#Knitterstream

[moveplaycreate-blog-blog]

Hacking away

Evan hacking away:

For the past couple weeks I’ve been working on automating and hacking the Passap E6000 knitting machine.

I have previously posted about hacking on .cut files, but it turns out that the machine doesn’t even use .cut files. While Ivan & I were learning to knit we heavily used a piece of software called WinCrea and it lead us down the path of .cut files as that it is what WinCrea reads and writes by default. It turns out that it uses something even simpler, much simpler.

With the task of being able to directly send patterns to the E6000 over the serial interface behind us I needed to design and attach the arduino circuit that would allow us to interface with it.

The E6000’s main control panel is exposed and easily hackable inside the plastic housing. Minimal dis-assembly was required to get into it and the electronics for the buttons have through-holes (via’s) for each button that made attaching our own leads to them a breeze. (Ok, maybe “breeze” was the wrong word. I forgot how out of practice I was at soldering so the first 20 - 25 solders were a total PITA until I found my rhythm again)

The main component used in our circuit is an Opto-isolator/Opto-coupler, which is essentially a digital switch that the arduino can control and allows us to trigger the buttons for any arbitrary period of time. Pins 5 & 6 of the opto-isolator attach to the leads to the button, pin 2 goes to ground and pin 1 goes to the arduino, via a 1K resistor to ensure that we don’t arbitrarily trigger the button press. (This thread on the arduino forums was most helpful in coming up with a design).

The final piece to the hardware hack was a simple arduino program that reads single bytes over the serial interface and translates them into button presses on our console, thus allowing us to trigger the buttons from our control machine. The code is small and straight forward, and can be found in the GitHub repository.

https://github.com/borgstrom/KnitterStream

[lucesintetica]

"Every day, an endless stream of tweets enters the Twitterverse - some to live on via retweets and favourites, others to fade into the dark depths of the web, never to be seen again. This "here today gone tomorrow" phenomenon led us to wonder: must digital chit chat be so fleeting? We didn't think so. And thus, Knitterstream was born. It began as a data visualization project - an electronic knitting machine from 1998 that, with the help of custom software and hardware, could transform a humble tweet into a tangible, real life, woven work of art.

Launched with the help of Fast Company at C2-MTL - a festival of creativity and commerce in Montreal - we asked twitter-users, "What creative mantra do you work by?" They responded, tweeting their mantras with the hash tag #knitterstream, and Knitterstream transformed the most retweeted mantras into custom designs, which it then knit into what turned out to be 120 feet of cozy conversation. Tweeters could watch the machine in action, live via ustream, and a virtual version was also "knit" in real time at knitterstream.com, allowing those not at C2 to watch online as their mantra was turned from tweet to knit. And there you have it. Proof that tweeted genius can stick around long enough to get the readership it deserves, when stitched into a wearable, frameable keepsake by Knitterstream. See a digital version of the C2-MTL scarf at knitterstream.com";

[jpeters1221]

Ladies and getlemen, Knitterstream. It will knit your tweets.

[mikrobik-blog-blog]

Knitterstream

[bitesbitesbites]

Knitterstream by Sid Lee - Knitterstream Makes Tweets Look Good - This “here today gone tomorrow” phenomenon led Sid Lee, Fatbox and Lunch to wonder: must digital chit chat be so fleeting? They didn’t think so. And thus, Knitterstream was born. It began as a data visualization project – an electronic knitting machine from 1998 that, with the help of custom software and hardware, could transform a humble tweet into a tangible, real life, woven work of art. http://bit.ly/YnJfu0

[borgstrom-blog]

Knitting is awesome #knitterstream (Taken with Instagram at Conférence C2MTL)

[moveplaycreate-blog-blog]

We are knitting

Our first successfully knitted piece! We were finally able to knit a 90x90 stich 3 color design of skull and bones that we uploaded from the laptop onto the machine. The piece came out perfect, with great edges and no holes (comparing to our previous attempts).

We are starting to get more and more comfortable with knitting on the machine and are now experimenting with knitting typography, patterns and images as well as knitting longer pieces. There are some challenges ahead. How do you write a 140 letter tweet, when the width of the image is only 90 pixels? How do we transition between different colors in the scarf? Do we create dividers between each tweet, or integrate them as part of a continuous design? What's the balance between illustration and type? Is anything influenced by data? Can we change scale, colors; introduce new elements according to data or keywords?  So many questions!

[moveplaycreate-blog-blog]

Hacking .CUT files

Evan Borgstrom wrote a nice post about hacking CUT files during our Knitterstream venture.

A .cut file is a simple image file format that can be used store very basic image data plotted in pixels and using a limited 256 colour palette. These files can be loaded onto the E6000 via a serial cable and there’s a couple different pieces of software out there that can both create .cut files and download them to the E6000 but we’ve been using Win_Crea for our testing.

And after a day of tinkering around with it… Success!

    The window on the left is Win Crea showing a simple pattern I designed in the grid editor and the window on the right is Preview on OSX showing the PNG I generated using some python code & PIL.

The goal is to build a nice interface to reading and writing .cut files called pycutter, but for now it’s just a straight forward python script. You can find it in my github account: https://github.com/fatbox/pycutter

More to come as we continue to put this project together.

[moveplaycreate-blog-blog]

Knitterstream Machine

Today was the day! We went down to our favourite new store - Sew'n Knit outlet and purchased an almost brand spankin new Passap E6000 with 4600 motor and a 4 color changer from 1998. Retro contraptions ftw. Jason from the store was able to come down to what is going to become our lab room for the next couple months and put together the machine. Needless to say, the machine doesn't come with a diy Ikea manual and misaligning parts can be crucial and destroy the machine in seconds, especially when it's hooked up to a motor.

Luckily, we managed to dig up a good ol' VHS player and were able to watch an awesome instructionaly video. After a couple failed attempts, we managed to knit our first piece! Turns out, it's all in the tension... Too tight, the yarn doesn't get hooked on the needles; too loose, and everything turns into a giant mess with loops everywhere.

[moveplaycreate-blog-blog]

When I was working on KnitterStream (www.knitterstream.com), I developed a Processing script that converts an image into a knitted pattern.

We decided to knit our scarf only 90 stitches wide, and therefore all of the designs we are creating for it are pixel perfect 90 pixel wide bitmaps. Of course, once they go through the machine, they are knitted to about a 3 foot wide scarf which looks awesome. But how do we create a digital version of the scarf for the website? Especially, if these designs have to be generated in real time during the event.

I am already generating all of the designs dynamically in Processing, so it was just a matter of replicating my 90 pixel wide designs with texture that imitated knitting. I found a great 4x10 tiled pattern created byJoel Glovier and cut it up in Photoshop into individual stitches. Then, I exported each of them as a single PNG. Now, I could affect each PNG's tint through color manipulation in Processing. After tinkering with offsets along X and Y axis of each individual stitch, I was able to recreate the tiled texture and have control over color of each stitch. I cycled through each pixel in the orginal Bitmap design and assigned that color to a stitch that "represents" that pixel in my digital scarf.

Couple things left to do would be creating a nicer edge on both left and right of the scarf as well as bumping up the saturation and levels of outputted image to match neon colors that we are using in real life. https://github.com/isharko/KnitterStream/tree/master/processing

[borgstrom-blog]

The #knitterstream is underway (Taken with Instagram at C2-MTL)