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Fabienne Serriere,  Travis Goodspeed,  Arjan Scherpenisse 2

multithreaded banjo dinosaur knitting adventure 2D Extreme

a bayeux tapestry for 2010

Welcome to the Multithreaded Banjo Dinosaur Knitting Adventure 2D Extreme!, a retro style video game with banjos and dinosaurs with winners' panels printed by a knitting machine. It was conceived and built by Travis Goodspeed, Arjan Scherpenisse, and Fabienne Serriere during Mediamatic's 5 day long DevCamp10 in November 2010 in Amsterdam.

Scroll down the first batch of photos to read more about it!

Source code and photos

We are working on more extensive documentation, but in the meantime, here is our source code and our photos and our build log (in text here below):

the svn repository:

svn checkout svn://svn.mediamatic.nl/devcamps/camp10/banjo banjo

source code in trac: http://trac.mediamatic.nl/devcamps/browser/camp10/banjo

travis' pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/travisgoodspeed/sets/72157625341543667/

fabienne's pics here: http://fbz.smugmug.com/All/nov-2010/

arjan's pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/acscherp/sets/72157625369391595/

day 4

we hacked the button matrix of the knitting machine by beeping out the rows (4) and columns (10) on the circuit to control the 39 buttons on the control panel of the kh-930 knitting machine. the buttons are then controlled remotely by microcontroller. this means we can remotely load patterns and queue them up on the machine. our video game is advancing wonderfully, with arjan building a scrolling background, thomas designed some lovely obstacles and updated the background graphics for the game. travis designed the circuit for the button pushing keypad emulator and updated the software scripts for controlling the knitting machine. we started experimenting with using a drill to control the mechanics of the sled on the knitting machine.

day 3

travis got the hardware done for the dongle to emulate the tandy external floppy
drive, and got the knitting machine to talk to the computer. arjan rounded out his software for the avatar editor (16 x 16 pixels for users to create their avatar for the game). and we gained a team member to help us with designing background pixel art and dinosaurs for our game. fabienne did some test knits for width, and we decided on 64 knit stitches wide for the final piece. we came up with a design to help the knitting be displayed, it will roll up to the ceiling. we documented the button pushes required to talk to the computer, and on day 4 will hack the button matrix to have this be automated as well.

day 2

we obtained a Brother KH-930 without the motorized sled for multiple colors, but with a color changer and a motorized picking for one color (garter stitch sled) from the North of Holland. included was a stand and an extra comb and a kajillion books and lots of cones of wool and a yarn ball winder :) we did a preliminary non-computer controlled knitting test.

day 1

some preliminary research links:

Becky Stern and Limor Fried's Brother KH-930e hacking http://ladyada.net/learn/electroknit/

list of local knitting machines being sold on marktplaats

all electronic (non-punch card) brother knitting machines support the tandy external drive and thus the emulator link

Compatible Brother Models KH930, KH940, KH950i, KH965i & KH970

and another link about electronic brother models

Contributions 
Fabienne Serriere, Caspar Menkman, Arjan Scherpenisse, Suzan Kolen, Evelyn Austin 
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