richfiles

What you are seeing on that photo of a prototype is the bottom side of what appears to be wire wrap chip sockets. On that prototype, it looks like they mostly use sockets that would be 2 rows of either 14 or 16 pins, and those would stick through the board, and have tall posts for connections. A wire wrap tool is inserted on each post and twisted, tightly wrapping a thin wire on each post. No solder is needed (though you can solder each wire to the post for added durability, if you wish to keep your prototype). Rather than what you assumed was no chips, you are looking at a massive collection of small scale integration chips, but they are on the other side of the board. small scale integration refers to chips with only a few logic gates per chip. They did not build a processor with a single chip... they built every logic gate inside the processor from scratch, from individual logic gates. Pretty hardcore! The bottom one MIGHT be a diode matrix, but I'm not sure. That would make sense as a stand in for the cartridge ROM chip. I wired my custom keyboard that I built using wire wrap wiring, but rather than leave it messy, I laced down all the loose wires. Wire lacing... The difference between rats nest and art! I'll be employing this tequnique in my Kerbal controller too, All loose wiring will be routed and laced down into bundles. On small stuff like this, I use unflavored waxed dental floss. My longest run starts in the top right and moves inward toward the Teensy 2.0, then it goes down the right side of the Teensy, hooks right, turns down again when it hits the LED driver board, follows the bottom edge all the way to the left hand side, turns upwards, makes a slight detour by the shift key, and then continues up, goes left a key, then back right toward the Teensy, and then binds the left side and bottom of the Teensy. All one piece of string. No cuts, just knotting. Knotting and a LOT of feeding cord through loops!

Yeah, if you have an HID mode for your controller, then you can use it with any game actually, as long as it supports a gamepad/joystick. I think I'd like to incorporate an HID mode for mine eventually, but it'd be the kind of thing selected by toggle. Stock mode would be KSP serial I/O. An HID mode would let me use the controls in other games, like Farming Simulator... Which oddly enough, has a specialty controller made by Saitek, who's layout is very KSP compatible. Like, freaky compatible! Who'da thunk Tractors and Spaceships would work nicely with similar controls! I highly recommend looking into a Teensy if you wish to create a "universal" HID controller, that interfaces like a gamepad, vs the way KSP Serial I/O does it. Teensy can perform as an HID device easily, and it's possible to run Arduino like code using the Teensyduino driver with the Arduino software. You can even straight up emulate keystrokes of a keyboard with it. I know some Arduinos can do this too, but I think it needs to be one with the USB interface built into the microcontroller, and not as a UART scrip attached to the controller. Not 100% sure, but that's what seems to be the most straight forward, anyway. I'm no pro with Arduino yet... I'm just repeating the recommendations I got early on. I'll trust those recommendations more cause I didn't come up with them!

I'm curious how much will have to be done to get The Serial IO plugin working under 1.1 and the Unity 5 engine? Of course, today is the first day 1.1 has been publicly released to the general public, in beta form. Tried it. Had no crashes, so that's good.

So... I suppose the big question now, is how much does 1.1 break our simpits and controllers! The next weeks should be interesting. I'll be watching the main Arduino Serial I/O thread regarding the status of the software.

You are confused. 64 bit generally refers to 64 bit addressing or data. It determines the largest number that a computer can represent with a single X-bit word. a 32 bit word can represent 232, or a number from 0 to 4,294,967,295, and thus can access about 4 GB of RAM per application. A 64 bit application can access 264, or values ranging from 0 - 18,446,744,073,709,551,615, and thus can access up to about 18 EXAbytes of data... Not Gigabytes, not Terabytes... Not even Petabytes... EXABYTES. No computer touches that... The largest (that I am aware of) supercomputer in the world is the Chinese Tianhe-2 (天河-2, or "Milky Way 2"). It is a 33.86-petaflop supercomputer with 1,375 TB (1,000 TB CPU and 375 TB coprocessor)... The world's largest super computer is still 13415 times smaller than the max memory 64 bit addressing is potentially compatible with. 64 bit addressing basically makes it so computers will be able to allow apps to access ALL their available free memory, for decades to come... Some people don't even think we'll achieve memory density that compact in personal devices. It has been theorized, but not 100% sure if it is confirmed, that Unity 5 may allow separate vessels to have their own separate physics threads. I do not think this has actually ever been confirmed. I repeat, it MAY ONLY be a rumor, as far as I am aware. This fixes the problem of the game slowing to a crawl if you have a large station and a large ship trying to dock... well, till they successfully dock. Then they'd be one thread. Appears to be a limitation to synchronizing the parts of a vessel. Running parts from a single vessel across multiple threads would call upon the kraken. Hard. I do believe that non physics elements of the game engine are now possibly running their own threads. UI, and such. Again, i'm unaware of the exact details of what they did under the hood, but they have made GREAT strides in performance enhancement, and any attempt at multithreading, even if limited, is welcomed!

Unfortunately, that's not how 64 bit support works. 64 bit support unlocks access to addressable memory sizes larger than about 4 GB. That means, if you have more than 4 GB of RAM in your PC, KSP will be able to use any free RAM above 4 GB. Like me, I have 32 GB RAM, but right now, KSP can only access 4 GB. 64 bit KSP will be able to access as much of my RAM as it needs. There are apparently VERY good performance improvements though. Scott Manley loaded a massive station that gave him 4 FPS in current KSP, and that same station ran 10 FPS in 1.1, which is a VERY impressive performance boost! That comes from more efficient code and new engine features though, not really 64 bit.

When right clicking on a docking port or the Claw, there should be resource [IN] / [OUT] / [STOP] buttons, like what you get by right clicking fuel tanks With this feature, you could, with a single menu, refill ALL resources of a vessel (say a lander) from another vessel (like a refueling tanker, a station, or a C/SM). This would allow a complex vessel with many small tanks (including tanks that are inaccessible due to surrounding parts) to be easily and quickly refilled, without having to somehow find every single tank and Alt-Right Click each and every one of them.

Now, now... Everyone knows this thread is in good humor... Silly humor, but good humor. Now don't y'all be stirrin' up the Kraken Hammer of Modulus! One simply can not bear to witness it's power and might!

I think RSS is 10x bigger. I think... 64K is apparently not in reference to the game engine and CPU bit width or memory addressability... LOL, when I see 64k, for some reason it makes me think 64 bit. Instead, apparently it's a reference to a 6.4x larger than stock scale... It's... confusing... All I know, is I run stock scale.

Mac OS has case sensitive file system functionality too, if you chose it when setting it up. I know... Cause Steam throws a hissy fit with it active.

I know Windows 10 has issues, but how does the Mac OS variant fare? I play on Mac OS primarily, but have a tablet that I've been avoiding upgrading to Windows 10 (from 8.1) over this issue. I use the tablet for development when I'm in my workshop, or on the rare occasions when I go to a local robotics meeting (that meets at a Maker Space... It's over 2 hours away, but it's my only chance to get there). With this bug, Upgrading to Windows 10 would nuke my option to really use the tablet for easy development. Do we have any long term solution for the receiving of data from Arduino to Windows 10? Come this summer, people like me who have been holding out will have no choice but to make the decision to lose full support, or have to pay if we ever upgrade Windows later.

No, those are three position "ON-OFF-ON" toggles in the image above. Center is off, and you can toggle them up or down. You can get a variety of toggle options... What you'd want are "OFF-Momentary ON", or "ON-Momentary ON". The key with a momentary toggle, is it flips just like a regular toggle switch, but it's sprung... It flips back off by itself when you let go. It's like a button, but with a toggle lever instead. Works identically to a pushbutton too, electrically. You recreate the look of toggles, with the function of a button. I like the idea of the flip discs, but If I see a large lot of mini edgewise analog meters, I MIGHT get those instead and try to make my sliding symbol style flag annunciator. Far too much to still have nothing actually up and running yet... I've mostly been acquiring parts, and struggling with trying to find time to actually work on it. I spent around $400 on the navball (the FDAI), and wasted about $40 on an incorrect circuit to control it... That was frustrating! I spent another $50 on digital displays, only to receive ones the wrong color, and then replaced the wrong color displays with the right color displays to discover those had a worse than 50% failure rate! THAT was even MORE frustrating!!! I have $45 on MORE replacement displays (good, so far), and spent $75 on misc parts like switches for the panels, and transformers for the FDAI controller. I spent around $50-60 on the pair of 3 axis joysticks, and over many years, collected random various parts... I probably spent $10 on my abort and Stage buttons, and another $10 for safety switches to lock those out... I spent $60 for three dual edgewise meters, and $22 for 4 single edgewise meters (BOTH those deals were absolute steals... as each meter should have been around $80 a piece!). I think I spent $25 on my vertical velocity meter, and $40 on my pair of giant VFD displays. I spent a shockingly low $10 plus shipping on the video effects board i salvaged for my throttle lever and my DSKY keys. I've spent probably $20-30 in just stocking up on PCB protoboards... But that's for just having on hand too. I couldn't tell you what I've spent in small miscellaneous hardware and parts... Still, for all I've spent, a lot of those parts are parts I bought years before ever realizing what they'd end up used for, such as the Abort and Stage switches, the VFD displays, and some of the PC boards I already had on hand before starting the project. But also understand, that you have to realize that I'm sparing no expense... I mean... I could have spent $5 and got cheap meters, and used cheap Chinese switches, and I could have done a software FDAI with an OLED or LCD display and a programable board... I probably could have done that for under $30-50... Probably more than 2/3 of my cost has been going into having a REAL navball, and having LARGE edgewise meters (those can cost over $150-300 when purchased new from the manufacturer, surplus value is around $80 for those). I never had to spend as much as I did on the large, super amazing parts... I simply wanted the best, so I paid for the best. THanks for the kind words! I rather enjoy figuring out how to do cool technical things, and sharing how I did it with others! It's always nice to share!

I am considering purchasing some flip dots to mimic the "flag" type annunciators that are used by NASA. Flip dots are a tiny mechanical disc that flips between it's two sides with an electromagnetic coil. I'm planning on ordering the parts with a 15mm (0.53 inch) diameter disc. I also realized that the price drops SIGNIFICANTLY if you order them as part of an XY matrix board, vs individually... €1.63 each in the grid, vs €4 each in quantities from 1-999... WAY cheaper to buy it on the grid. I'd only get 22 flip dots ordering individually, vs 49 flip dots by ordering a grid, for the same price. I might USE that many! Why not get the grid then... So, my plan is to paint the black side with diagonal white stripes, to mimic the black and white striped pattern of the Apollo flag annunciators. I have not decided what I want the other color to be... Apollo was rather bland... Grey for off, black and white striped for on, and some of the flags had a third position that would go red to indicate a fault. Given the prevalence of green, I'd considered green for on, and black and white stripes meaning off (despite having the opposite meaning compared to Apollo). The problem, is my spill lighting (which will be critical for viewing the annunciators, as they don't actually emit light) was probably going to be a mix of green and or amber/warm white. Any green spill will tint the white and black striped area green. The available colors are red, yellow, white, and green for the set side. The reverse side is always black. I suppose I could consider red/black, so that the white stripes I'll add to the black side would basically pick up on the spill lighting color. It'd also represent on, once again. I'd have a non neutral color (red) representing off though, as opposed to a fault. I SO WISH there was a way to get ahold of the actual three way flag annunciators NASA used, as they would be perfect for my idea for vessel switching triggering an "update switches" fault condition. Basically, if you switch vessels, the vessel would not take the state of the controller, the controller would light up mis-match fault lights on any controls in the wrong position, and not register inputs from those controls till they are first set to match the vessel state. The other catch with the flip dots, is because they are a flipping disc, as opposed to a sliding component, they require clearance to flip, meaning they can't be flush mounted unless the enclosure hole allows full clearance. I want to have a square window over them to hide that they are discs, and mimic the Apollo flags. It just means I may have to set them back a couple mm for the discs to clear the enclosure's opening when they flip. If all you need are 7 flip dots, you can actually order a 1x7 "grid"... More of a line, for 20 Euros. They come with a controller that can be interfaced to an Arduino. You have to provide 24 volts to the controller, but that's not hard to do. That's still only €2.86 per dot, and you GET the controller with it! Not a bad deal for small scale. Even if you want 14, it's still half the price of the 7x7. 14 dots would get you... Hmm... 10 action groups, plus RCS, SAS, and 2 more functions. Not too bad for €40. I'm planning on getting the 7x7, just because it is a WAY better deal, and I REALLY am considering the possibility of expanded Action groups in the future. The current setup is absolutely insufficient. I could have 10 (or potentially 20) action groups, RCS, SAS, Brakes, Lights, Gear, Indicators for my auxiliary, non-KSP functions, etc... In the end, I could potentially use quite a few of these! What I would do, is de-solder the individual flip dots from the matrix controller board, and run wires to each instrument panel location from the controller board. This lets me distribute the flip dots as I need them, but still control them from a central controller board. I think the original flag annunciators used a pretty simple mechanism. I am guessing at this, but it appears that the black and white striped area is likely a fixed background. The red fault indication is probably painted directly above that. It would appear a "flag" covers the window, and a pair of solenoid pulls the flag either half the window's height up, or half the window's height down. Pulling the flag up reveals the black and white striped background, and pulling the flag down reveals the red fault marking. The flag is painted to match the color of the instrument panel. One could further mimic this with the flip dots by painting the top half of the dot grey on the black side with white stripes painted not he bottom, and on the red side, you would paint the bottom half of the dot grey. I don't know if I'll do this, but one can do it for a more authentic look. There are surplus electromagnetic status indicators on ebay, but they are mostly very large ones, and are a rotating prism style device... Also multiple times more expensive than flip dots. There is one more way this can be done, though it takes some effort. It's possible to get VERY tiny analog edgewise meters.. Sometimes, you'll find a lot on ebay, which is the perfect way to snag these up. You'll need to print a piece of paper with your three status markings. It's easier if you can find a centered meter. Then you control it with 2 I/O lines and a resistor or two for current/voltage limiting (you don't wanna smash your paper into the end of the meter housing). 0,0 is center, 1,0 is one polarity, and 0,1 is the other polarity. 1,1 does nothing (center). If you have a non centered meter, then you have to use an analog line, or you can use 2 lines (again) and resistors to deflect the meter a little, or more. This gives you a relatively affordable three state flag indicator, on the cheap, providing you find a lot of tiny edgewise analog meters on the cheap... I am regretting not buying exactly this thing a year ago, now...

Honestly, if you're willing to do custom code, then it's FAR easier to just code it. I think trying to physically mod a toggle with a tactile button would be very finicky. Possible, but far more effort for what you can do with a very small number of parts, or for free by just coding it. If you're willing to do a little soldering, you can use regular SPST toggles and a monostable multivibrator circuit. You can do that with as little as two transistors per switch, and a couple resistors, a diode, and a capacitor or two. If you can find a breadboard diagram online, then you can order some cheap proto-board, and solder up multiple duplicates of the circuit, one for each switch. No hacks, no trying to take toggles apart... Just follow a diagram, solder it, and you have an electrically reliable way to trigger an input. _______________ Also, this is for everyone here... Just a cool part I spotted. I found this puppy while looking for some other parts. I don't know what kind of quantities they have, but it looks like it'd be nice for anyone who wanted to have some Apollo/Shuttle like locking toggles. I think this is a smaller style switch. Word of warning though, they are ON-OFF-ON types, with center locking, so something to be aware of if you're only interested in an ON-OFF type. Eaton Locking Toggle Switch - Electronic Goldmine I have no affiliation with these guys. Personally, I think their customer service is... well, less than ideal. I've only ever had one problem on an order, having used them occasionally since the late 1990s... But yeah, that ONE problem was a doozy, and their customer service amounted to waiting me out so I'd go away. I never found out if it was a communication problem, or them...

So, I know that Valentine is .05 lightyears from Kerbol... Still have no idea how that relates to scale. I think that's why people have asked for the distance in AU (Kerbin to Kerbol), so they can understand the scale as an "n" times further than Kerbin is to the sun frame of reference. With stock KSP having no time delays with distance, and measuring everything in metrics of meters, It's not remotely possible to generate a clear frame of reference without whipping out a calculator and looking up some values... So... If 0.05 Lightyears = 473037 Gm, and Kerbin is 13.6 Gm from Kerbol... Valentine is 34782 Kerbin AU from Kerbol. Dayum! Add another zero for RSS. Anotehr issue I have seen in planet packs, is solar power. Most packs like OPM require fuel cells or RTGs, since solar energy is nil passed Jool. The question is, does your mod allow solar panels to generate solar power with Valentine as a frame of reference? Does the red shifted spectrum affect solar efficiency, if solar power generation does work off of Valentine? ... Still wanna do a conventional propulsion mission, since it sounds like Squad has stomped the 32-bit signed integer bug for rendering time passed 233 Kerbin years! That might drive me crazy though... witht he exception of my very first sandbox game, I no longer warp for the sake of expediting large transfer windows. I have always restricted myself to only time warping in system (Kerbin to mun or minmus, Duna to Ike, Etc). I just run moar missions simultaneously while I wait for stuff to get places! I think the longest span I have ever time warped in my last save was 14 days! No really... I might go crazy waiting!

One factor to consider @JTpopcorn, is that many of the more complex projects already have multiple controllers. Use a Teensy for controls (switch > keys). Btw, go with a Teensy 2.0 or the 2.0++ option, not the 3.2. The 2.0/2.0++ software is very well developed for keyboard emulation for 2.0/2.0++. The software for 3.0/1/2 is not yet very beginner friendly. The CPU power of the 3.x is overkill for keyboard polling. As for the KSP I/O, you'll still need it for things like meters, lights, and digital readouts. That, you'll want an Arduino for. If you want, consider a controller box and a display box, that can sit on top or behind the controller box. If you're not playing KSP, you could set the display box aside, and have only controls for other games. A LOT of the fun of KSP I/O are blink lights and digital meters and gauges! Another potential option is to use a mod lich Telemachus, as I belive you can set it up to send telemetry to a browser. You could set up a tablet or smart phone, or if you have a second or third monitor (like I do), you could have a browser window open displaying readouts... I think that's how Telemachus works. Anyway, look into it if you want a super simple readout solution. I have every bit of faith that the KSP I/O software will be brought up to speed, even if not right away, when 1.1 comes out... I feel like 1.0.x to 1.1 is a far greater leap than 0.25 to 0.90, or even 0.90 to 1.0.x ever was!

I suspect that the Teensy is the better choice for keyboard emulation. Natively supports HID, and almost all the mechanical keyboard people use the Teensy. It's actually rare to ever hear of them use an Arduino. They even have software already made that handles keyboard emulation. You could do a mix of both options. Keyboard emulation (or even gutting a store bought keyboard and wiring switches into the original controller board) could handle most inputs. Retail joysticks can be made to handle the control axes for attitude and translation (although I hear this can be tricky). You could STILL use an Arduino to receive data from KSP, for gauges, LED annunciators, and digital readouts. As long as you configure your games to use the keys in your gutted/emulated keyboard that correspond to the switches you are using, then you can share the controller. Alternately, you could have a toggle switch on your controller that selects HID mode or KSP I/O mode. As for pulsing switches, your best bet is to use momentary toggles. They look EXACTLY like normal toggle switches, except they are sprung. You pull the lever, and let go and they spring back. It's the simplest solution, as it give you the look of toggles, without the permanence of switch position. If you REALLY want toggles that can flip and stay flipped, but still only send a single signal, then yes, you can either do this in code, using your Teensy, or if you are using a gutted keyboard, you can use a monostable multivibrator circuit to close a transistor wired across the appropriate row and column that corresponds to your keypress. Thanks! I'm planning to use it to set the node that the crosshairs on my mechanical navball (FDAI) will display. A toggle will select between Pro and Retro/Anti orientation, and the rotary will dial in Grade (as in prograde or retrograde), Radial, Normal, Target, and Maneuver Node vectors. The crosshairs work just like the vector markers on the on screen navball, but since you only have one set of crosshairs, you have to choose what marker you wanna see at a time. Just like in a real Apollo capsule or the shuttle, or how it works on our KSP navball, you just line up the crosshairs to the center and then do your burn at the correct time.

So, a few build updates on my rotary knob. I got the thing slightly better shaped (I may still work on that, a little bit more), and I found a fender washer that's about the same diameter as the knob. I'll drill out the center of the fender washer so the knob can pass through it. I'll drill a hole for the light pipe hole, and then epoxy it, filling the pointer slot and underlying hole, so light spill from beneath the knob will illuminate the pointer mark. That was done with just an X-Acto knife and a drill! I drilled the bottom out just enough to barely pass through the groove I cut with the X-Acto blade. I then lengthened and deepened the slot with the blade till it was clear. Here is the fender washer. It's the same size as the knob. It's perspective that makes it look smaller. Once flush with the bottom of the knob's handle, it'll look right. When it's all assembled, I'll paint it with a metallic paint to complete the look. Like I said... I'll still probably file it a bit more. It looks just a hair lopsided. Here's the money shot. Threw an LED under it to really let the illuminated slot stand out. I REALLY like the illuminated slot. It seems there were different versions of these knobs. I've seen a solid aluminum knob with a skirt sized larger than the knob handle, and a simple hole drilled in the pointer end of the skirt. That hole in the skirt is what is illuminated from underneath to indicate the knob position. That handle of that style knob is solid aluminum and appears to have set screws on the side, and is prominently seen in the Command Module photos. It's also what I tend to see copied in reproductions most often, and is probably the more iconic look. I prefer it's shape. The other style knob I have noticed, seems more prevalent in the Lunar Excursion Module's instrument panel. It's a more complex knob, that appears to be made from multiple components, and has a screw set on the top in the center. There appears to be a plate of some kind that covers a portion of the top, and there is a slot in the pointer end that is illuminated by spill light from the electroluminescent nomenclature panels beneath. I prefer this illuminated pointer style. What I'm creating, is essentially a best of both worlds amalgamation of the two knob styles. THe shape and solid body will be more reminiscent of the CM knobs, but the pointer illumination will be modeled on the more complex LM knob. in all honestly... If I ever actually FIX my mill, I'm just gonna redo this thing from aluminum and probably ditch this knob. If I ever sat down to clear the quill gearing of debris, I'd probably have a working mill in a third of the effort this knob is taking to saw, file, drill, and cut by hand...

A quick thought from work, on my phone... I think I know how to properly do my meters. The solution to backlighting them is not EL strips. EL was great for Apollo, as each ship would fly for 2 weeks or less and be retired or discarded. EL can fade over time. LEDs ARE the definite way to go, but getting sufficient diffusion was the issue. I realize the issue is an opaque backing plastic beneath the scale legends. The solution is simple: Cut it off. Literally cut out the curved plastic that the legends mount to and replace it with a bit of heat curved plexi. Then all I have to do is put an LED inside the meter housing, and it'll just shine through and backlight the scale legends! I can do that with my dremel tool, but I MUST be absolutely careful not to damage the pointers. The shafts are graphite. That helps them be light, so they can move more responsively, but they are also as fragile as the lead of a mechanical pencil! But yeah... that's my solution. I just gotta cut out the entire front of the internal housing of a meter worth around $80... Each! Nothing much!

That makes me think how AMAZING it would be if KSP could open the map view in a pop-up window. Just that ALONE would be amazing! I could drag that to one of my monitors, have the main game on the center monitor, have a delta-V map open in my browser on the other side monitor... Just being able to view the map and the main window at once would be amazing. Maybe someday. I would happily settle with just a pop-up map view, or map view in a second window, but I would second the idea of other views as well, such as the tracking station being available too. I think that would be incredibly useful! Also, the resource sliders option is pretty cool too. Another cool option, I think, would be the ability to set up tanks as "groups", and establish automated "fuel pump" priorities. This would be similar to the GPO Speed Pump mod. Basically, by designing your craft correctly, you can set up any tank within the crossfeed region of a stage to basically auto balance. rather than drain fuel only from the top/forward most tank, the mod basically "pumps" fuel equally from all tanks on a set "pump level". With the mod, it's possible to configure stations, launchers, refueling tankers, and landers that ALL automatically move fuel where it's needed. A tanker would have the highest level fuel pump staging, so it would automatically fill up a station if it docked to one, as long as crossfeed is active across the docking port. If you have a transfer stage, a station could be configured to automatically fill it... and I mean all tanks, even little tiny tanks in poorly accessible regions. No right clicking. I've made entire collections of vessels with that mod that automatically keep fuel where it needs to go. tankers to stations to shuttles and transfer stages to landers and probes. If there was EVER a mod that I thought deserved incorporation, that one would be it. I could see adding a fuel pump, and a bidirectional fuel pump into the tech tree, to make it something you have to earn. Ultimately though, while I prefer my rockets, some people like space planes and even regular planes. The nice thing about GPO Speed Pump, is that you can set al your fuel tanks to the same pump level and set them to balance... No more CoG shift as tanks drain, cause they drain equally, in a distributed manner. Adding such a function to stock would be pretty cool! It also adds some impressive options for fleet building and plane flying.

So, I've had this part sitting in my workshop for over a month, almost two, but I finally did the mod, to see how it looked... I LIKE! So, there's still room for improvement. I have not made the skirt yet, nor drilled a hole for a retaining screw (the knob has a threaded hole, so not really meant for rotary switches, but that's easily remedied by simply drilling it out). I also don't have paint for it. I want to get a good metallic aluminum finish paint to make it look right. I also still need to get some fine grit sand paper to give it a better surface finish (and prep the smooth parts for paint). I also need to drill out the slot and fill it with epoxy, so light will shine through it. I don't think the neighbors will appreciate if I continue work after midnight! Compared to the original design... Ain't that a beautiful glow... So bright and shiny! Anyway, the mod was SUPER simple! I used a saw and a file to cut out chunks of the knob, which was a stock part at my local hardware store. I finished the shaping with a file. It was all done by eye, no measurements. So, that's it for now. This knob was DEFINITELY something I wanted on my panel, no matter what it took. It'll be used to select the vector to display on the crosshairs of my FDAI "navball". It'll have Positions for "Grade", "Radial", "Normal", "Target" and "Node". A toggle will select between "Pro" and "Anti/Retro". In all likelihood, it'll be the only rotary switch on the entire panel, but I'm GONNA have one, and it's GONNA look right!

I suppose people with a hobby background and people in industrial/aerospace motor industries have different ideas of what "servos" are. The cheap hobby servo is typically a 1/2 to 3/4 rotation proportional motor that uses a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal to set it from one extreme to the other and anywhere between. In the industrial setting, a servo is any motor with an integral feedback system that allows for either speed, torque, or proportional controls. Such motors can be free spinning, or can have range limits. The simplest servo, by industry definition, is slapping an encoder on the end most gears of a gearbox with a plain DC motor rotating it, and driving it with a controller. Most modern inkjet printers now do this, instead of using steppers, as it is cheaper, and works just fine. You also still get high speeds out of it. Steppers are still quite affordable, and have simple controllers and libraries on the Arduino. You can also attach an encoder to one, and get precise feedback. Thing is, you can do it even more cheaply, by just using a photo-interuptor (it's a part with a slot. One side has an infrared LED, and the other a phototransistor). You can index your wheel, so when it passes the "home" position, the arduino can double check it's stepper counts against the index signal. If the stepper has slipped, then it can reset the stepper count to zero, thus resetting the error. When you power up (or reset a flight), you would spin the stepper till it reaches home, so it always knows where it is at. You can actually make a cheap encoder by using a photo interrupter with a wheel with evenly spaced holes. It might not have super resolution, but if all you need is to have it know were the next number is, then that's all you need. You can do a count style encoder, where you just count pulses, or you can carefully position two photo interrupters to try to create a quadrature encoder. This has the benefit of being able to tell direction of rotation. Even a low resolution home-made encoder will still give you enough resolution to step from number to number, probably even half step betws if you do it right. Sometimes, salvage is a great way to come up with workable ideas. a good possible source for a wheel would be an old analog stereo with the long tuner window and a pointer that slides back and forth when you rotate a knob. Inside those is a set of pulleys. When you rotate the knob, you are spooling a cord back and forth over those pulleys. See how it's put together. If you JUST want the wheel, you can salvage that, and could probably even belt drive it with a small DC motor. The wheel will already have a groove for the cord, thus will work with a pulley. Print a strip of numbers on a piece of thick paper or plastic (if your printer supports printing on plastic) and hot glue it to the edge of the wheel, and you have a rotary number dial, made with entirely scavenged parts! You could also steel the capstan wheel from an old VCR. It too has a pulley designed for a rubber belt,a dn a precision bearing. It also has an integrated motor, but it's designed to spin fast, not slow, so it's not suitable for the gauge application. What you can do is have another slower motor, with a small pulley (probably also salvaged front he same VCR), and you can then drive the capstan from an external motor. Attach the number strip with hot glue in the same way, and you're set. Bonus points if you can find the signal for the hall effect sensor in the capstan motor, as you can then use that as your index too! Making actual tape meters... A lot harder... Although, if you did it right, you MIGHT be able to repurpose the previously mentioned stereo tuner as one, if you can affix a tape to the cord, without disrupting the cord.

According to his comments elsewhere, he's been over here http://www.goforlaunch.co.uk

The type of vertical gauges I currently have are called analog edgewise panel meters, or simply edgewise meters for short. Specifically, mine are General Electric 180 (the single pointer meters) and International Instruments 1251 (the dual pointer meter) models. The 180 models tend to cost around $40-80 each, but it you are VERY patient, you might sometimes find a better deal. I got mine for $11 a PAIR! The catch, is I have to build a converter circuit to run them with an Arduino, cause the ones I got are not compatible with the 0-5 volt signaling used by an Arduino. Basically, cheap, but more work. For a MUCH cheaper meter, you can get GE 185 meters. They are half the height of the 180 model (3 vs 6 inches, or 7.5 vs 15 cm), and have a needle instead of an arrow pointer, but can be found cheap, and commonly available in Arduino compatible voltage ranges (0-5 volts). Any analog edgewise meter makes for a GREAT resource readout. They were the documented favored meter by NASA astronauts. They are super easy to read at just a glance. If you are referring to the discussion I had a while back about a meter with moving numbers and a needle that stays fixed, then as far as i am aware, that is typically called a tape meter. Google REALLY fails at finding these, cause it assumes you're shopping for tape measures... I have never** actually seen one. They are incredibly uncommon. I have only encountered them in aerospace instrumentation, and they have been obsolete since the introduction of glass cockpits in the 1990s, thus finding them tends to be quite difficult. I have considered building one from scratch. You can do this in two ways: 1: You can have a single wheel behind a window. Print labels and apply them to the wheel, and drive it with an arduino controlled stepper motor. You'll need some sort of index sensor, or a full encoder to "home" the wheel (find the "0 position"). 2: You can have two reels with a "tape" between them. You can drive this with two motors, one motor with gears and belts, or you can have one reel on a spring, and one motor to take up tape from the supply reel or release it back to the sprung supply reel by reversing. As you can see, tape meters are VERY complex. I know exactly how they work, and even I'm reluctant to attempt it. In general, if you're wanting to do a tape meter, the easiest way to do it these days is on an LCD or OLED display. Get a small arduino and a small OLED display and render vertically scrolling numbers and a fixed line to mark the center of the screen. The other problem with tape meters, is the scale tends to be very application specific. With a traditional meter, you just replace the meter "face" and you can have a whole new set of numbers, graticules, and unit legends. With a tape meter, you have to make a durable tape that contains all the relevant numerical data, at the scale you want. Much harder to do. If I lived near an aviation scrap yard, you bet I'd be digging' through the piles of junk, looking for one of these puppies! **Never means I've never seen one as instrumentation. I have seen a tape readout tied to a mechanical rotary switch. It read 360° in 5° increments. It was big and clunky... not exactly a mechanism I'd see fit for fine readout. Still have never seen one used in actual instrumentation.

So, I found something while looking for a bottom plate to close up my custom keyboard build... These panels came from 1960s/70s era test equipment... the heart of the Apollo era. They have both a color and a texture that I think feels and looks good, and suits the period well. They are aluminum panels with a laminated and textured plastic layer on the top, and gloss paint on the bottom. They have a rounded front edge. I am now considering using these as my primary controller surface panel. I'll have to trim/bend them to size, and there will be seams, but that's fine. The Apollo panels had seams too, and my seams will be located at the edges where the keyboard notch sits. I also have some mildly curved steel square tube from an old Gamestop PS3 display I disassembled. I might mount that underneath for rigidity, and to put a uniform convex curve to the panel. Haven't decided definitively on that one yet. It would mean the front edge would be very thin, but the thickness would rapidly increase, allowing me more forward clearances for my throttle and my Stage and Abort buttons. The small wood piece with the wires hanging out is for a future number pad attachment for my keyboard. I used an Apple MagSafe connector to create magnetically locking side panels. I will be able to slide the keyboard forward, and snap my number pad to it for regular use, and when I want to game, I can snap off the number pad and set it aside, and slide my keyboard into the cutout in the controller where it can comfortably sit during a KSP gaming session. Keyboard still has some wiring and programming left, before it's functional. Look at that beautiful texture! It's a little beat up, but I have close to a dozen of these panels, If I'm not mistaken. I'll just pick through them all and grab the nicest two for the horizontal surface. I think I'll use a few more of these vertically for the vertical readout/gauge surface or for the top panels. That will have the benefit of providing me with a nice rounded edge on the top as well. The aluminum is thin enough that I can drill it and use my nibbler tool easily on it. That will make for very custom tailored openings for the various gauges and meters. A touch of grey paint will be used to cover the exposed aluminum underneath, wherever cuts must be made that might be exposed. I can also still do rectangular cutouts and backlight those with plexi and those translucent printable sheets. I'll still need to have it done at a print shop, as my printer is deteriorating. Benefit of having cutouts with plexi behind, Is I can get most of the legends on a few sheets. No huge sheets needed for whole panels. It won't be an Apollo copy, but I think it'll still do, while still keeping a decent look. And for those curious about the keyboard, Here it is, in all it's glory! Yup! That's a "Danger Zone" key! There's the magnetic connector and the embedded magnets in the side trim. The magnetically locking number pad side trim. They make such a lovely snap when they come together! And here's part of the hand wiring. I decided to hand wire LEDs later on... I still need to finish that. Went old school and made this my first practice in the classic art of wire lacing/looming. I actually used waxed dental floss as my cord. There are only 4 pieces of continuous floss not he entire thing. Once piece is a single short bit at the right shift key to secure a single wire, and two pieces could have been one, but I did a short trial run down by the space bar, just to see if I could do it right. Technically could have been done in 2 pieces! It's really a continuous knotting method. I plan to use the technique inside my kerbal controller, to keep wiring in tight, managed bundles.