Respira is an pattern transmission and embroidery monitoring application for the Brother PP-1 SKiTCH embroidery machine. It replaces the Artspira app and allows the user to transmit .PES patterns directly from a computer without having to go through the app. This allows the user to operate the embroidery machine fully offline and from the comfortable screen of a computer.
The latest release of Respira can be downloaded here. Choose the appropriate installer for your Operating System. Be aware that the macOS release has difficulties because it is neither signed nor notarized by Apple1. The application will offer updates automatically, at least on Windows. On macOS it does not because of the aforementioned issue.
If you are using Chrome, Edge or another browser with WebBluetooth capabilities, you can also use it directly in the browser: https://jhbruhn.github.io/respira
After first starting, you are prompted to connect to your machine. Respira will only show Bluetooth devices which are Brother PP-1 machines. Respira has a handy step-guide at the top. Clicking on the current step will show hints what needs to be done in the current step.
If you never used Respira with your machine before, you will have to pair your machine with your computer first. To do so, head to your operating systems Bluetooth settings, long-press the Bluetooth-Button on your Brother PP-1 until the LED changes its blinking pattern or there is a beep, and then pair your computer with the machine from your operating systems Bluetooth settings. Only after this pairing has been done, Respira will be able to successfully connect with your machine. Otherwise, the connection will fail silently.
After startup, the machine has to home itself. Remove the hoop and press the accept button. The machine will move a bit. Afterwards, you can reinsert the hoop.
To import and prepare a pattern, click the Choose PES File button and import a PES embroidery pattern. Before uploading it, you can move the pattern in the preview window so that it is embroidered at the correct position. Upload the pattern using the Upload Pattern button.
After the pattern has been uploaded, you can start embroidering. First do a mask trace so that the machine can check whether the whole embroidery area is accessible. Press the Start Mask Trace button, then press the Accept button on the machine. When the mask trace was successful, you can start sewing by pressing the Start Sewing button, and then pressing the Start/Pause button on the machine.
While the machine is embroidering, watch your sewing progress using the live preview in the Pattern Preview pane and know which color to change to from the Color Block list in the Sewing Progress pane.
After the embroidery is done, remove your fabric from the hoop and press the Accept button on the machine to continue with a new job, or repeat the current job by pressing the Start/Pause button again.
Embroidery software seems to be a niche product and thus is quite expensive. But fear not because the great people of Ink/Stitch built and Inkscape extension which allows you to create embroidery patterns with Free and Open Source software. How great is that? I think it's great. All my tests were done with PES patterns exported from Ink/Stitch. In fact, Respira is using their pystitch library to import PES patterns.
But PES patterns from other software or downloaded from the internet should work as well.
For reasons of fairness and possibly also as a warning, be aware that 99% of the code has been written using LLMs, specifically Claude Code.
That does not mean that the code is untested, bad or dysfunctional. In fact, LLMs were a great tool for reverse engineering the Bluetooth Protocol and pattern format the Brother PP-1 uses to communicate with Brothers App.
This project wouldn't have happened without the existence of LLMs. So, while LLMs are still being heavily oversold and the circulary economy of the big AI companies is not exactly a healthy market IMO, they do still offer some benefits.
See LICENSE.md.
Footnotes
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To me this is frankly insane. It effectively makes a computer running macOS not a computer that can run general compute anymore, but only applications that were explicitly allowed by Apple. Not only does signing and notarizing the application require the developer to pay a yearly 99€ fee, but it also strips every Apple computer of its generic compute capabilities, unless you know how to circumvent the security measures. ↩
