Jump to content

[1.0.5] NanoKube: Ultra Tiny Probes!


Patrick Suddeth

Recommended Posts

:cool: UPDATED 2.2.3 4-14-2016: New Parts :cool:

NanoKube now includes an experimental all-in-one Kube! The new Kube has an antenna and a single 1U solar panel integrated into the probe body, so it's a fully functional satellite in one KSP probe part. I haven't used the KAS mod, but let me know if this helps those of you who do. The most major difference between this version and assembling your own is that this Kube can only support one single solar panel, as I haven't been able to figure out how to get a working solar system made of multiple panels facing in multiple directions to work properly. At least this one has RCS so you can point the single panel toward the sun.

 

Are you not entertained by your assemblies acting unpredictably? The new Antenna2 has the same specs as the old antenna, but has a better model so you don't have to guess which way it will extend. The round bit stays still, while the yellow bit extends out.

 

 

:cool: UPDATED 2.2.2 4-12-2016: Hotfix :cool:

 

Playing KSP again after my hiatus, and I wanted to get my mod working again.

I've upped the parts' heat tolerance. They no longer appear to explode immediately on the launchpad or during a vigorous launch for the moment.

Research tree requirements have been tweaked to align with new research.

     To get the parts, research Basic Science, Miniaturization, and Precision Engineering

 

I believe I've fixed all the bugs I had with RemoteTech compatibility, so version 2.2.2 restores the .cfg for that temporarily removed in 2.2.1.

/update

Good things come in small packages. Launch swarms of tiny, low-cost satellites when you're on a money or weight budget.

If you're interested in the currently-growing area of Nanosatellite missions such as CubeSats, this is the mod for you. While these Kubes may not provide the most science compared to some other options, they're simple and inexpensive to make, costing between 160-500 Funds each depending on how you want to build it. Fly a swarm of 20 of them for less than 5000 Funds. They are very small and lightweight, having minimal weight impact on a rocket. You could even slap one on the side of another mission to get a little more from your launch. The experiments are designed to be repeated many times, so unless you want to spend a long time making one Kube do all the work, launching multiples is recommended.

RemoteTech Upgrade:

Included in the download is an additional folder that can be used to make NanoKube RemoteTech compatible.

If you have the latest version of NanoKube installed, all you should need is to install the RemoteTech_Upgrade folder according to the installation instructions. The upgrade requires RemoteTech in order to work, of course.

Currently includes two experiments: A particle detector on the smaller-sized probe, and a combination magnetic field detector/particle detector on the larger one. The small one is a mere 10cm/side.

These Kubes are meant to reflect the simpler design of nanosatellites compared to larger and more complex satellites, so you can start flying them at tech level 4. Super-tiny reaction wheels take some extra tech to design however, so expect to be flying the probes without them at first until you get your research a couple levels higher.

Mod includes: 4 probes(2 each of each size, one with reaction wheels, one without

2 types of solar panels, sized for each probe type

A decoupler sized and tuned for very small probes

An antenna to match the probes

Also adds two custom science experiments for the kubes to perform.

Download from Curse:

http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/227600-nanokube
 

Download form SpaceDock

http://spacedock.info/mod/740/NanoKube

 

 

How-to-assemble-a-Kube guide:

http://imgur.com/a/IvFBo

Pix:

NILD06V.png

m9Un2d5.png

Licence:

Full license in download .zip

CC-BY-SA 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

 

On my todo list:

Make animated deployable solar panels (so all 4 deployable panels on a Kube can point toward the sun for more power)

Make a better animation for antennas (unrolling the antenna rather than stretching it)

Advanced Kube parts

        Make detectors modular, and add more experiments

        Ion engine and fuel tank to sink all that extra deployable-panel power into

Figure out how to get multiple-piece solar panels working

Edited by Patrick Suddeth
Added SpaceDock link
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Suggestion: goo canister and gravioli and temp sci experiments ;) nice mod nonetheless!

Also: Remote tech and KAS support.

I recomand removing from curse and put it on kerbal stuff. That way I am able to receive notifications :D

EDIT: uploaded to kerbal stuff(if you mind I will take the mod down ;))

quick question where is the source file?

Also here is kerbal stuff link: https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/578/NanoKubes

Edited by Joshwoo69
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Suggestion: goo canister and gravioli and temp sci experiments ;) nice mod nonetheless!

Also: Remote tech and KAS support.

I recomand removing from curse and put it on kerbal stuff. That way I am able to receive notifications :D

EDIT: uploaded to kerbal stuff(if you mind I will take the mod down ;))

quick question where is the source file?

Also here is kerbal stuff link: https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/578/NanoKubes

Well under the CC-BY-SA license, I can't stop you from hosting it yourself, though you've prodded me into signing up on Kerbal Stuff to have an official download project there. I can see how update notifications and subscriptions would be nice to have, seeing as I've updated my mod three times in as many days. :P

As for science experiments, I'm intending my kubes to use my own custom-made experiments. However, the two experiments I have now are not going to be the only ones. I plan on adding more experiments as I make them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah the additional link is broken... :P. Copy my link and it should work fine :D

also send me a PM of your username on kerbal stuff. I will add it to the additional author's page ;)

Unauthorized

The server could not verify that you are authorized to access the URL requested. You either supplied the wrong credentials (e.g. a bad password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials required.

Edited by Joshwoo69
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah the additional link is broken... :P. Copy my link and it should work fine :D

also send me a PM of your username on kerbal stuff. I will add it to the additional author's page ;)

Link's been fixed. Apparently I needed to hit the giant green "Publish" button before it would be visible to anyone but myself. Link worked fine last night when i posted it, but I think I was still logged in to kerbal stuff so of course it worked for me then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just an update on the update.

I'm in the process of making single-part Kubes for KAS compatibility. I've gotten all the modeling done, and the antennas worked out, but I'm stalled on getting the solar panels to work. I'm not sure how to make a multi-collector solar panel where the parts face in different directions work out.

I've started looking into how to get these RemoteTech-compatible

I also have some deployable solar panels in the works, but they aren't sun-tracking and would be two-sided, so they're also waiting on the solution to multi-part solar panels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure, how big the attachment nodes are, but try to make them smaller.

As far as I could tell, those were the small attachment nodes. I haven't found any smaller ones so far, only larger ones, and I'm not sure how to turn the node markers off.

The solar panels have attachment nodes in the first place because the nodes showed up as soon as I made the panels able to be stack-attached, to allow the 1U cubes to be able to have 6 solar panels.

Once I'm able to get the solar panel problem worked out, I'm going to combine the solar panels, antennas, and probe bodies into a single model so the nodes problem shouldn't be around anymore, along with making these KAS-compatible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reminds me of this. :)

omg its so cute!

@modrelatedstuff:

You should totally add some sort of micro SCANsat and Karbonite part! that way you could launch a ship with four of these radially attached with radial decouplers on 4x symetry that way you can do all four scans at the same time! Low-res, Altimatry/Biome/Anomoly, and High-res and then scan for karbonite all at the same time with one quick launch and no more slapping all the parts onto a single probe, making it look super ugly with that gnobby karbonite scanner slapped on he side...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any idea where I could find suitable engines for these? I'd like to set up a huge omni-swarm around the planet for my remotetech game, but I'd like the swarm to fly to their own orbits once I have them up in space rather than moving one larger carrier and dropping them off all one at a time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any idea where I could find suitable engines for these? I'd like to set up a huge omni-swarm around the planet for my remotetech game, but I'd like the swarm to fly to their own orbits once I have them up in space rather than moving one larger carrier and dropping them off all one at a time.

I don't know much about outside engines that'd fit these. From my memories of old mods I used to use, if the 0.5m parts pack is still up-to-date, you might be able to make some mini 0.5m rockets to attach to your one larger rocket. You'd still have to deploy one at a time, but you you can use one mini-carrier per orbit to help spread the load.

If it helps, the Kubes are 10cmx10cm at their base. NanoKube engines are on my to-do list, sometime after I can finish Realism Overhaul compatibility.

One of the mission ideas I think I added to the OP was to fly a swarm of 20-30 kubes at a handful of orbits with varying RA's to provide communications for things like drone flights around Kerbin, which sounds like what you're trying to do. Keep in mind, though, that the NanoKube RemoteTech antenna has a range of about 300km.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any idea where I could find suitable engines for these? I'd like to set up a huge omni-swarm around the planet for my remotetech game, but I'd like the swarm to fly to their own orbits once I have them up in space rather than moving one larger carrier and dropping them off all one at a time.

You could look into what Patrick said... but I have something WWWAAAAYYY better (no offence Patrice x.x)

get the 2.0 PRE release for RoverDudes sounding rockets, which are like... .3 things, SRB's and they even have a little LFO rocket. You can keep it iddy biddy by getting Procedural Tanks, and there is a tiny .3 or .5 rocket engine, but its fare from efficient (you could go into the config and you could make it very efficient, something like 1000 IPS Vac and a thrust of maybe 75, that would give the rocket great fuel economy as well as a really really good TWR for such a tiny little probe

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I looked on the site a bit more, and found something better than water propulsion; Propellantless Propulsion.

I would also suggest looking on the site a bit more, especially the products (they are very interesting products indeed).

Thats actually pretty intresting! I wonder how something like that in KSP would work, you could make up some sort of resource that ssslllooooooooowly degrades over time. The resource would be "Electromagnetic Tether". It would be contained in a small box attached to the bottom of the satelite, and when deployed, the tether would slide out below the satellite, but the electricity requirement would be large, maybe 30 ec/s, but, the DV would be limited to your battery size and charge rate

- - - Updated - - -

I too took some time to look around on that site. Something like this could be used to make solar panels In Situ- but it would require super advanced modeling skills to make the legs move. Or you could have it be a box that "prints" the solar panels out. But that would require KAS to be able to attach the solar panes after....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding multiple solar panels, C.O.R.E. makes them work somehow, but it (and its code) is not permissively licensed. Maybe you could ask JoePatrick1 to release the plugin under a more permissive license. You might also keep an eye on the Modular Common Spacecraft Bus, which will (hopefully) end up with multiple solar panels on each part as well.

EDIT: Another idea. Have you tried giving each "suncatcher" transform (or whatever it is that defines a panel's facing) a different name? Then, each ModuleDeployableSolarPanel could be uniquely named and pointed. I see this was suggested over here, but you didn't say if you'd tried it.

Edited by Kerbas_ad_astra
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding multiple solar panels, C.O.R.E. makes them work somehow, but it (and its code) is not permissively licensed. Maybe you could ask JoePatrick1 to release the plugin under a more permissive license. You might also keep an eye on the Modular Common Spacecraft Bus, which will (hopefully) end up with multiple solar panels on each part as well.

EDIT: Another idea. Have you tried giving each "suncatcher" transform (or whatever it is that defines a panel's facing) a different name? Then, each ModuleDeployableSolarPanel could be uniquely named and pointed. I see this was suggested over here, but you didn't say if you'd tried it.

I think I have tried different-named suncatchers. I tried at least two different ideas with the ModuleDeployableSolarPanel but neither worked well. The first was to make 4 solar panel modules in the code, each one using a different transform on the model. Only one of them functioned, as I could see by right-clicking the probe and seeing four solar panel stat sets in the pop-up menu, crowding things like the antenna deployment and science buttons off the screen. The second method was to use one module, but under the raycasttransform I put "suncatcher1, suncatcher2, suncatcher3, suncatcher4" This method got multiple panels to provide power, but only when one particular side was facing the sun and no other, while still crowding the UI.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...