Activate brakes via staging?

[Krymson Skorpyon]

In order to improve my chances of recovering upper-stage boosters that drop off either in the latter stages of launch or just before re-entry, I would like to add a couple of air-brakes that deploy when I stage the component.  I have not yet figured out how to do that with the stock action groups - when I add the air-brakes to the "Stage" group, they activate at each staging, which is not what I want. 

Is there an addon that allows actions other than firing a separator, firing a rocket, or arming a parachute, as part of the staging system?

[Misguided Kerbal]

On 5/18/2020 at 8:01 PM, Krymson Skorpyon said:

In order to improve my chances of recovering upper-stage boosters that drop off either in the latter stages of launch or just before re-entry, I would like to add a couple of air-brakes that deploy when I stage the component.  I have not yet figured out how to do that with the stock action groups - when I add the air-brakes to the "Stage" group, they activate at each staging, which is not what I want. 

Is there an addon that allows actions other than firing a separator, firing a rocket, or arming a parachute, as part of the staging system?

Have you tried action groups? You can activate the action group just before staging.

[Cavscout74]

14 minutes ago, Misguided_Kerbal said:

Have you tried action groups? You can activate the action group just before staging.

Or even set the action group to trigger the particular stage instead of using the spacebar - for example, set both the airbrakes on the booster and the decoupler to fire with action group #1, then the next set of boosters with AG 2, etc

[Krymson Skorpyon]

Yes, I've used action groups, and the airbrakes activate via the "brakes" action group, as well.  That's not what I want, though.

I want to be able to activate the airbrakes through the staging system.

[Nightside]

This would be a great mod.

[Geonovast]

This can be done with SmartParts

You would put the brakes in an action group, and use a SmartPart... part to activate the action group upon staging.

 

[Nightside]

4 hours ago, Geonovast said:

This can be done with SmartParts

You would put the brakes in an action group, and use a SmartPart... part to activate the action group upon staging.

 

I would guess that this means that you could just patch the smartparts module onto the airbrakes themselves,too.

[linuxgurugamer]

30 minutes ago, Nightside said:

I would guess that this means that you could just patch the smartparts module onto the airbrakes themselves,too.

You could, but don't  complain if something  goes wrong