You’ve been waiting for it and it’s finally here! The Janome Horizon Memory Craft 9400 QCP Accessory Upgrade Kit. What is it and how to I upgrade my machine? Let me tell you!
The Accessory Upgrade Kit contains a USB that will allow you to upgrade the software in your Janome 9400 to allow you to use the four new feet that are included in the kit. I’m especially excited about one of these feet in particular: the QR foot, which will allow you to use rulers when quilting on your Janome 9400.
Now while you probably want to just start attaching and playing around with those new feet, you need to stop, hide them out of sight, and upgrade the software on your Janome 9400 first.
You will have received a manual with the Accessory Upgrade Kit and the instructions for updating the machine software are on page 5, so turn to that page to start. You’ll also need the USB stick that came in the Accessory Upgrade Kit.
Before you upgrade your Janome 9400, you want to be sure that it needs upgrading! You will need to upgrade it if the software version in your Janome 9400 is 2.0 or a lower number. If it is a higher version (number) than this, you won’t need to install this upgrade.
How can you tell what version of the Janome 9400 you have? It’s easy! Turn on the Janome 9400 and watch in the bottom right-hand corner of the display screen. You will see “Ver.” and a number. My Janome 9400’s version was 1.0, so I knew that I was okay to upgrade it using the USB stick that came in the Accessory Upgrade Kit. This information is only shown for a few seconds, so keep your eyes on the bottom right-hand corner of the display so you’ll see it when you turn on the machine.
Assuming that you need to upgrade to version 2.1, turn off your Janome 9400 and get your USB stick. Remove the cap and insert it into the port on the right side of the machine. Press it in firmly so it is secure. Now comes the magic part!
Press and hold both the Needle Up/Down and the Lockstitch buttons as you turn on the Janome 9400. Hold both of these buttons until the display screen turns to yellow. This should happen quite quickly, so you won’t have cramped fingers!
As the software installs, there will be a colour bar that comes down the display screen, starting with medium blue and then changing briefly to red and then to aqua – it’s almost like playing with the colour wheel! Finally, the screen will return to a solid medium blue colour and will say “FINISH” on it (see the image on the manual page above). This means that the software install was successful.
Turn off your Janome 9400, pull the USB stick out of the machine and put the cap back on it. Now when you turn on your Janome 9400, you should see that it has been updated to “Ver. 2.1”.
That was easy, wasn’t it?!
One more quick thing to do. Get out your original instruction manual that came with your Janome 9400 and turn to page 97 for instructions on how to reset everything to the default state. Press on the Set button (wrench icon) on the display screen and scroll through the options, using the arrows at the bottom of the screen until you come to “Reset All to Defaults” and press “Yes”. You can then choose “OK” to return to the Home screen.
To follow along with me as I upgrade my Janome 9400, click on the image below.
I'll have more information about using the four new feet with the Janome 9400, so be sure that you are subscribed to my blog or my YouTube channel to be notified when these are posted.
Do you have your Accessory Upgrade Kit yet? Let me know in the Comments below.
Creatively,
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