Margaret Low regularly runs workshops for school children using the Turtlestitch software, giving a fun introduction to programming for primary and secondary school children. Its free, easy to use, and generates patterns that can be stitched by sewing or embroidery machines.
After an initial discussion with Richard Millwood at the 2019 Scratch Conference in Cambridge UK (hosted by Raspberry Pi), Margaret Low and James Johnston started investigating whether it was possible to transfer files wirelessly to an embroidery machine. The aim was to avoid some of the problems with USB memory sticks (having sufficient USB memory sticks for the class, identifying files to be stitched, accidental overwrites of files).
This led to the development of DropStitch which uses the Raspberry Pi Zero W to add wifi and bluetooth file transfer capabilities to embroidery machines. Its based on the 2017 MagPi article by Russell Barnes “Make a Pi Zero W Smart USB flash drive” (https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/pi-zero-w-smart-usb-flash-drive) with some modifications.
We love the TurtleStitch project, and encourage you to support its development by making a donation. Their fund raising page is here.
DropStitch 