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Freshmeat

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Posts posted by Freshmeat

  1. I happen to be a high school physics teacher, and I have thought long and hard about KSP. It could definitely teach senior students a lot about mechanics. The orbital parts is pretty much a given, but one learns a lot about inertial systems and Newtons laws when docking, in a quite intuitive way. The problem I face is that our school is bring your own device, and copyright management would be a royal nightmare. And most students have potatoes that would melt if KSP looked at them. Or Macs.

  2. First, grats on your project. It looks slick.

    Second, hardware suggestions:

    • I made a single-axis joystick out of a small wooden pin attached to a potentiometer. It worked pretty alright on a budget for rotation. For forward-reverse translation, I just use a stick between two microswitches.
    • The best enhancement of my second controller was the ability to switch between airplane and rocket control schemes: A selector that switches the roll and yaw axes in code. It was only after that I could fly spaceplanes.
    • You could improve above idea by mapping a joystick to EVA movements in a third option, freeing space and switches on your panel.
    • For your momentary switches, you can set them up as a keypad and save tons of input pins. It can be done with toggles as well, if you put in a diode after each switch to prevent ghosting.

    The only guy I know of that has a working navball is @stibbons, the author of Kerbal Simpit. Check his rather large source. Word of warning: I recall him taking a very long time to get the navball correctly done, and IIRC has a Teensy devoted just to doing that. This puts the price tag somewhat above £30.

    On the I/O plugin, I find myself very much on the fence. Look closely to your needs. The most versatile is kRPC, but it runs slower and is more complicated to write programs for. Kerbal Simpit has a cleaner way of interfacing than KSPSerialIO, but my requirements are better aligned with the latter due to familiarity.

    Ask around, there a lot of people more knowledgable than me that will love to answer. Even more so if you do it in the relevant plugin thread, where more people look ;) And be sure to post pictures so we can applaud your progress.

  3. @Burning Kan: I use a couple of Alexustras IVAs, but he has not developed anything for Mk 3 cockpits. And any and all new IVAs get my careful attention, I tend to spend a lot of time there. All my vessels are flow a mission at least once using IVA, so not having a proper one is make or break when I decide on mods.

  4. I have some 1200 hours on steam, and an unknown number since I started to launch the game outside steam. My wife and one of my kids has it as well, but neither has more than a couple of hours. It is very much a learning game, and if I did not have a background in physics I do not think I would have had the same appreciation of KSP.

    The fun comes at many different levels:

    First: Can I get a rocket of the pad?

    Then: Can I get to orbit? Can I get to the Mun? Even land there? Even return? Can I make a rendezvous between two ships? Can I get to another planet? And return? Can I make a vast space station? And one on the surface of a different planet? Can I do the same if I have to take care of life support to my kerbals? In a bigger solar system?

    The list just goes on and on. Right now I am driving around a planet, just to prove to myself I can do it (others have succeded). I got inspired to learn sufficient about Arduinos to build a custom control panel (glorified joystick). The point is the game is about challenge, and what you have to learn to overcome the challenge. KSP is not a game of quick reactions, but careful learning, planning, and execution.

  5. 9 hours ago, papuchalk said:

    <snip>

    But i have issues with throttle. When i launch the Rover from spaceplane hangar, all steering works fine (throttle and brake). But when i start the same rover from VAB building as most of the rockets, when i press "forward" button, the rover starts turning on one place. Obsiously one wheel goes frontwards, the other one goes backwards. And theres nothing i can do with it with wheel control menu (right click). Any help? Ofcourse for the real mission i need to start the rover on rocket from VAB..

    <snip>

    It sounds like it controls from the wrong direction. Have something that has "Control from here" option (probes, command seats and docking ports) facing forward and select it as control point after launch. I have forward and backward facing docking port juniors to enable backwards driving with throttle control.

  6. I have not had the chance to upgrade, but a question/suggestion:

    Konstruction has PAL devices as well. Part of the functionality includes a boost to the lifting abilities of nearby Kerbals when using KIS. The reasoning is that the crane might be unwieldy in-game and we cannot control both an operator Kerbal and the crane at the same time for KIS attachment. Have you done the same with your krane and would you consider it? I think the relevant code got referenced here

  7. As for releasing, I think it depends on whether you're in a flow with something right now. If so, a release will reveal the ever so inevitable bugs, prompting you to do those ten minute fixes that seems to consume days worth of spare time. Personally I am happy whenever I get it, and an upgrade from 1.3.1 will anyway be when I start a new career, pretty far from Near Future tech :wink:

  8. Specifically, my favourite launch vehicle is the Raven Vb series, my space programmes answer to the Soyuz rocket. It is a Twinboar with an orange on top of it and four Kickbacks to assist on take off. Takes a Skipper based third stage for 20 t to Mun intercept, and I can fly it to LKO for 3200 m/s even when drunk. I have spent quite some time trying to improve the design, but noting seems to handle as well.

    I use spaceplanes for crew transfer to and from LKO, and have recently even done a 36 t payload one, but I haven't got the patience to fly them for routine missions. Space shuttles are interesting in theory, but an equivalent payload of the Raven comes in at roughly the same price and a much higher failure rate (defined as revert to launch). I guess that KSP in this aspect models the current real world in that upgrades to old designs might not be the most cost-efficient way of doing things, but the most reliable.

  9. Good going. Also saw part of your CNC router timelapse, I am not at all envious.

    For alarm boxes, I do not recall by whom I got the idea, but I use a small 3d printed grid box beneath a piece of acrylic glass. Cardboard can work as well, but I have access to a small amount of 3d printing. A piece of paper between the box with appropriate labels, and suddenly it looks a lot like real annunciator boxes.

  10. 6 hours ago, KerbalBoy said:

    Hello! Just ordered stuff to basically copy Hugo Peeters  panel as featured in Make Magazine. For fun I've also ordered a Lattice semiconductor FPGA eval board to delegate some of the switch I/O and control to make the Arduino code even easier.

    Anyway, I'd really appreciate it if someone could bring me up to speed with the story on Windows 10. Does the latest version work bi-directionally? Do I need to mimic a keyboard? I apologize if this is a real newbie question .. I've searched around the forum and couldn't quite get the full picture on Win10 compatibility. Thanks!

    Hi KerbalBoy, welcome aboard.

    Unfortunately, compatibility with windows 10 is a matter of try and see. Many boards work just fine, others refuse no matter what you tell them. If you are unlucky, you can buy a €1 usb->twi serial port and connect to your Arduino through that instead.

    Using a Arduino Uno or Mega wioll not give you keyboard emulation, you need a Leonardo or Due for that, but KSPSerialIO does not need to emulate a keyboard. It just sends commands to KSP itself.

    Hope this helps, good luck on your endeavor and keeps us posted. Feel free to ask questions, this thread is a friendly place.

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