Knitting Machine Hacking with AYAB

Knitting
Written By Ria Burns

Note before reading: This blog was written in 2018, when I was studying for my MA (hence the Harvard referencing!). Where needed, I have edited these posts to correct any factual inaccuracies. This post was last edited Jan 2025.

I really enjoyed using Designaknit last trimester, so I looked into buying a machine that had the capability to use it, but they were way out of my budget! On one of the Machine Knitting Facebook groups, I learnt about AYAB (All Yarns Are Beautiful) - an open source programme that, when combined with an Arduino device, can hack older knitting machines so that you can programme them with a computer!

I excitedly bought a secondhand early electronic knitting machine from eBay, which was hand delivered by a lovely chap from West Wales. I also ordered the Arduino interface from America, and after a couple of weeks waiting for the parcel to clear customs, I set out to remove the 1980's circuit board and replace with the AYAB interface. Luckily, it was really straightforward and didn't require any soldering, and my laptop recognised the device straight away. I used a 'stripes' pattern from a Designaknit swatch I had made last trimester as a trial design.

The equipment worked really well, although I have to be a slower, more patient knitter than I am used to, as the interface has to register every row, meaning you have to wait for an orange light and a beep to let you know you can proceed! It does automatically select the needle at the end of each side to ensure the edge is nice and tidy, which I thought Designaknit lacked, but apparently just needs turning on manually (read the comment below!).

I soon realised that AYAB simply treats stitches as pixels (or binary 1s and 0s) - a black pixel on the row tells the interface to select the second colour for that needle. The test image I imported was a little blurry which confused the machine, so I reduced the image to pixel level on Photoshop, then drew over the lines to end with a design that was pure black and white, rather than several shades of grey.

This test was much more successful, and I produced a swatch that I would like to develop into a garment. I used some Shetland synthetically dyed yarn that I had in my studio that are the same colours as the final design, in order to not waste my precious naturally dyed yarn, but get an idea for the colourway. There will of course be some differences in gauge, drape and hand feel, but I feel that working this way to develop a prototype should aid the overall design process.

I felt like this stripes design would work really well as a cropped boxy sweater, so the next stage is to design a pattern, and make the pixel design repeat successfully.

References:

  • AYAB. (2018) All Yarns Are Beautiful. [online] Available from: http://ayab-knitting.com/ [Accessed 1 February 2018].

  • Burns, R. (2018) AYAB Setup 1-7 [photograph].

Ria Burns
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