ESP8266 controller

[nathangray]

Using an ESP8266 and Telemachus to create a WiFi Kerbal controller. I'm mostly focusing on buttons here, since tablets work great for display.

Currently just a proof of concept, it connects over WiFi so you're no longer tethered to one computer.

Source and a compiled binary available on Github

[stibbons]

Doing it in an esp8266 looks like a really novel approach, great work!  I'm looking forward to seeing how your project progresses.

As far as the lag goes, do you know if that's mostly because of the esp8266's wifi performance, network in general, telemachus, or something else?

[Freshmeat]

As Stibbons said, using Telemachus is an interesting choice. I figure you have attitude and throttle right now, what are your plans?

[nathangray]

I'm not sure about the source of the lag, so I'm open to ideas on how to narrow it down.  A comparison with the web interfaces shows about the same delay between operating a control and the on-screen response, so I'm leaning toward Telemachus or KSP itself.

Here's a snippet of the debug while quickly changing the throttle from max to off:

{"t.universalTime":17020.1764956399,"f.throttle":1}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[1.000]"]}
{"t.universalTime":17020.29649564,"f.throttle":1}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.367]"]}
{"t.universalTime":17020.29649564,"f.throttle":1}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.015]"]}
{"f.setThrottle[1.000]":0,"f.setThrottle[0.367]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.41649564,"f.throttle":1}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.000]"]}
{"f.setThrottle[0.015]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.53649564,"f.throttle":0.367}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.000]"]}
{"f.setThrottle[0.015]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.53649564,"f.throttle":0.367}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.000]"]}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.65649564,"f.throttle":0.01499999}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.65649564,"f.throttle":0.01499999}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.65649564,"f.throttle":0.01499999}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.65649564,"f.throttle":0.01499999}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.65649564,"f.throttle":0.01499999}
Sending data: {"run":["f.setThrottle[0.000]"]}
{"f.setThrottle[0.000]":0,"t.universalTime":17020.77649564,"f.throttle":0}

Messages to Telemachus start with "Sending data:".  You can see that Telemachus does not immediately respond with the correct value, but that it takes a bit, even though it acknowledges the change in its response.

On the other hand, the flag waving at the launch pad is not exactly smooth right now, so system load might be an issue...

 

To be honest, I did it just to see if I could.  There are two other things I'd like to try now.  I have one of those emergency stop buttons, and I think I can get a fully self-contained abort button.  I'd also like to see a remote docking control.

[Freshmeat]

Remote docking control sounds really cool. Can Telemachus send the position and direction of the targets docking port?

[nathangray]

On 03/01/2016 at 2:23 AM, Freshmeat said:

Remote docking control sounds really cool. Can Telemachus send the position and direction of the targets docking port?

Looks like it has the needed information available.