It’s getting to the point where there are too many people to thank for carrying this forward, you know who you are.

But, the increasing popularity has led to some problems and frustrations for people.

Recently I discovered an old thread on a Ravelry forum about the PDDemulate.py disk emulator that I wrote. People were frustrated by problems they were having. By the time I discovered the thread, I had already been contacted by one of the people with the problem, and I discovered a bug in the emulator. It’s now fixed in the repository. But months had gone by between the forum postings and email contact. The forum thread is still out of date, because a solution has been found but that’s not indicated.

I try to be responsive to people when they have problems with the code – I help when I can and try to be up front if I’m too busy to dive in deeply or if the problems are with an environment I don’t have (I only have a KH-930, and only run the emulator under Linux). But I don’t have time to find and follow every forum where this is being discussed.

Through email from people using the software, I’m becoming aware of more people who are working on this but unaware of others doing the same thing. It feels like there’s a larger community forming around this, but it’s fragmented.

Therefore, I’d like to respectfully suggest that we centralize the resources used for these projects, so that we can help each other, and keep a record in one place of the existing knowledge. Other forums are great, and I know there are communities with forums which reach and help the people who participate in them. Those should continue of course, but for people with deeper interest it may be appropriate to point them to this blog entry.

The definitive repository for the knitting machine disk emulator and related files is here:

Adafruit knitting machine rep on Github

If you’d like to fix or improve the code, or add information about different models of knitting machine, please fork that repo and then make pull requests to have your changes incorporated.

Technical information about connecting to Brother knitting machines and about the KH-930 is here:

Antitronics Knitting Machine Wiki Page

Discussion about the software and reverse engineering of the data formats is taking place here:

Yahoo kminternals group

The Yahoo group and git repository are the only places that I’ll regularly follow, and try to respond to questions.

I’ll still respond to email, my email address is in the code in the repository. But I’ll probably ask you to go to the Yahoo group. Still, if you’re self conscious about the question or whatever, you can use email.

Now, let’s all make great things!

Update 3/1/12: After some more thought, I’m recommending against simply using a serial adapter, as I had previously written here. My reasoning is this -

I’ll be updating the wiki page very soon with directions for how to use the FTDI Friend to interface with the knitting machine.

I’ve now thoroughly tested connecting a PC to the knitting machine using only a standard USB serial adapter. This means that you don’t have to fool with FTDI interfaces, inverting signals, etc. All it takes is a serial adapter, a female DB-9 connector, and four jumper wires. That’s documented on the wiki page.

This makes it much easier for the less technical among us to connect their machine to a computer.

The rest will have more impact in the long run . . .

I’ve obtained an actual Brother FB100 external floppy drive, and successfully connected it through a serial adapter. It requires a 5V adapter – I’m using the adafruit FTDI friend. It’s a little complex – you have to rejumper and reprogram the FTDI friend. That’s also documented on the wiki page here.

There are some files currently in the ‘experimental’ directory in the source repo which communicate with the disk drive, and extract information from knitting machine disks into the format used by my disk emulator. I’m planning to use these to help fill in some gaps in knowledge about the file format used by the knitting machine.

Most people won’t have use for this code to interface with the floppy drive, as the drives are rare.

I have other plans for this investigation, so I may have more to say about it soon.

As usual, I’d love to hear from anyone who finds these to be useful.

Steve

It’s so great to find that something you threw out to the public is useful to someone.

The tile floor is half installed, and insulation is probably next on the list. The trailer is a vending trailer with a big side door, and already equipped with AC power and lighting. This project is going to take months to finish.

I’ll post some photos soon.

The Altus Metrum TeleDongle

Bdale Garbee and Keith Packard are both longtime Debian Developers, and have a pile of code to their credit. They’ve presented at a number of conferences and almost always find a way to work their passion for rocketry into their presentations. They are both amateur radio operators.

At the Linux Collaborative Summit last week, I had a chance to talk with them, and the topic drifted quickly to Rocketry and Amateur Radio, and the intersection of those interests. They’ve created the TeleMetrum telemetry system, available soon from their Altus Metrum site. This is an amazing platform that has applications beyond rocketry – a GPS, accelerometer, and altimeter with a telemetry link in the 70cm amateur band. it’s all open hardware and open software.

They’re about to open shop and start selling these, and I know it’s going to be a big deal for a lot of people in Rocketry. I can also see uses for high altitude balloon launches.

I’m not into rocketry any more, and there’s no room in my hobby load for that, but I was really interested in the programmable radio chip that they are using. The same chip is used on both the rocket and for the ground station, and the ground station unit is available as the TeleDongle. The TeleDongle is a complete radio system with 10mW output on the 70 cm band, powered from a USB port. As supplied, it has code installed from Keith which makes it a virtual 38k4 serial link. With different output filter values, the chip can function over a wide range of frequencies, but it’s only certified in certain bands. I’m still digesting the data sheet, but there’s an amazing amount of functionality on the chip.

Happily, I was able to order a couple of the TeleDongles from Bdale, and I got notice today that he has shipped them. They’re set up so that you can use one as a USB adapter to program the other, making experimentation easier. I’m looking forward to experimenting with these. I’ll post the results!

Applications shown will include:

fldigi – sound card digital modem
xlog – a logging program
hamlib – rig and rotator control
xdx – dx cluster client
colrdx – another dx cluster client
gpredict – satellite pass prediction and information
splat – VHF/UHF propagation prediction using terrain data
antennavis – Antenna pattern modeling and visualization
xnec2c - Another antenna modeling application
gsmc – a smith chart tool
aldo – morse code trainer
xastir – APRS application which can use network or rf connection

And . . . A surprise demo that I think is very interesting. The success of that demo will depend on reception conditions at the meeting. If I can’t make a full-functioning demo I’ll show what I can.

The meeting is at the Huntsville American Red Cross Chapter house at 7:30.

Here is a map link.

Next Friday, March 5th at the same time and place, we’re going to be having an installfest to install Ubuntu Linux on your computers.

Two Drawdio kits from Adafruit Industries. These are fun little kits that make a lencil that generates tones when you draw, using the resistance of the graphite on the paper. You can see one already built at the Antitronics space – I’ll be there this afternoon.
Auction Info (pdf).

Two Introduction to Arduino kits and lessons. These each include an Arduino Duemlanove, some assorted extras, and a free lesson.
Auction Info (pdf).

Update: Here’s a link to some of the awesome artwork available at the auction.

I have to give a shout out for the people I ordered the case from – Leisure Pro. I ordered the case with less than a week to go before this trip, so I had it shipped second day via UPS. Leisure Pro called on delivery day and said “Your shipment was just delivered to us. We don’t know why, but since you ordered this second day you must need it in a hurry – what can we do to make sure you have it when you need it?”.

Wow – proactive customer service! They got the case to me in time, it holds the makerbot, a handful of tools, and a couple of pounds of plastic with no problems. And – it comes in under 50lbs, which makes the checked bag limit.

So the ‘bot is here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, and is printing as I write.

Well, it had some software issues and then got set aside for more urgent projects (like the makerbot – oh yeah!).

As a reminder, it’s built around an Arduino Duemilanove with an adafruit ethernet shield and an Xport module.

Tonight I wasn’t sleep-inclined, so I dragged it out and dug in. I ended up having to dig pretty deeply into the Xport configuration and learn more about how it works, which was a good thing in the long run.

The problem turned out to be an error in the Xport configuration that I had copied from an arduino example sketch. The owner of that example’s been notified, and my arduino code works, so it was a good evening of hacking.

The XPort module is a pretty powerful thing. Here are links to product information and the user manual (pdf)

The power monitor now PUTs a request to the web server as it should. There is still a bug on the server side, but it will wait until another day.

It’s been nagging at me that this got set aside, so now I feel better. I think I’ll go get some sleep.