Rebecca Spender´s KnitWit are smart needles that keep track of the number of stitches you’ve already done. Movement sensors in the ends record the movement of the needles. This data is streamed via RF to a remote base station which decodes the signal, looking for a specific series of movements which correlate to the formation of a stitch. When a “stitch” is recognised, the LCD counter increments.
In a similar way the interaction between the two needles is used to determine when one row has been finished and another started and thus the rows counter increments too.