Meet Crochet Buddy
Adventures in Analog Modeling
In the Spring of 2020, around the start of the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic that caused countries to shut down, I took up the art of crochet to fill the days in isolation. Due to my inability to count my stitches correctly in each of the rows I completed, the first blanket I made came out as more of a trapezoid than a rectangle. The other big issue that most novice crochet hobbyists is keeping a consistent tension in the amount that you pull on the yarn to create each stitch. Crochet Buddy is an Internet of Things (IoT) device created to assist novice crochet hobbyists in their pursuit of beautiful yarn-craft.
DESIGN
The Crochet Buddy is a fairly simple IoT device with a large impact on those who crochet. The physical device has three main components: an ergonomic handle, a camera facing the crochet hook’s neck, which counts the number of stitches and tracks which type of stitches are being made using a machine learning algorithm. The hook also has a pressure sensitive hook, which tracks the amount of force exerted each time the user pulls for the stitch. The hook will also vibrate when the user should stop pulling on the stitch, thus enforcing a consistent pull, making the yarn-craft more consistent.
PROTOTYPE
The prototype for Crochet Buddy was made out of 3 ingredient clay (made with flour, water, and salt) as well as a crochet hook that I had lying around my room. I made the clay for the hook, and then wrapped it around my hook around to form a handle. I then took and extra bit of clay to figure out what the camera placement would look like. After the handle was formed, I took it off of my crochet hook, and baked it until the clay became sturdy. I then put the handle back on my crochet hook for user testing.
I actually went through two prototypes while designing this hook. The first prototype turned out to be far too bulky and big, so I created a sleeker and smaller handle, which ended up being the better of the two.
View the demo video of the Crochet Buddy Prototype here:
ANALYSIS
The grip that I created for my prototype makes holding the crochet hooks that I have so much more comfortable, that I actually find myself using the lo-fi prototype handle when I’m planning on crocheting for longer periods of time. This is a testament to the biggest feature that I was using my analog model to test for: comfort and grip positioning.
During the analysis phase, I also took a video of what the camera would see. This was to see if it was even possible to use machine learning to track stitches in this way. It did prove that there is a distinct possibility that machine learning for stitch counting in this way is a distinct possibility.
This video was incredibly difficult to make, because I was holding both my phone and the Crochet Buddy at the same time. So please excuse the quality of the video.
