I have always loved the Passap e6000 as a concept- so many things about it appeal. Knitting without weights, with up to 4 colours as standard, and all those different stitches which Japanese machines simply can't do. The problem for me has always been the console. The problem is, if you are going to put so many different abilities into one machine - shaping, hundreds of different built in patterns, loads of different knitting techniques, automatic cast on - not to mention the different ways you can overlay patterns on patterns, place, rotate and multiply different stitches and so on, you are bound to have a very complicated machine. Add to that the fact that it came out in the 1980s, so the electronics are much more complex to use than, say, a modern laptop, and the fact that your only window into this device is a 16 character LED screen, and you have a recipe for frustration and confusion. Not for nothing is the manual 192 pages long - and that's without the 172 pages of the pattern book!

Fortunately, a couple of years ago I came across an amazing website by some engineers who had combined two electronic front beds into one dual-bed machine they called a FrankenPassap. It was, and is, an amazing project, and I highly recommend you go and check it out here.

In order to control such a device, they have written their own software and designed and coded a hardware interface based around the Arduino Uno microcontroller. The GUI was written in the Processing IDE, and is excellent, albeit aimed firmly at controlling the FrankenPassap. It occured to me that the software could be modified to make the standard e6000 easy to control from a computer screen. The only problem was that I had never coded before, and so I had to learn from scratch. Nevertheless, I have taken their code and modified it to make a program which I call Visual Passap. It is far from perfect, and there is much still to do, but for what it is worth, if you would like to try it out then you are most welcome. I hope this very basic website will encourage e6000 owners to try it out - and improve it if they would like.

It can't (yet) do everything the console can do, but I am planning future updates to add a specific cast-on module and a form computer. Watch this space... Comments and suggestions are always welcome; offers of expertise and help are even more so!

Charlie