richfiles

Bummer... I'd still say to replace them. If you can't ninja the tags, I'd say do something silly like add a "k" to the front of each default tag, and make a new equivalent emoticon... Then leave the stock yellow ones alone, hidden away by the main "Emoticon" list, so it takes the extra clicks to reach. We add a "k" to the front of everything else, why not these! Eh, it's only my opinion though. In the meantime, I won't exactly be using the yellow ones though... Doesn't feel Kerbal enough!

For real!? Who's idea was it to add a bunch of non stylistically conforming smileys in the first place... They're an eyesore. Let me ask you this... Who uses them... I certainly don't. I feel they just don't fit here, so I actively avoid them... Even when we had the big mass exodus of devs, and everyone was talking about onion cutting ninjas and stuff... I still didn't even see one single use of even the ninja smily... It was always just the crying Kerbal. Never the yellow ninja. Doing a search for "ninja", "Ninja'd", and "ninjas" and clicking a bunch of random posts in new tabs tells me the same thing... No one seems to be genuinely interested in the "oddball non Kerbal smileys". That one just happened to be easy to search for. I don't know what the actual site adoption of the yellow smileys are, but Instead of making assumptions, i have one simple suggestion: You say changing them will break all previous uses of the yellow smileys... So? Have a poll. Sticky a poll on the top of the announcements or something, and get the opinion of the forum users. I know I won't miss the yellow smileys, cause I just simply don't use them, period! Simply ask: Do you want to leave the Yellow Emoticons as is, or do you want to replace them with Kerbals (at the expense of breaking any previous use of the yellow emoticons).

Cool!

Another development... I my be down to having space for only four of my vertical edgewise meters in my main panel instead of five... I may have some extra meters... I mounted the slide guides for the steel mounting rails for the horizontal control panel (so it can be slid out of and detached from the instrument panel's main body), and discovered that due to lack of foresight, that the steel support rails cut into the edges of the meters. Now, I think I'm okay on the right side, by the vertical velocity meters, since the meter is shorter and round. Means I have a hair more clearance. Even if I don't have enough clearance, I can make a SUPER easy compromise... I can put my digital LED altimeter readout below the meter instead of above it, as I'd originally planned. Long story short, right side is okay. Left side... I have three options: A: I can give up a meter and have just 4 meters in the panel. One single meter, and three dual meters. I'd rather not do that! B: I can CUT INTO THE LEFTMOST METER HOUSING, as I think that the internal mechanism clears the rail... Maybe? I'd... I'd really rather not do that! C: I can buy another dual edgewise 1251 meter and switch over to having 4 full meters... Which is actually the same number of readouts as 3 duals and 2 singles! Sounds good! Right? Right!? Well, the catch is the cost! I got INCREDIBLE deals on the meters I have already. I mean... UNREAL deals... The kind of deals that shocked me. Deals I've not seen since... The meters that are for sale at the moment cost at least 3 times more... After negotiating a reduced price! Additionally, I'm torn. I found a pair of meters that are direct Arduino compatible (0-5 volt DC input). Not bad, no adapters needed... Catch is, they are $65 PER METER! Yikes! Of course, I'm committed. If a second ebay offer falls through (I offered $42 per meter... LOL ), then I'm gonna buy anyway. The big question, is do I buy both meters available and retire all of my GE 180 single edgewise meters, committing to a unified 1251 Dual edgewise layout across the board... If I do that, it'll set me back $130... Not sure I can justify THAT much! I spent half that amount on all three of the 1251 meters I already own! Again, YIKES! That leaves me in an interesting situation... I'll have either 4 dual meters on my main panel and 2 single meters on my overhead panel, or I'll have 4 dual meters on my main panel and 1 dual meter on the overhead panel. That depends on whether I get just one dual meter, or I blow the whole budget on a pair of them. Regardless of whether I get just one meter or if I get the pair of dual meters, I'll have either a pair of the single meters, or possibly even 4 single meters, that I simply won't be using anymore... What to do, what to do... So... If anyone is interested in my single meters, feel free to PM me. I'm not really sure what to do with them other than try to pass them on to another interested party. If no offers, I'll just put them up on ebay. I can make custom scales for them. One meter is already converted to be backlit (and will require custom scales to be made). The other three meters can still be converted, or left as is. They require an adapter to drive them from an Arduino, but those are cheap on ebay. I could order the correct adapters, or even build them, and verify everything works. Hmm... I'll also need to get a 24 volt power supply to include with them. Again, I don't think I'll be needing the single meters anymore, so if anyone's interested... PM me. **I have been PMed That being said, someone just dropped 6 of the same style meter (General Electric 180 Edgewise Meter) on ebay for about $25 + shipping... That's not a bad price, actually! Even better if you can get a good combined shipping deal, since it's all the same seller.

http://imgur.com/a/mm9Xv Be orbiting while landed!

A banana is used to effectively put the perspective of this thread to scale.

Any chance of getting as many of the regular face emotes on the "top level" of the Overview in the smiley drop down menu? Or maybe do away with the Overview/All Emoticons selection altogether. There's no way the box takes up so much space that it's content needs to be split up. It takes me three clicks to get to a face that's not on the top level, and hasn't been recently used. Too many clicks... for this. --> I suppose one simple viable solution might be to just remember whether you left the menu selection set to Overview or Emoticons, across all pages, I notice it remembers if you switch to the Emoticons (all) view once you've used it once on a post, but the second you reload, or use another page, it defaults back to Overview again. Minor quip, but it's been a pet peeve since the new icons were added. Last thing... Can we get those yellow alien blobs Kerbalized? Why do we have those there anyway! Are those yellow smileys the things transmitting the Duna SSTV signal!

Well... I took the plunge. I ordered the Futura stamp set to do my tape meter. man, that was spendy! I could have spent $5-10 on a cheap office stamper, but instead I went Futura, and it set me back just shy of $60 USD! I could have saved $20, but I figured, the fact I have to import this thing means I may as well buy the full set, so i don't have to deal with this again, if I suddenly find myself in need of more than just the numbers. Can't believe I had to buy three sets of numbers... No duplicates... Ugh...

Nope... Oh dear, looks like I'm dazed and confused... and very, very tardy! I suppose I can try this once... You there @Snark ?

**Unholy girly noises emanating from a dude** SO MUCH thanks! I look forward to it, and yes, I absolutely will share pics (vids) when I get to the point I can build it and actually make it work.

And of course, you can't forget the issue of memory. Even bumping from just an Uno to a Mega is a significant jump in SRAM, which leaves more room to actually work on your data.

Those modder forkers... I tell ya!

I'm looking for a way to export the values this mod generates to an external device, using another mod. I'm pretty new to coding, but I'm building an instrument panel to play KSP with. It'll have real analog gauges, a navball, joysticks, toggle switches, etc. I am curious though... Your mod produces a number of values that would be very useful to have outputted over the KSP Serial IO plugin, to my panel. A few people have even created their own forks of the KSP Serial IO plugin to handle custom data sets, and do things like connect with Action Groups Extended, for example. I'm going to need to ask that person how they did it, but I'd be VERY interested in outputting some of the values of this mod. Having the accurate burn time, countdown to burn, time to closest approach, distance at closest approach, and time to impact would be VERY nice values to display on my instrument panel! (**EDIT** I realize time to burn is a simple division of the burn time by 2, and then subtracting that from the time to node... So it's not actually necessary to actually transmit the data, as It's redundant... The important thing is having the accurate burn time, and more importantly than that, NOT having n/a, like the stock burn time does) Again... I really don't have the expertise to do this (yet), so I'm not even sure what I need to make this happen, but I suppose the variable names for the values that this mod produces would be as good a place to start as any. I'll ask the guy that integrated AGE how he got the serial plugin to interact with that mod, and go from there.

I haven't used krpc, but I've seen it mentioned before. I think so. If you can communicate with an Arduino or other microcontroller with it, and send values from KSP, then it ought to work just fine. There's plenty of types of meters too. I restricted myself to edgewise meters, cause that's the style i wanted, but there are other styles. Many meters can be had for fairly cheap. $3-6 for a meter or two from China. It's just dependent on what style you want, and how large you want it. Not many builds even go with edgewise meters, but I always share my experience building with them, incase others want to follow suit.

Well, the thing is generating video, animating a 3D ball, calculating vectors, reticulating splines, the good old fashioned brute force way! No graphics chip to handle it. I bought a Raspberry Pi knockoff to basically do the functional equivalent of play a few animated kerbal GIFs on a tiny CRT! It's SO beyond overkill, but at $15... I am cool with overkill!

Oh yeah. you were asking about HOW I controlled the meters too. Forgot to mention. I'll be using KSP Serial IO to communicate to an Arduino. Kinda important to include that detail.

I had a thought about your chair. I had suggested making it dual use. That might still not work, but I had this thought, and if it's useful to anyone... well, here it is. It explains itself. It lies on it's back, and the legs keep it at your desired angle for KSP play. Whatever setup you have your controller on, include your leg rests there. When not playing, you flip it upright, and you can wheel it around and use it as a regular chair, meaning if you have limited space, this does double duty. Better an idea come 2 months later than never!

Wait... So no more bus with 48 kerbals, each patiently waiting their turn to plant their very own flag (only to promptly take it down)... And then they had to go back home!

Not that hard. Depends on what type of meter you get. Ideally, you want to find a 0-5 volt meter... and then theoretically, you can just drive it with the PWM out of an Arduino. If you go with eBay meters, this is super easy. Buy meter, wire it up, write code. For me it was a little more complex, since I'm going with an Apollo style meter. Realistically, finding the meters you want can be an exercise in balancing price vs what you can find. I ended up getting GREAT prices, but I have to build some hardware to drive them, cause the Arduino can't directly drive them. Three of my meters are 0-10 volt dual meters. To drive them, I'll need a PWM signal to drive a transistor, which will in turn drive the meter with a larger voltage. Simple. Four of my meters are single meters, and they were beyond stupid cheap... $11 for a pair (paid $22 for two pair)... That is around 1/16 the normal cost... but they are 4-20mA current loop meters, preferred for industrial settings. They require a particular driver. To drive these, I needed to build four 0-5 volt to 4-20mA current loop conversion drivers. It's all electronics, so not really hard. As for looking for meters, the meters I used tend to average about $80 on eBay, but they sometimes pop up for lower prices. The single meters I am using are are GE/Yokogawa 180 analog edgewise meters. The dual meters that I'm using are International Instruments 1251 dual analog edgewise meters. I got them for a decently low price of about $20 each, mainly cause the seller was literally new at ebay. Both style meters are 6 inches tall. Dual meters seem to be far less common, but they pop up. If you want a smaller meter, the GE/Yokogawa 185 Edgewise panel meters are a great choice. The 185 is also good if you are on a budget. They are smaller, but still bigger than most cheap chinese made edgewise meters. These measure about 3 inches tall. I see them on ebay all the time, and last time I looked, I saw them routinely appear for around $10 to $25. Just be patient and wait for the right ones to pop up for sale. As for custom scales, you can disassemble the meters and print new scales and replace the existing scales with them. You might need to use a dab of glue or something to secure the ends, as the stock scales are metal. There ARE meters with integral backlighting, but I've not seen ANY in these styles for sale. Most meters of this style are used in power plants. My dual edgewise meters... Came from a power plant simulator... I kid you not! I guess they prefer to train prospective employees in a power plant that won't REALLY take out power on the east coast if they screw up! If you get meters with a 0-10 or 0-100 scale, and you like the style, there's no reason not to leave it, unless you REALLY want a custom scale. If you must have custom scales (like me ), then be careful when you disassemble the meters. The long bar that attaches the mechanism to the pointer is VERY brittle on some meters. My dual meters use what can only be described as a hollow tube of metal, not much thicker than foil. I got one broken, and am struggling to repair it. I used a resistor lead inserted into the tube's center to joint the broken halves, and I carefully soldered mass to the tail of the mechanism to counterbalance the added weight of an inch of resistor lead wire! Don't break them! Your best bet is to CAREFULLY remove the mechanism before working on scale replacement. You could carefully feed paper scales under the pointer, as long as you're careful though... Just watch the pointers! My meters are modded (some of them... I need to finish) for backlighting. I had to cut out portions of the internal structure with a Dremel and replace it with a formed polycarbonate piece that I can bolt in (that also secures the new scale). If you skim through the Simpit Repository thread, you'll find details of what I did to my meters on page 15 there: **EDIT** Sees your new post... Awesome! "You are only allowed to give 25 likes per day" -{NOOOOOOO!!! )

@Mattew The issue was addressed several pages back. not sure where. Long story short, is a 256 byte packet (0-255) is 1/4 (Pro Mini) or 1/8 (Uno) the entire SRAM of some Arduinos. Doubling the packet would drop available memory significantly, and that memory also needs to be used for executing your code! The Mega is in a much better state, with 8 Kb of SRAM. I won't even bother to use anything less than the Mega at this point, but the code has been intended to maintain compatibility with as many Arduinos as possible, I think, which would include the Uno. At least, I think that's what I got out of it, back then, when it was discussed.

It's OUT!

That's actually what I have planned... I'm just confused curious (naw, still confused ) what the old behavior of node ∆V was... Cause I'd always assumed it worked like ∆V remaining. As I said... Must have missed the memo, crossed the lines, etc, etc. I look forward to whatever Stibbons figures out! I don't know how the software you described would work to split everything off, but if you ever achieve a piece of software that can indeed do just that, You'll have my respect and gratitude!

I must have missed a memo... What did node delta V even do? was it just a static value of the total of a maneuver node? I mean, that's really only useful when paired with remaining ∆V, to calculate the percentage of a burn remaining. Seems to me like node ∆V and remaining ∆V could be used to recreate the analog "burn meter" that's on the left of the in game navball... Or am I missing something? I was planning on constructing the assembly below. It displays maneuver node ∆V remaining, time to burn, and displays via mechanical positioning, the percentage of the total burn remaining. It's a steel bar and a threaded rod, in a mechanism much like that of a floppy drive or optical drive head assembly. It'd read out the ∆V remaining value, and I figured I'd have to manually set the node total ∆V with a manual button to "lock" the node in. Node remaining ∆V is definitely the important one. (Spoilered to reduce clutter) Current method of operation would be to set up a maneuver node in the game. When it's where I want, I'd press a Maneuver Lock button on my controller, and the meter carriage would slide to the top position, and the maneuver node remaining ∆V would be stored in a total ∆V variable. The time to node and ∆V will display on the meter carriage. If remaining ∆V drops, it'll read the numeric value live, and the carriage will drop lower based on the percentage of the remaining ∆V out of the stored total ∆V, from when the Maneuver Lock button is pressed. When it gets to 0 ∆V, the meter carriage would be at the bottom of it's scale. Target Speed and Distance is a big deal though. Most certainly need those... **Scratches head** Hmm... do we have maneuver and target vectors too? I don't recall. Anyone else feel like Arduinos are sitting right at the edge of just barely performing all the stuff we want them to do...

What I got was certainly labeled Futura from the font site I got it from. I noticed the numbers are a little slimmer than the text. The alpha text is very "roundish". The image above is my template file for the two meters shown. I might have been using a condensed setting for the numbers, due to my meters being narrower than stock Apollo edgewise meters. They do look a little thinner than stock Apollo numbers.

This is my instrument panel (a work in progress, spoilered so it's not distracting from your build). You can see the Futura font in use in the second and sixth meters from the left. They only have paper test templates installed right now, but I'll be printing final scales on plastic (Nekoosa synthetic "paper"... It's a plastic sheet that looks like paper, but has good translucency and toner bonding). I still need to mod the other 5 meters for backlighting yet... Ehh... I need to get the dremel out... I actually hope to cut openings for the instruments in the aluminum plate that mounts to this chassis this weekend... That is, if I don't sleep through half the weekend. It's hard not to sometimes, especially after a long week at work!