
7. Go to your knitting machine computer and when “ready” lamp is lit, hit “CE” and type “551” then “STEP” and type “1” then “STEP”
8. You should then see on the knittington software “read emulator 1…2..3…until 31”
9. The bip from your machine tells you that the pattern has been fully transferred.
10. On your knitting machine computer “ready lamp” is lit and row “1” is on the screen ready to knit!
11. Set your carridge to jacquard mode (push MC button and KC1 or KC2 on the knob)

Linux Users:

If your Ftdi cable serial port doesn’t appear on knittington go in your terminal and write this:

ls -lh /dev/ //list serial port
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0

//gives rights for chosen serial port

01/05/16
Issue on installing Knittington on a Linux 64 bit system.
This is because of libfreeimage being a 32 bit library so i get this message:

$:~/knittington_update/knittington/bin-linux$ ./gui
./gui: error while loading shared libraries: libfreeimage.so.3: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS

Here is what to do to fix this:

1. Install: libsdl1.2debian , libsdl1.2-dev, libsdl1.2-dev, libsdl1.2-dev, libfreeimage3, libfreeimage3-dev
2. Download the knittington-master zip file :https://github.com/stg/knittingt, on
3. Replace the linux-gui-make.sh file by the new one to download here:https://github.com/clairewiwi/knittington-64-bit-ubuntu-modified-make.sh
4. Execute in the terminal:
   ./linux-gui-make.sh
chmod u+x linux-gui-make.sh
   if you get a “permission denied” messageThen go to the file
5. knittington-master/bin-linux and execute:
   $./gui
   And knittington should work!