richfiles

You know, @Freshmeat... An Arduino with a faster CPU like a Duemiwhatsitcalled, and with lots of ports, like a Mega2560... And INTEGRAL LEVEL SHIFTING would be an absolute killer device! Maybe an easier name too... Why can't this be a thing that exists! In the mean time, there's this thing: Level Shifter Shield. It looks like that particular model from that particular vendor had to be reworked. They say it works 100%, but since it had to basically be fixed after manufacturing, they're selling them for about $5. Not sure if it's what you need, but it might help, and it's cheap. It's not able to directly drive LEDs and other devices that require higher levels of current, but it makes all I/O 5 volt tolerant. You can use transistors to drive current, if you need to directly drive anything.

I think most people will be okay with a solid light, as long as it's simply there. If you figure out a way to update it in the future, awesome, but don't worry too much about it. If you have a way to code timed events in the mod, you could possibly even just have 3 - 5 small lights, and toggle them on an off by a script, if such a thing is possible, that is. I honestly have no idea what is an isn't possible with modding. I will honestly be happy with just the car itself modeled, even with a static red or amber front light. If you do decide to do it though, super pursuit mode could rely on KSP's control surfaces to function. Disable them for all axes, and have a right click GUI option to deploy or not deploy. Overall, Super Pursuit Mode would require several parts having deployed and non deployed states that would need to animate. Basically, little stabilizer fins, a front and rear spoiler, etc extend from the car (I guess as far as the show is concerned, meant to create extreme downforce to hold the car to the road at extreme speeds). If they are treated as fins, and could also all tied to an action group by default (like the gear button), then they could deploy/not deploy similar to airbrakes, without having to right click. You'd not wanna tie SPM to airbrakes though. KITT already has airbrakes! XD Super Pursuit Mode

Man... I had a 3 day weekend. First in a LONG time... I was SO looking forward to it! ... Strained my shoulder at work, and then got sick, on top of the injury... Wasted the WHOLE thing! Spent most of the time in bed! No setting up the mill. No assembling the enclosure and cutting out openings for the instruments... Not even soldering. Shame RL can't have a revert to VAB... I did get some nice foam from work though. It's the kind with the "egg crate" pattern on it. I plan to suspend it from the ceiling of the closet with the mill, to act as an acoustic dampener. I figure, the more sound deadening I can achieve int he closet, the better. A mill is useless if the neighbors complain every time I use it.

Yeah... We'll give you a month or two... I know better! The rings are aesthetic only and I don't think the ore amount varies but I could be wrong Is it possible to spawn a "prodigious" number of asteroids within the rings? Basically, always perfectly match the ring/planet inclination, and have the periapsis and apoapsis bounds be the inner and outer bounds of the rings. Eccentricity should be near or always circular. I think if an asteroid manages to spawn in an orbit that could intersect a moon in the rings... Cool! Why not let objects collide. Or maybe it already does this, and I missed it... I've said in the past. OPM is my reward (and incentive to hurry up) for finishing my desk mounted "cockpit" style controller.

hmm... what should it be named? How about JEBB? Interestingly, KITT actually works: KITT? Kerbal. Industries. Two. Thousand. KERB? Kerbal. Engineering. Roving. Bot. JEBB? Jeb Bot??? I can't think of any good ones. Personally, I like the original name KITT, with the slightly modified acronym, changing "Knight" to "Kerbal". Actually, KITT and KARR were the two main cars of the show, with KARR being EEEVIIIL™. KARR was KITT's predecessor, and the acronym stood for Knight. Automated. Roving. Robot., and became an antagonist, because his AI was basically psychopathic. The two cars were identical in hardware (basically, both were a modified Pontiac Trans Am), save for KITT's forward scanner being red, and KARR's being amber. KERB works well as a Kerbalized version of KARR. If you could create two versions, with one having a red light and the other an amber light in the front center, that'd let you get two more cars off the same texture, and very much please Knight Rider fans! I have not checked? Does your mod support real headlights/taillights? If so, that can be the differentiating factor... Just the color emitted by the front "scanner" light. One thing is undeniably certain though: It needs a probe core... It's gotta be able to move on it's own, without a pilot driver.

No rush, as you said you're busy... But KITT. You gotta do KITT from Knight Rider! Mega props if you can figure out got to toggle "Super Pursuit Mode"!

Has anyone tried for a double land/marine circumnavigation of Kerbin? Basically, hit up a land trip (maybe polar), and after making the complete circle, and with the same crew and rover, continue on by sea this time, crossing one of the two accepted narrow land bridges. Alternately, if a land circumnavigation already crosses one of the two land bridges, then one would already have a waypoint at both locations. Would one need only meet the waypoint they didn't depart from to count for a maritime attempt, since a land crossing through one of those points would have bridged that gap already? Note: This is merely a proposed route, not one taken, nor is it definite. I am also very curious about the points I marked in yellow. Due to the extreme stretching near the poles caused by the Mercator projection, I would suspect that the distance between the yellow points isn't that much different than the distance between the red points. I don't know how distorted the map is, but honestly... How does it compare with the green points even?why is this narrow spot not considered a valid maritime circumnavigation waypoint pair? Would two circumnavigations be permitted to overlap like this? Points 9-13 constitute a massive detour for the land trip (as these points comprise all the maritime trip, minus the final waypoint at 14), but the diversion is only for the purposes of a second circumnavigation, and it still ends up at the start point, even though you leave the start point a second time to continue to the maritime start point at point 8. Does this make sense? Would it be a valid double attempt? I ask this, because I'd start, not at the runway, but at the shore in front of the KSC. The reason is explained with the vessel i'd use. I want to drop my primary wheels after the land trip, to gain a drop in drag for the maritime trip. Basically, if I try this again, it'll be in a rebuilt and reengineered variant of the rover below. I present to you, Gilly Vanilli Much like the Challenger Titanic Fitzgerald I, II, III, and IV, and my Columbia Gasburgers refueling station (and diner)... This rover stays true to a long and proud tradition of naming all my major vessels after complete and utter disasters. I should have kept on driving... I'd already made it 1/3 of the way around Minmus. I wasn't even trying to circumnavigate... Never even crossed my mind then. Billy Bobdan and Alley Kerman were just doin' it for the science! My rover's design has a nicely compliant double rocker bogey suspension constructed out of docking ports. It's big, but if the last leg is water only, I could presumably ditch the suspension altogether by just undocking them and letting them sink into the ocean (or float, I dunno). That'll leave a long, streamlined vessel that would presumably be ideally suited for water, I hope. My Gilly Vanilli rover is around 44 tons, and has 32 wheels on 4 independent springy suspensions, and a main vessel basically suspended from the center of the suspension. I always play mods. Tweak scale is a Godsend. The ability to make parts however you need is way better than blowing your part count on lots of little bits to do the same. I'd like to do a new revision of Gilly Vanilli designed just for circumnavigations. Ditch the science lab for a large LF tank. Add Jets for incline boosting (the NERV is HEAVY), add runway wheel leaders (that can hopefully be either fixed, or be reliably manually deployable before unexpectedly large jumps land, to protect the drive wheels). It had built in jacks to raise the vehicle so wheels can be repaired. I've also never had a fatality in the vehicle, even when reduced to a scattering of parts. I actually observed the mechanism by which high velocities are contained rapidly when the suspension shreds. It's like skidding to a stop on 4 spring pegs! The only thing Gilly VanillI lacked was AN ENGINEER WHO CAN CHANGE A TIRE, ALLEY KERMAN... Yeah Alley, I'm looking at you! Funny story. I actually set out on my first circumnavigation, after getting an Engineer to whatever level the wiki said was required to change tires... Except with the new jobs feature, that entry was actually wrong for a short time, and so I never knew... So yeah... Went out on a circumnavigation run (in 0.90) with an "Engineer who said she could change tires"... She lied (Alley was deemed a nice "girly" name, and so I arbitrarily defined some of my Kerbals, her included) as ladies, before the official female kerbals were added. Alley is now a real woman (oh my) in my 1.1.x save. I shipped Alley off to Duna to get trained on tire changing, and then KSP updated to 1.0.x, and I got hardcore into building an Arduino based "cockpit" to build into my desk. Still a work in progress. I've actually played very little KSP in the mean time. I was primarily waiting for 1.1, and native 64 bit support (so I can enjoy my glorious 32 GB RAM). After 1.1 came out, I was just more invested in the project. It's slow going, but it is going. There were a few snags last year, with bad parts being ordered, and some design problems for controlling my Navball, but most of that's now been solved. I've moved on to working on the enclosure, and getting my meters, navball, readouts, and controls all mounted. I think once things are mounted and wired, and I can switch to programming, I'll be able to start getting parts of it up and running. The navball and the "DSKY" styled digital readouts... Those in particular... The first, cause it's just cool, and the second, cause I really look forward to having that kind of data without needing a MechJeb window open, or switching to Map or IVA views. One of my first goals upon returning to actively playing (using my "cockpit" controller, I would hope), will be this challenge. I had already tried to start a circumnavigation, and I REALLY wanna finish what I started. Billy Bobdan and Alley will take exactly one step back from their starting point, the LOOONG way around! I should probably roll back from the 40-50 m/s speeds when the terrain gets too hilly though! There's popping your tires... And then there's hoping your suspension!

Not so much Kerbal controller related, as just simply setting up the tools to be able to actually make stuff for it... I did more work on the mill yesterday and today. Made up the initial frame to suspend the rubber mat from. I got all the mounting hardware to secure the mill to the table, and got some light inside the closet. One of the first things I'll so with the mill, once I'm completely set up, is to mill out the large side view window for the tape meter (it's currently only has a single digit at a time end viewport). Milling out the side will allow a NASA style tape meter to be shown. I'm also going to (reluctantly) mill off the side mount for the rotary switch mechanism. It's such a cool switch setup, but it takes too much width. I'm thinking I'll remount the gear to something rear mounted, or swap the gear for a belt pulley. I can drive that with a stepper with an encoder. I'll punch a tiny hole in the tape, at the 0 meters position, and use an optical interruptor to make that into my index. That ought to work well, and be a relatively narrow profile. The beauty of having a mill, is nothing is really out of my reach, from custom brackets to mount my enclosure pieces together, to custom facia, like what I'll make for the DSKY! This is the wood box frame. I have not had time to cut and suspend the mats from it yet. Tis a tight fit, Aye tells ya! I forgot about a shelf in the closet, so I may just drape the mat partly over the mill, at light level. I'd rather not block that shelf. I suppose I could consider getting some foam and a few adjustable shower/coat hanger rods (the kind that has a spring or adjustment so it stays up by squeeing between two walls). I'd hold the foam in place with he rods, and could mount it way high, near the ceiling. Maybe I can even get that kind of foam with the... pattern of hills and valleys. I think that's good for sound dampening. I might just line the walls under the mat with that foam too. I wanna reduce noise to as quiet as possible. I do have neighbors. I saw the light, and realized how important it was to get this mill set up for the first time in 4 years. Also, before you ask about the board the light is mounted to: yes, no, no, and oh yeah... Is it crooked? Is it screwed down? Do I care? Is it really wedged between he two walls that hard?!

Has anyone seen some of the new fuel stuff int he Devnotes for 1.2? Could be interesting. I still see GPO being a very valuable tool and hope compatibility with he new system works out. I don't think flow priority is as refined as the GPO pumping system. I do believe it still needs a valid crossfeed path.

So, a huge development for me... I was watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and the end credits started to (finally) roll. I had the crazy thought... What could I get done during the time it takes to roll these credits? It was apparently enough time that I fixed my mill's jammed Z-axis! Not even joking. I fixed my mill. During the end credits of LotR. It's the most time I've ever dedicated to working on it! Since I'm in an apartment, it's not good enough that I just fix it and run it. It's in a closet right now, but I bought some rolls of long rubber mat (about a meter wide, and several long). My plan is to make a simple box frame with some cheap lumber and screw the rubber mat around the box (and maybe some sound dampening too), to shield the walls and floor from chips and cutting fluid. I have tomorrow off, so maybe I can get it done then. Having the mill up and running gives me the chance to more easily cut my panels... I hope... It is a small mill, so I hope I can fit it all in! I also hope my neighbors work during the day. **EDIT** Man, It's been forever since I even thought about using that thing! I cleaned out the closet, so now I have a 3x5.5 foot (0.91x1.6 meter) machine shop! I measured up the table I got for it ages ago, and figured out the hardware I need to mount it safely and securely. I think I have a few rolls of LED light strips as well, so I can mount those for lighting in the closet. It's only a 500 watt motor on it (it is a rather tiny mill), and I have power run to the room via one of those old style computer power distribution boxes (they would typically sit under your big old CRT monitor, and have several pushbutton power switches to turn on your computer and all it's various peripherals. Basically, I'll be able to plug in the Mill, LED strip power source, and my DRO (when I get the scales installed), and I'll be able to just push the button on the front of the box to power things up. My milling table even has a proper drain, so if I do a decent enough job in my rubber mat "box" around the mill, I could presumably even use proper cutting fluids and such! The milling table has a door in the front, and you can run a hose from eh drain to the bucket. I could even get a pump and set up a cutting fluid recycler! Maybe... I probably will take a while to get everything properly set up, unfortunately. The main instrument panel is also rather huge. Trying to mill it would be difficult. If I had room, it'd be possible to mill by doing it in sections, but I have only 5 extra inches of clearance on either side, when the mill is extended to one extreme or the other, so I am quite limited by the small space of the closet it's in. What ought to be doable though, is the smaller DSKY face panel. What I would like to do is machine the display openings from a sheet of alodine treated aluminum. I have a nice piece that'll work, though if I can get my hands on some solution, I'll refinish it, so the machined surfaces are also treated. Doing that will give the DSKY it's own distinctive feel, as if it were a module, in and of itself. If I can find a reasonable optical filter to use, I'll mask the annunciators and the DSKY LED readouts and block them as two whole areas (like the real DSKY was arranged). I'd like to find a grey or grey-gold filter, but will settle on anything that'll genuinely work. It's a tiny shop, but it'll do for now! The top panel of my controller, I want to paint a similar "hammered" green. All the various brands of these Chinese mini mills are all actually the same model, made by the same source. Different retailers just order them with their colors and nameplates. Jet is white, Harbor Freight and Seig are red... Knowing they are all the same, I honestly chose the Grizzly, cause it was green, the koolest kolor!

It's happening! I got the sheet metal parts for the Kerbal controller chassis cut. I think I'm gonna make the control and instrument sections separable. I'll be able to unscrew the support ribs, and then slide the controller section off from the front of the instrument section. I'd really LOVE to get the structural aspects of this build hammered out next weekend (I work all through this weekend... ). I also realize that I should consider getting a pair of saw horses and some planks... Working outside was wonderful today! It was cool, breezy, and I had SPACE to work in! The steel square tube is curved with a very slight arc. They came off the Playstation 3 demo stand at the Gamestop where I used to work, before the store closed. When we switched from PS3/Xbox360/Wii to PS4 and Xbox One demo units, I took the old demo stands apart and salvaged the parts. Green LED lighting from the Xb360 stand, plastic and metal parts, etc. The curve of the square tube gives the grey panels a little curve too, and I just can't get over how NICE it looks and feels! The curve also makes the front edge lower, but raises the thickness slightly closer to the front, so it makes extra room for components like the joysticks to fit much easier, and closer to the front. I have plenty of leftover aluminum and plastic (I previously mentioned the plastic came from poster hangers from the same Gamestop), so I can easily create side pieces and internal ribbing to support the control panel structure. Actually, the plastic might serve as a good mounting structure for the side panels. It's thick, about .25 inch (6.35 mm), relatively soft material. I should be able to screw into it edgewise, meaning I can attach to it at 90° angles. A simple easy mounting solution. I will be using the grey plastic to line the inside of the keyboard cutout, so that there's no chance of scratching my keyboard up when sliding it into the space... Or I might notch out the trim that supports the front instrument panel, so my steel ribs are all the way out to the sides. Then I can just screw the sides to the ribs. For the front edge, I may actually mount another grey panel to the bottom of the unit, so the rounded edge is on both top and bottom. I have not made the cutout for the keyboard yet, nor have I notched the instrument panel so the steel square tube can insert through it. The grey panels are very thin, and I'll have a section in front of the DSKY that bends downward. This is to allow clearance for the DSKY, and it'll provide just enough clearance for the slider pots that will sit in front of it. I'll make a couple guides from angle bracket inside the chassis, and arrange screw holes to secure the tube to the chassis. This also allows the control unit to be unscrewed from the chassis, and the whole control unit slid out of the instrument unit. I'll have an interconnect (maybe a card edge connector, I have PLENTY of those) to electrically connect the two halves. With this arrangement, If I wanted to take it to the Hackfactory (a maker space in Minneapolis where a robotics group I occasionally attend meets), or to something like a Maker Faire (I know they have one in the same area), I could move it around easier, without risking banging up the thinner control portion. You can see how the grey panels are elevated, concealing a portion of the instrument panel. I can have a connector joining the two parts in this area. Only the DSKY will extend below this line, and I've shown mockups previously that describe exactly how this will work. Note, the surface these photos were taken on is not level, and the entire control assembly was sitting a bit low. The exposed height of the instrument panel should be a little over 6 inches. cutting all the different openings is gonna be... fun! I have a rattle can of Rustoleum Hammered green paint, and I intend to spray the main chassis with it. The instrument panel face has two options... I can cut up some of my grey plasticized aluminum panels to match the openings and place it on top of the bare aluminum panel, for absolute consistency, or I can paint it. I have a similar can of grey paint... One will certainly look nice, but it doubles my work for cutting openings. I want clean cuts, so I'm probably gonna have to use a Dremel and take it VERY slow. I wish i could get my mill up and running... I'd just mill out the openings. Also something not shown, is that I have some thin aluminum panels that have been treated with Alodine. It's a chemical chromate passivation process used frequently on aluminum for defense, military, and aviation applications. It results in the aluminum having a yellow-gold finish. I'm considering using it as a trim piece to make the DSKY stand out. Haven't made a final decision though (again... Lots of extra work, and I don't know if I can do the work without screwing up the surface anyway). Obligatory backside... Dat Chassis

The annunciators were test fitted, and it turns out I can fit 20 of them very comfortably, and it doesn't make the DSKY feel too wide. Not bad! I also mocked up a bunch of annunciator labels in the image, just to see how things look. I like! Note that the actual text might yet change. I plan to order a bunch of green and a few red ones. Needless to say... I have enough yellow ones! I am also really loving the fact that all my attitude vector annunciators for the FDAI crosshair mode selector can fit entirely within the left row. My rotary switch will select what attitude vector my navball's flight director crosshairs will display, and the DSKY will indicate the actual mode I'm in. I fitted everything into a rough layout to see if the widest parts will fit. Believe me, it'll be close. It's SO close, that I may be forced to make my Maneuver Node ∆v carriage meter only 4 digits wide instead of 8. It's a tolerable sacrifice. Most burns don't need over 9000 9999 m/s of ∆v (impossible! ), but if they do, I can very well still display up to 999K. Same goes for time. 9999 seconds is still a 166 minute burn! I can also do 999m, or even 999h... Not that I'd want to do that last one! I don't think any accurate method of determining burn time really exists, but we do have time till next node, and for actual burn time, I think it should be possible to do an "interwebs download" style time remaining (aka... one that bounces around, mostly just gives you a suggestion of time left). The idea will be to measure the rate that the ∆v for Next Node value is dropping, in relation to the manually set Maneuver Node Total ∆v (discussed in a previous post... A button will be pressed to set the Maneuver Node Total ∆v to equal the value MNDeltaV (∆v for next node variable). It ought to give a "rate to reach 0" that should provide a reasonable guesstimate for the missing value. I feel like I just spent $40 on something I already have... I need to check thickness... Good... I did at least get thicker material than the thin aluminum I already had... I just picked up a sheet of scrap aluminum from the recycler. Now I need to find my Sawzall, my new blades (which are mysteriously no where to be found), and pray I can cut a straight line. Thankfully, I have 2 good edges per cut, so I can always stick my crappy cuts in the least visible place!

Most hardware stores will carry parts. It's a matter of simply finding a part to fit the application. Sometimes, if you can, salvage is even better. Regarding the drawing, I just drew it with the Mac equivalent of MS Paint! It's a program called Graphic Converter. It's grown over the years, but it ain't no Photoshop. It was all done with the line tool and the fill tool! I might have used the pencil and eraser tools for a few touchups. The edgewise meters... Yes, that tend to be expensive. the 4 single meters was me simply finding an inconceivable deal on eBay. I got them for I think $22 a pair, and bought 2 pairs. I have never seen that deal since. They also can't be driven directly from an Arduino. they require a 4-20 mA current loop, which is an industry standard. I had to build a current loop driver for each meter, before I could control it with an Arduino. I suspect that was why they were cheaper. The dual edgewise meters were bought for $20 each, x3 meters. I got that deal, because I was the only bidder on a very badly put together sale, from a new buyer. They really didn't know what they were doing, and no one else bid. Those meters normally sell for $80 each, and that's the surplus market price. If you are interested in edgewise meters, consider some of the alternatives. Theres a meter that's half the size, but far lower in price than those $80 meters. Search this thread... I know it's all in here. The other issue, is the US has a lot of this stuff on the surplus markets, thanks to some of the incredible technology spending... and cuts... that have occurred over the years with our energy, military, and space programs. I never knew such a thing even existed until my search for these meters... But apparently we have Power Plant Simulators... No, seriously! I guess this is actually a thing that exists, to train power plant workers. Apparently, making mistakes and causing a tenth of the US power grid to fail is considered bad... So they practice! The company that had the cheap meters on eBay apparently makes their business maintaining such setups. They had a surplus of older meters (many new power plants and retrofits have switched to digital meters with LED bar graphs combined with precise numeric readouts). These kinds of things keep the surplus markets quite full of wonderful goodies over here in the US. I really don't know what surplus markets are like in other countries. The US seems to have it pretty good though. Outside of waiting for a freakish deal, like I lucked out on, yeah, those meters are expensive. As for my DSKY. It's inspired, but not true to the AGC DSKY. The keys will handle a lot of the game functions, like time warp, saving, loading, etc. The displays will display Apoapsis, Periapsis, Inclination, Eccentricity, Semi-Major Axis, and have a Time To: X, where you can select things like time to next Ap, Pe, or Node. Since the navball only has one set of crosshairs, I can only display one attitude marker at a time, so there will be annunciator lights to indicate Prograde, Retrograde, Normal, anti-normal, and so on. I may or may not have 2 rows of annunciators... I want to make SURE I have room for my tape meter and my digital carriage meter (for the Node burn ∆v). If I need more annunciators and run out of room, I'll move them up to the overhead panel. My panels will be pretty fixed, but I know how I'll do them. I have bags of standoffs too, so I may as well use them! I think I'm off to bed... The time on the clock is scaring me, cause I need to get up for work in the morning! haha! LOL... I just realized that if I build the 24 volt power supply for my Kerbal controller first, that my controller will be able to self service! You see, I'm going to be gutting a Hakko 927 digital soldering station for the 24 volt power supply required to run the 4-20 mA current loops to drive the four single edgewise meters... But I'm not ditching the soldering iron. I'm actually building it into the control panel itself. I even have pictures on a previous page of the mini keypad that will be used for setting it. I found a good deal on the small green LED segment displays I want to use to swap the existing red displays Hakko uses in their products. Having a soldering station at my desk would be awesome, but having a Kerbal controller that lets me self service by soldering itself... Even more awesome!

HUZZAH! What a relief! Jeb likely won't blow up over this... Though he may still blow up because of this!

If you find a pulley wheel that will just fit over the diameter of the motor shaft or gear, and it has a set screw or bolt, you can clamp it down to the shaft. If you use a hack saw to cut the wheel into a "D" shape, then one side will be heavier, and you will have an offset weight. Alternatively, you can also drill holes into one side. This is both easier, and it lets you gradually test the resonance. Not enough weight imbalance, and the ting won't have any power, too much weight shaved off one side, and the motor won't spin it well. Taking a little weight off at a time lets you fine tune the resonance, till you get your best power shake. Oh yeah! here is a quick editing hint, if you hold shift and press return/enter, then you can get a new line with no wasted double space! I really wish they would have left that alone when they updated the forum software. As for my own build, Here's a quick layout mockup of the overhead instrument panel. Not a whole lot, but enough to be useful. The overhead console will most likely be flat. While approximately 2 feet (60 cm) wide, it's neither tall, nor remotely wide enough to justify any extra complexity to the enclosure shape (in other words, no curve or angles). I'll just find a nice long rectangular enclosure to box it all up in. Since the meters are enclosed, I'd consider a shallow enclosure, with the meters sticking out the rear. I am also seriously considering having my master alarm button up top too. As I said in a previous post, these two meters will deal with atmospheric conditions... Air Density and intake Air. Interestingly, I had forgotten about the GS meter on my navball. It actually means Glide Slope, but I don't really know that I need to do that, since we are used to using the Vertical Velocity meter and surface speed already. GS could very well also come to mean Gs, and in G-forces. The meter is smaller than my 6 inch tall edgewise meters, but it would also free up a meter. If I ever find a way to open (the sealed) navball, I'd label the scale to better represent G force. The divisions actually match up with that KSP uses, but there are just no numbers. For now, I'll take the lower quarter division as 0 G, the middle as 5 G, the top quarter as 10 G, and the top as +15 G. The bottom can represent -5 G. I wouldn't mind marking off 1 G, as well as adding some color bars, marking the numbers, and labeling it as Gs. For the main instrument panel enclosure, I've figured out I will need to get a sheet of aluminum (the dark grey section) that is 29.625 inches (75.25 cm) wide, and 7.875 inches (20 cm) tall. there's a +/- variance of around 0.125 inches (3-4 mm) that I can afford. I've not sized the bottom panel yet, as I don't know my control panel overall size yet The bottom panel will be 29.625 inches (+/- 0.125) by 27.25 inches (+0.5 / -0.25 This is rather flexible, due to the construction of the rear), based on the dimensions of the salvaged plasticized aluminum panels (mentioned below). Most of the rear of the unit will be recessed into my desk, so it should only stick up about 3 inches from the desk surface). The front panel seems to be set at a 76° angle from the horizontal plane (referencing the internal angle to the bottom panel, of course, not to the user). Preferably, I'd like to get a thick enough sheet to support the weight of the FDAI, even though I'll have a rest supporting it's back end. All the instruments will be suspended from it (except the tape meter, which mounts to the bottom panel), and I'd prefer it to have some strength. I could certainly get a piece pre-made and bent with a 76° mounting lip, but it'd be just as easy to buy a few 90° mounting brackets, and manually bend them myself. Bending each one individually is actually quite easy, but with a few combined, they'll be nearly as strong as just bending the aluminum. At this point, I now could assemble the bottom panel and the instrument panel, both using ONLY flat sheet metal! This makes the build FAR simpler than the previous rather convoluted bent sheet metal concept! This old harris Stereo-5 audio console enclosure has proven to be a real winner! What's interesting, is I discovered the chassis slides into the enclosure and locks into place with just 2 screws. I'd love to recreate that functionality, for ease of service and display of the guts, but it can't interfere with the meter placement. I don't think it's possible to salvage the existing side panels, for that specific reason, but if I can make a suitable alternative, it might work out. If it doesn't work, that's fine too, but it is such a nice feature, it'd be a shame to not at least try to recreate it. The bottom panel will be just a rectangular sheet, with a cutout where the keyboard recess sits. There will also likely be a pair or trio of cutouts for the stage and abort buttons, and the throttle lever. I'll mount a "pan" beneath it to cover the parts that extend out the bottom. The joysticks are only and inch deep, so they will be no trouble. In order to accommodate the large height of my DSKY, I'll need to have an area of the horizontal surface that is rather low profile. The light grey section is how that will be done. Since the entire panel will consist of 5 large slider potentiometers (dimmers for my desk and room LED lighting), the entire thing will be very rigid due to all the support beneath. For this reason, I'm going to use the thin aluminum I salvaged from the old Phase Angle Voltmeters (the old 1960s model I have a stack of, and mentioned earlier in this thread). The thin aluminum has a nice plasticized finish that actually feels very good to the touch, and is thin enough to actually be bent without extraordinary tools. Those are 16.5 inches (42 cm) wide, and 12 inches (30.5 cm) deep, with a rounded front edge. I think that's actually large enough for this to work. They'll be angled so the back is higher than the front, and I may or may not put a slight bend in the middle, to affect the taper angle. Underneath, I can have a more substantial sheet of aluminum, plus standoffs, for rigidity. The main point, is I need the space between the bottom panel and the surface panels to be 1 inch at the point where I place the joysticks. I've also definitely decided on one change from traditional Apollo/Shuttle construction style. Rather than polycarbonate or acrylic above the panel structure, with shine through nomenclature, I'm going to have windows for nomenclature. I'll get a close paint match to paint the bare aluminum that gets exposed with any window cut into the panels (since the plasticized coating is grey). I'll print the nomenclature white on a matched grey on my Nekoosa translucent synthetic "paper" (It's plastic), and secure them underneath instead of on top. That will provide for a nice backlit nomenclature, without sacrificing the surface texture of those panels... Man, I really like how that feels! The opening left where the keyboard recess will be closed off with some grey plastic I have. It came from poster hangers from he Gamestop where I used to work. The store closed, and it's one of the things i snagged. Didn't grab it to hang poster, but cause the huge sheets of 1/4 inch thick plexi, and the grey plastic backing panel of the same thickness. I'll cut the plastic so that it pretty much softens the edges around the keyboard. It'll also make sure no metal is exposed near where I'll be sliding my keyboard in and out of the recess. That'll save it from scratches and unnecessary wear and tear.

Lookin' good, but I see you've lost "Ludicrous Speed". I don't know how you could possibly get by without that!

set your low pass filter at 45 Hz, so the highest peak frequencies passed are at 45 Hz. It'll leak some lower and higher frequencies, but 45 Hz will dominate. For the offset weight, that's super simple. Any round thing that's solid. Metal is most commonly used. Find a pulley from a hardware store. Use a hacksaw to cut off a side of it Make sure to get one with a hole that will fit around the gear, and has a bolt inside that can clamp onto the gear. You can try drilling, grinding, or hacking the gear if you need a flat surface to get the bolt to lock onto, but it may be good enough as long as the bolt clamps down between some teeth. You can use a few means to control it. A relay should work. Just get an automotive relay. It'll have enough capacity to handle high current 12 volt switching. Look up driving relays with an Arduino if you wanna control it from the Arduino. One more possibility. If you rectify the audio signal, feed it through a capacitor, and into an analog input on the Arduino, you can get an audio level reading as a 0-255 value. If you use that and your G force value to drive a digital out (or a PWM out), you could play with controlling that motor from the Arduino. I'm not sure what you'd do with those two values in software. If PWM, you'd just take the average of the audio, and probably set the PWM to a value that factors the G forces, timed to the audio peaks... Like the motor could rumble continuously at a lower speed, and get "bursts" of speed when the audio gets louder. You need a variable speed controller for that. You could also generate a 45 Hz signal from the Arduino. If you use the PWM, you could adjust the intensity using the PWM value, and switch it at 45 Hz (or actually try to render the 45 Hz), and run it through a low pass filter to get rid of the PWM frequencies. Tying those outputs to an analog value derived from the audio would likely carry over the synchronization, making the thump "feel" right. I'd recommend Googling "how to drive a motor with an Arduino", as there are probably dozens of sites that can tell you how to do it better than I could. Good luck!

@Pvt. KASA You can only have one Arduino connected to the computer via the plugin. You can send data to other Arduinos though. For my setup, I'll have main controls (joysticks, toggles, buttons, etc) all controlled by the main unit, for lowest latency. I'll also display all analog meters from it (I just have to set a PWM output for those). That Arduino will send data on to other Arduinos. I'll have one for my Navball, and one for my digital meters, since that library requires you to break down the numbers into individual digits and then write a digit to each position on the displays. What I'd give to have a MAX7219 library that just did that all automatically. Whatever happened to the simplicity of PRINT. C feels so ridiculously and unnecessarily convoluted to an old BASIC guy... I'm still diving head first into hardware... If anything cause I dread the point where I'll be stuck doing software. I might use a Teensy 3.1 for my navball, simply cause it's fast, and cause I have it, and need to do something with it. Of course, that means I'll have a 3.3 volt device. I might need to get level shifters to make it work properly with my FDAI controller. Depends on if the DACs will take a 3.3v SPI input, while running at 5v, and if the analog switches will operate on 3.3 volt inputs while running at 5v. I ordered the MCP4922 DAC from Mouser (also available at Digikey, but I had stuff I needed to get from Mouser anyway) for my FDAI controller (for the navball). I'm already using them as an attenuator DAC, so application wise, these should be perfect for you. They have 2 channels as well. If you just wanna run Left and Right audio channels through them and control them in sync, you could just drive a pair of shakers with each channel of your amp. Granted, it adds parts to the build. You can also use just one channel, and ignore the second channel (you can still split the one channel to control both channels of your amp, and then have the amp's 2 channels drive two shakers). Remember, you can split an output to run 2 inputs, but you can't always use 2 outputs to drive one input, not without special hardware. As for the shaker, a sine wave isn't the best idea... You'll just hear a steady tonal hum, and not all audio amps are designed to run below 20 Hz (that's around the cutoff for human hearing). Ideally, doing a low pass filter, amplifying it, tuning, running it through an attenuator DAC (to adjust the intensity), and then amplifying it again... That should leave you with some good force that actually correlates to the game's sounds. A low pass filter should get you just the low rumbles. As for the Gs and the DAC, the key is that you don't wanna have a perfectly linear response from 0% to 100%. You want it to start out, already at a significant percentage of full. Even staging tends to result in a fraction of some Gs. Think of it like this: Gs--- <-1 -.5 -.1 0 .1 .5 1 2 3 4 >5 DAC%- 100 75 50 0 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 | | | | | | . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | __|___|___|__ __|__|__|__|__|__|__|_ The example above has the negative G values ramp up rapidly. Negative Gs are the feeling you get when going down an elevator, or a rollercoaster. It can be disorienting, so If you ramp those values very quickly, you'll get the most out of your shaker. You'll need to fine tune the values to feel "right", but since this is all software controlled, that's super simple. By the time you hit -0.1 G, the shaker is already up to 50%, and by -0.5 G, it's at 75%. Once you hit -1 G, the shaker is maxed, and all further negative G forces will all pump out max output. Likewise, the positive G scale is similar, though spread out a little bit. At 0.1 G, you are already starting at 40% shaker power, and at 0.5 G you are at 50% power. 1 G through 5 Gs results in scaling from 60% to 100%, and everything over 5 Gs (at least in this example) will run the shaker at full power. Honestly, once you're over 5 Gs, the difference between 5 Gs, and 11 Gs is consciousness. 5-10 Gs are gonna be violent no matter what, so 100% is fine for it all! Here's another trick you can do to get a better inertial thump out of your shaker. Gs--- <-1 -.5 -.1 0 .1 .5 1 2 3 4 5 >6 DAC%- 100 75 50 0 100 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 | | | | | | | | . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | __|___|___|__ __|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|_ In this example, we have a small range at 0.1 G where the output is pushed all the way to 100%, and then drops down to 40% at 0.5 G. This means the initial inertial jerk of the vessel from anything to a small bump to a staging event gets pushed to 100% for a short period, making for a much more notable thump. This overcomes the tendency of small events to not be felt. You'd have to experiment with what feels right. Maybe you need more thump further up covering a wider low end G range, or maybe 40% is too low, and it needs to have the lowest value be 60%. I don't know. This is one of those things where experimenting is key. A simple mixing circuit could also inject a DC bias pulse into the signal for a short moment whenever Gs change from a 0 value to a non 0 value. This would make the shaker speaker at generate a basic thump, even if there is no sound playing through. All you need to do is connect a digital I/O line to the mixing circuit after the DAC and before the amp. It guarantees a thump with every single action performed. The intensity can be tuned with a simple voltage divider set by a potentiometer. You could have different pots on different I/O lines to even set a few different thump intensities. I still highly recommend running the game sounds through a low pass filter and attenuating and amplifying those though, as the correlation between he sound and the feel will honestly just feel right. As for the off center balance, I'd put that in the seat. You don't need the controller to shake at all if you are! It'll save on mechanical stress on your wiring too. Vibrations will lead to electrical failure over time, if ANYTHING is even remotely loose. If you are shaking, and your controller is not... Your controller, relatively, is shaking to you. One question? Is the drill the battery powered kind or is it a plug in type? Either way, you'll need a beefy controller for it. If it's a plug in type, you should be careful, as you'd be working with high voltages and currents. Such a drill motor will require line voltage, or near to it to operate. You'll need a way to control it that won't burn up. You'll also need to make sure you're not over stressing the motor's rated duty cycle with repeated starts and stops. A motor draws more current when starting, and the offset weight will make that even higher. If you're pulsing it to much, it could cause it to get hot. Better, would be to branch out the amplified signal and rectify it, then feed it into a smoothing capacitor and use that variable DC value to drive the speed of the motor. If the drill is a universal motor, it'll actually run on DC. You'll need a beefy driver for that, but if you have a variable speed drill, you can probably re-use the built in driver. If it's a battery powered drill, then you should be aware that they can draw a LOT of current. You'll need a beefy power supply to power it, possibly even large capacitors to provide your inrush current. That's one thing batteries excel at... You can dump a lot of power from them in a very short time. You'll find that the offset weight vibrator will be far quieter if you remove the gears from the drill and attach right to the motor shaft. Very few offset weight mechanisms ever use gearing. If you mount it with he shaft vertically, the motor won't have to fight gravity to get spinning, and if mounted to where your chest is, you should really feel it.

I'll admit, I wish I had just an additional inch or two in width... It's close to perfect. In order to have room for my tape meter, I may need to ditch one of the single edgewise meters. I could mount one of the single edgewise meters horizontally, on the upper level of the desk, beside my VFD display (which will display Latitude and Longitude, SoI, and mission elapsed time). I can make that my air density gauge (it IS on the top of the screen in KSP anyway). That frees up a small amount of space, making fitting my tape meter far easier. My only concern with having the VFD mounted up top, is the serial communications. I will need it to span over a meter, possibly more than 2, cause it'll need to exit the Arduino, exit the controller enclosure, route itself to the back of the desk, up the pillar, and back over to the center and front, where it can reach the controller for the VFD. If I use twisted pairs, is I2C or SPI okay for this, or should I convert to something like RS-232 or RS-485 for the communication and then just read the data stream off of that... Shame my big VFDs are parallel, and will require another controller, just to control... I have some far smaller VFDs that already operate by RS-232 (they even have long cables), but they are 1x16 displays. I like my giant 2x20 displays. On a side note, since I'm talking about moving a meter up to the top level... Maybe I should just go ahead and move two of the single edgewise meters there. I could move both Air Density and Intake Air to the top panel, one on either side of the VFD. This will make things symmetrical, and free up even more space on the main controller instrument panel. I refer to those two meter values least of all, only during certain atmospheric flight situations, and never in space, so I feel they can move out of the way. The side benefit of moving two of my single meters up top, is with only 5 meters on the main panel, instead of 7, that frees up 3.5 inches of space, which leaves me room for the tape meter, DSKY annunciators, and even enough for my ∆v meter! I think that'll be the ideal solution. The 5 meters that remain on the main panel will show me Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer, Monopropellant and Electric Charge, Solid Fuel and Xenon, G forces, and Max Overheat. There will likely be a toggle for each resource meter to toggle between vessel and stage remaining values. I was also hoping for a way to determine time to next SoI... I'm not seeing a data packet value for that. Same with target velocity and distance to target. Those are all pretty important values. I don't think it's possible to fly entirely by instrument without those. @Pvt. KASA Regarding the shaker idea, If you got an DAC with a reference input, and have the Acceleration value adjust the attenuation of the DAC, and then feed the peaks of the audio into the voltage reference, you could get a series of "pulses" who's strength is a combination of the number of Gs you're under, and the intensity of the audio. It would unnaturally make you feel the music at high Gs, but if you're at high Gs, chances are, there's more than music playing anyway! You want to probably use a low pass filter on your audio too. That'll extract that low rumble from the audio track, while filtering out all the middles and high ranges that won't produce much "feel" out of a shaker. You'll wanna run the audio input through a low power pre-amp and the low pass filter, so you can fine tune the system, then capacitively couple the audio into the DAC voltage reference, while also clamping it (with a zener) if there's any chance it could exceed the rated input. If the output can't exceed the rated input of the DAC (such as the pre-amp and DAC share the same voltage rail), then no clamping is required. The pre-amp should use ground as the (-) of the audio out, so you have a positive biased output (not a zero crossing output... again, this is so you have a 0-positive rail signal to feed into the DAC). You can control the DAC's responsiveness by adjusting the program. It'd be based on the Acceleration (Gs) variable. Higher the Gs, higher the value of the DAC. That will allow more of the voltage reference (which is your incoming filtered audio) to pass through. Feed that into your main amp, and then to your shaker. As to whether you can combine channels? No clue. Some amps let you, other amps will blow up. It's entirely dependent on the model. You'll have to find the specs on it.

Regarding the bed space... could you build your setup in such a way that it folds down to save space? Have something you can remove a pin and have it fold down to the floor, so it could then slide under your bed? As for a chair, if you put wheels on it, you could use it as a chair in your room, replacing one if you already have a chair taking up space. Can you simply raise the bed a little more. It should be possible to build "stands" that raise the legs of the bed a bit. Just a few thoughts. Anyway, good luck. I hope you figure out a solution. Now, as to my own developments... This is the audio console I had in storage. Supposedly, this was a part of the local AM radio station's main console. I was totally wrong about my previous statements... It was made in 1979. I coulda swore it was early 1970s or even possibly late 60s. Oh well. No biggie. It also supports stereo... Hence why it's sorta kinda called the "Harris Stereo-5" Internally, it was wired for mono though. Left and right channels were connected together. No need for any of that fancy-schmancy stereo business at an AM radio station! So... This is... I... Clearly, nothing in the universe is chance. Everything that is, is for a reason... The reason I found this old sound console, and stored it away for half a decade... is this... That wasn't planned... The dimensions are EXACT... How... SO BEAUTIFUL!!! My God, It's full of stars instruments!

FOUND IT!!! Clear 35mm Film Leader White 35mm Film Leader If anyone wants to build a tape meter, salvage a few 35 mm cameras from your local thrift store to get sprockets, and then use this stuff for the tape. It specifically says you can write on it with a Sharpie, so presumably, it should be feasible to find durable stamping inks to mark it. Heck, it's Kodak type Estar (Mylar) film, so the melting point is 490°F (255°C), so you can probably even use toner transfer techniques to print mirrored numbers on paper and bond it to the film using an iron. You then dissolve the paper with water to leave the ink bonded to the film. In theory that might work. I don't know how well toner would bond to mylar. The spools are rather spendy, about $100 US for a thousand feet (304 meters). It might be something where someone takes the plunge and buys a reel, and then divvies it up between anyone interested in having a go at building a tape meter. Man... I looked FOREVER for exactly this... It just takes knowing the right search terms to find what you're looking for. On a side note, I also just recently realized I have the old channel mixer from the local AM radio station, from back in the 1960s or 1970s I think. It's pretty huge, and i can't remember the exact shape. I might run down to my storage unit later today and see if it might be able to serve as part of my enclosure. I remember checking the value, and it's pretty low, since it's just an old mono unit, not compact at all, but depending on the shape, I might be able to let it live again, launching Kerbals instead of playing polka! Unsure of the shape... I wanna say it's wedge shaped, maybe a meter wide. Depending on the depth and height, I might flip it on its back and let it frame the vertical instrument cluster. It may be too steep to serve as the lower horizontal control panel. I'll know more when I get to my storage unit and remind myself just what it actually looks like. By all rights, its probably ideal as the whole enclosure to any KSP controller except my desk mounted plan...

Seriously though, just eBay "slip ring". First result is under $8 US dollars, has 12 wires, can handle up to 300 RPM (that is your capsule spinning 5 times a second... have fun Jeb! ), and is 12.5 mm in diameter (and if you want more wires, I see there is a 24 wire unit for $17). My only concern is your step frequency. A navball can get spinning pretty wildly. Can that stepper handle it? You might have to software cap spin if it gets too high. (you could have your controller light a yaw, pitch, or roll warning LED to indicate spin over-rate). Consider the addition of encoders for position feedback as well. That's where a 24 wire version is useful. Minimally, you at least need an index sensor. You need a calibrate function at start up that would spin the ball in all three axes till it hits the index, then counts out back to the desired position. If the ball ever loses track due to mis-stepping, auto calibration will fix it. Basically, every time you read the index signal, the controller resets the ball position on that axis to 0, correcting out any error induced by missed steps. If ball position and axis vector do not match, the controller will move the calibrated ball into position to zero out the error.

Hit Page 7 of this thread. I cover most of these questions. You need at least 2 rings to transmit power. An etched PC board or a TRS connector (headphone jack) are proposed as options. I also suggest simply buying slip rings. They are not that expensive on eBay, through you may want to make sure when you build it, you make sure they are replaceable. No idea on the durability of Chinese parts. You could try for inductive coupling though. That's one idea that never made it into the original discussion, and it would never wear out. Optical communication seems to be the lowest cost, simplest idea for communication, unless you're able to modulate the inductive coupling. The machining that goes into these things is pretty high end, and you'll need to pass a signal or light through two joints, reliably and repeatably. If you can modulate the inductive coupling, that very well may be THE simplest method of making this work. The only question i have left, is can inductive coupling transfer enough power into the ball to drive the two motors and an arduino style controller, and to transfer enough power to handle violent capsule spins without depleting power... I'm thinking a battery or capacitor bank, and persistent power transfer is the solution there. Power it, even when you're just in the VAB, loading, etc... So you have a store of power to drive current off of, but are constantly trickle charging it at all times.

Yeah, I was hoping for a shorter wavelength yellow, that might have been closer to green and had just enough green to shine through, but it's more of an amber yellow. That puts it far closer to the red end of the spectrum. I'm solidly sold on green as my primary annunciator and nomenclature illumination color, but I can have a few differentiated annunciators. Some yellow or red ones, but mostly for alarm states, etc. I still think I'll use some diffusers and do a light box style annunciator, similar to @Krewmember , or just suck it up and buy matching green LED annunciators off eBay. I have seen good deals, but not large lots for a while. I need a large lot that's a good deal, so I'll just keep waiting and watching. @Pvt. KASA, if you want a heartbeat monitor, it's possible to get it from the finger tip or the ear lobe. Sparkfun has a pulse sensor that can do the trick. As mentioned, you clip it to your fingertip or your earlobe. Considering you'll be trying to fly a space ship with your controls, that basically means the earlobe is the easiest solution. Just don't ask the Mercury crew how they took their temperature...