So sew files only give deltas of movements, not absolute values so if my starting point or one byte is off, it messes up the whole image. With this, I decided to just plot the deltas, expecting on my card there to be a lot of back-and-forth movements.
First I tested on the known good file (downloaded from the internet):
Flywired the memory card to 0.1" headers then jumpered them to an Arduino Mega.
Here's the start of it:
I'm using pyembroidery to parse the results. Looking online, everywhere said these should be *.sew files and thankfully pyembroidery has a parser so I can see how it works.
And I get this on my readout: Lovely. But it's far too few points. Looking at the source code of the parser, it seeks the file to a magic number 0x1D78. Looking at the file in a hex editor, it's all zeros until that address. On my readout, it looks like the data starts at 0x3000 so I set it to seek there. Interesting point, my filler bytes are all 0xFF not 0x00
More points but not right. I'm expecting something like this (Memory 101 column):
I've owned a Janome 9000 since I bought it new in 1998. It's a fabulous machine. I do have the reader/writer box, plus the scanner card that goes into it. It works with Customizer 2000 software on my windows 10 computer and I have a link to free download of that (below) plus written info that I'd be happy to share. I would LOVE to see any and all improvements you have or can make to the embroidery functions of this machine. There's a market for selling anything you develop since it's regularly bought and sold on EBay and other online venues. If, by chance, you can tell me how to make any of the readily available cards erasable, readable, writable, that would be fantastic .
Also, the largest area this machine can embroider is around 4" x 6". If that can be expanded somehow, you'd be regarded as a god.
PS. I only understand a small fraction of the work you've done but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents worth in here.
I have recently refurbished a Janome MC8000 and have been exploring the idea of creating an alternative to the Janome cartridge, something like a PCB card for sideloading .SEW embroidery data, akin to a printer PCB card.
I believe the concept is similar to Gameboy Homebrew Cartridges.
I've been conducting research for some time now and came across your project.
By the way, I wanted to inform you that the sewing community in Pakistan has been maintaining a family of early 1990s and pre-2000 Janome embroidery machines.
They have managed to salvage surplus cartridge develop their own embroidery pattern cards as seen in the video
The memory cards are read-only. I'd be making a new re-writeable card, graft the connector on to it, and give it a USB port so you can directly connect it to a computer. My next steps are to wire a logic analyzer onto the machine with the card in place and see how it reads the card. If you are able to instrument the scan-n-print to see what it sends, that'd be huge
Can we edit these cards? Have you progressed any further? Is there any blank off the shelf cards that could work? I resorted to the scan n print with blank card but would like to completely replace the hardware with arduino but cant find nothing to compare with.
Could you upload the raw data from the card? I would like to look at.