DISK IMAGE MANAGER AND GUI FOR UPLOADING PATTERNS TO KNITTING MACHINES This program will allow you to design patterns in any raster image editor such as gimp, photoshop, paintbrush, picasa, corel painter, etc. and upload them to your knitting machine. You will need to build an interface cable. How to do this: * http://www.ladyada.net/wiki/tutorials/knittingmachine/ftdicable.html Fully supported on WINDOWS ONLY, OSX and Linux support is being actively worked on, but you can contribute by contacting senseitg@gmail.com Machine capabilities: * Brother Electroknit KH-950 * Brother Electroknit KH-940 * Brother Electroknit KH-930 BETA * ! Your machine here? Help out the project! :) Emulation capabilities: * PDD1 floppy drive FDC emulation mode (limited) Picture read capabilities: * Recommended: 24-bit RGB - GIF, TIFF, PNG * Any format supported by FreeImage Software using library: * Alternative OpenFrameworks GUI See http://www.mcanet.info/patternUploader/ for information Recognition: * Thanks to Jonas Bengtsson for OSX support and binaries * Thanks to Andrew Solomone for the full-color knitting style * Thanks to Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet for inspiring the project * Thanks to Steve Conklin for information provided at Antitronics * GUI relies on SDL2 and FreeImage == WINDOWS USERS ===================================================== Just download everything in the bin-win\ folder, put it anywhere you like, then run gui.exe. This has everything you need to quickly get patterns onto your machine. == MAC USERS ========================================================= OSX binaries can be found in the bin-osx/ directory. Jonas, would you like to put in a word here? == LINUX USERS ======================================================= Linux binares can be found in the bin-linux/ directory. This requires a modidifed SDL2 library to add xDnD support. Tested under Ubuntu only. Still no serial port detection effectively making the program useless for linux at this point. HELP WANTED! The modified SDL2 .so file must be placed in the library search path. Sorry for this odd procedure. HELP WANTED! == FILES ============================================================= bin-X/ Binaries/executables for operating system X lib/ Source files for the disk image manager/emulator cli/ Source files for command line interface gui/ Source files for graphical user interface doc/ File/memory layout description ptn/ Sample patterns as both original bmp and raw win-###-make.bat Build ###:cli/gui program (windows batch file) linux-###.make.sh Build ###:cli/gui program (linux shell script) osx-###.make.sh Build ###:cli/gui program (osx shell script) Want to help out by creating makefiles? Let me know! == HOW TO USE GUI UTILITY ============================================ Sorry, no proper documentation available at this point. HELP WANTED! It is however fairly straight forward! 1) Install the application (os dependant process) and launch it. 2) Click FORMAT and select your machine 3) Drag pictures (24-bit GIF, PNG or TIFF) into the window Make sure the pictures are of size STITCHESxROWS pixels. Pictures with two colors will import as single color. Pictures with different colors will import as multi or full color. Multi-color: pictures with only one contrast color per row Full-color: pictures with several colors on one or more rows Full-color requires special stitching procedure 4) Verify import by clicking pattern in list on the left, then EDIT. 5) Click EMULATE and select the correct serial port in the list 6) Use the knitting machine to load from disk (track #1 only) == HOW TO USE CLI UTILITY ============================================ The CLI utility can be considered outdated, but is still useful when you need to make patterns on a new machine and store them as a file for analysis. The GUI does not provide this functionality. Compile and launch knit executable. Typing ? or help will give ?/help show this r/read read in data from file w/write write out data to file m/machine select knitting machine f/format clear all tracks t/track set working track a/add add pattern to track s/show display content of track i/info additional track info e/emulate emulate floppy q/quit end program x/halt halt on errors read - Reads image on disk to memory The file can be either disk image or folder with emulator files. Entering the name of a file will read it as a disk image, ie: filename> sample/1.img Entering a folder name, ending with a (back)slash, will read Tandy FDD1 emulator file folder, ie: filename> fddemu/img/ write - Write memory to image on disk The file can be either disk image or folder with emulator files. See "read" command for more info. machine - Select knitting machine This will show the currently selected machine as well as list the available/supported machines. After listing, you are prompted to select a new machine and this is selected by typing the short name of the machine you wish to use, ie: machine> kh940 format - Clear computer ram contents This will delete everything currently contained in memory and ready the program for input of a new file. track - Set working track The machine can store patterns in two separate tracks and this is chosen when saving/loading from the machine. This will sets the current working track for add, show and info commands. Tracks are entered as a number between 1 and 2, ie: track> 1 add - Add a pattern to memory The pattern is read from a raw image file, ie: filename> patterns/903.raw See doc\raw_format.txt for a description of the format. show - Show patterns contained in memory This will list all available patterns and to into pattern display mode. In this mode you get the following promt: pattern> instead of the regular one. To exit this mode enter d, done or simply enter a blank line. While in this mode, enter the pattern number of an available pattern to print out a graphical representation of the pattern as well as its binary data representation. info - Shows additional non-pattern information This will display all important fields in the currently loaded file and run a verification suite against all of the know values. Verifications are done against the most common and verified to work values that have been downloaded from the machine. Therefore it MAY give FAIL on "write pointer" entries and/or the "loaded head" entry for some files because the machine sometimes inserts a 0x00 byte between patterns which causes a mismatch of 1 for these values. Exactly when/why this is done is uncertain, but it is not needed when writing patterns, so it may actually be a bug in the machine. Additionally, MOST parameters WILL give FAIL on a blank formatted file, regardless if done via device or this program. For a file generated using this program all parameters should give OK before attempting download. emulate - Start floppy emulator This will ask for a serial device and the format is different depending on your system. For linux-flavors, it will usually look like: serial device> /dev/ttyS0 For windows, it will look something like: serial device> COM1 After entering a serial device, the program will go into floppy emulation mode. You can exit this mode by sending a SIGINT, which is usually Ctrl+C on most systems. While in this mode, you can use the knitting machine to save or load data into program memory, which can first be build using add or read using read. After saving from the machine you can keep it with write. quit - Self explanatory Go outside and enjoy the weather halt - Enable/disable halt on errors Enabling halt on errors is good for command line execution == CLI BATCH EXECUTION =============================================== All commands can be executed from command line, for example: knit x a ptn/tile.raw a ptn/inca.raw a ptn/text.raw w test.img q Will do the following: * Enable halt on error * Add ptn/blocks.raw as #901 * Add ptn/inca.raw as #902 * Add ptn/text.raw as #903 * Write disk image to test.img * Quit In addition commands can also be piped in, or typed manually in succession at any prompt within the program.