Wow, I think I really started something here! I have been doing some really deep thinking (I know, gets you into trouble every time), and I have come to the conclusion that a redesign of my quilter screen is in order, with larger buttons and a larger pattern screen, that's the easy part. The hard part is the thread break indicator! I have an idea for that as well. I was watching some quilting videos made by commercial companies, and I found that most of the thread break detectors are using the thread tension spring to detect the slack in the thread when it breaks. It will automatically move to the upper position when the thread breaks. if that spring were magnetized, one could use a hall-effect sensor to detect the magnetized spring as it comes in front of the H-E sensor. This way the only extra equipment needed would be the hall effect sensor and the wire to hook it up. Possibly an arduino board could be used as an amplifier to bring the voltage output from the HE Sensor to 5 volts from the Arduino board into the input of the controller board, which would in turn trip the e-stop or stop hold/pause. Think about this and let me know what you think.
Larry