The KnitterStream is an electronics based art project that is being put together for the C2-MTL conference. It consists of some hardware mods to a Passap E6000, some ingenuity in tricking the E6000 into doing things it was not meant to do as well as some Python & Processing code to handle the generation of our patterns. Check out the KnitterStream website for more information.
The KnitterStream is a collaboration between Sid-Lee, FatBox and Lunch.
The Arudino portion of the project is a mod to the E6000 control panel and motor control buttons to allow button presses to be triggered via the Python application (below).
It exposes a very simple protocol that signals which button should be triggered by receiving a single byte over the serial port of the Arduino itself. See the code for the current map of button codes.
The hardware portion of the Arduino is comprised of a Uno R3, the Robot Builder’s Shield, a 4067b multiplexer (as we need more pins that the Arduino has), lots of 4N37 optocouplers and other odds and ends for interfacing with the e6000.
The Python portion is a daemon which runs and controls the E6000 via the serial port using the DesignaKnit serial cable. It also uses the protocol of the Arduino portion to trigger the actions in the order that we need them to happen.
It watches a directory for new PNG files, sorted by filename (so use timestamps to guarantee processing order), and for each file it finds it will quantize the image to our standard 3-colour pallete (black, red & white), rotates the image 180 degrees, pack the data into the format wanted by the E6000 and finally writes it to the E6000.
The PNG files should be a 1:1 mapping of pixel to stitch. If you want a pattern with 90 columns & 120 rows then the PNG should be 90x120 as well.
Processing code applies a knitted texture to an image. See www.knitterstream.com for example. We used it to convert a 90 pixel wide graphic to an image the looks like a real life scarf. To use, place an image into Source folder and change "imageName" to the file you want to convert. Launch the script and you'll get the result in "Converted" folder.
The texture is based on Joel Glovier's texture. http://dribbble.com/shots/382725-Knit-Pray-Love and there's some room for imporvement when it comes to tiling the texture. Right now, it's not a 1x1 ratio, so the pattern has to be stretched vertically, which decreases type legibility, especially if it's a pixel font.