Wed, 16 Mar 2022

Somehow, I am still fighting with computers, though it is a different fight.

I had some trouble getting the Janome to recognize some designs, and finally decided I had a little corruption going on in the Raspberry Pi that provides it with wifi. And then I remembered I hadn't pushed the release candidate to Gitlab, so that is happening now, and I fixed some of the formatting on the how-to's while I was at it.

(Well, that's blurry but you get an idea of the sizes.)

The Pi Zero is a lovely and elegant way to put embroidery machines on wifi, and the only drawback to the plan is that Raspberry Pi Zeroes are out of stock everywhere. Apparently the newer Pi 4's can actually do Mass Storage Gadget mode, but they're hard to find as well.

This MangoPi can do MSG mode but doesn't have onboard wifi so it's not a great candidate for a substitute. Its maker has been teasing a larger, $20 replacement with wifi, and if it's widely available that should be a good substitute. I've also ordered a Radxa Zero and will try that one out - availability seems a little spotty though.

If you're new here, what all this means is: I have two tiny computers that I plug into my embroidery machines. To the embroidery machines, they're USB drives, and to my desktop PC, they're just a couple of directories. I copy embroidery files into those directories and they show up on the machines. It's great, it cost me around $25 each, and I really want everybody to be able to do it but the supply chain is conspiring against me. If you can get your hands on a Pi Zero, here's how.