richfiles

No... I think I shall not...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000143910873.html While not a perfect drop in, they do offer both analog and digital versions. This is what I'm using on my currently very damaged Radar Altimeter Tape Meter, as well as what I plan to use for my Delta V Carriage Meter. My only complaint about them, is the cost per unit. they feel kinda spendy, but when you realize they incorporate hall sensor, interface, shaft, bearing, and housing into one standard unit... It's kinda worth it. No idea if this is suited to your application or not, but it's ideal for my application. Good luck with your project, whatever it is you're working on.

No, no, no, no, no... Oh man... It's worse than I thought. The electrical tab on the motor easily popped out, letting the motor turn again. That actually unbound the motor, but it still won't run smooth unless all the hardware is loosened, because of how warped everything is... Now that the motor spins... I can see that repair was pointless, the shaft is bent, and it feeds into the tightest bearing stack of the whole assembly. Motor might spin, but the gearbox output shaft is unusable. As annoying as this is, its just a shipment from China to replace it... The real issue though, is the PRIMARY REEL DRUM has a deformed tooth, and it now snags the tape itself. This is literally the worst possible scenario... This is actual damage to the tape feed mechanism itself. I can try to file it, but if that fails to fix the issue, I'm not really sure what to do. I might be forced to part out my backup unit. This is literally the worst case outcome. It's nearly a complete rebuild from scratch at this point, if I end up having to do that! I'm so mad right now... I've been busy with work, so I haven't had time to sit down and work with this. I wanted to get back to my vertical velocity meter and actually finish that, since it's so close to done (which I will probably do before this, cause I'm so frustrated and dang it, I need that dopamine high of actually completing something, vs being sent back to stage 0)... This is yet another setback to starting the Synchro Emulator DAC boards or starting the Delta V Carriage Meter mechanism... I just... I haven't felt this defeated by a setback in a long time... I put 7 months into building this assembly, and it took just a second to destroy it. I hate this so much...

The Kraken really seems to have done a number on this piece... Man, it is SO warped... Honestly, I don't think there's a single straight plate left in the whole entire mechanism. I don't think I can straighten the plates out well enough to not still cause binding in the bearings... I hate to say this, but I think I may have to start entirely from scratch with these plates... I think I'm looking at scrap metal here...

I dropped my Radar Altimeter Tape Meter assembly, one of the more complex parts for my Kerbal Instrument Panel... Shirt sleeve snagged it and yeeted it towards the floor. It's badly warped, all the mechanisms are bound, the motor itself is damaged, and it's going to take complete disassembly, and replacement of probably half the hardware to get it up and operating again. It's BAD... Not unrepairable, but a LOT of work to fix. It took nearly the entire sum whole of 2020 to design, order and receive parts for, and build this assembly... April till October. I'm mad... All the work I put into the device below... and it's ded now... (Downloadable Imgur link) https://imgur.com/a/8drH6V6.mp4 ***EDIT*** Oh man... It's worse than I thought. Was able to do a quick fix for the motor, but now that the motor spins... I can see that repair was pointless, the shaft is bent, Even worse though, is the TAPE FEED DRUM has a deformed tooth, and it now snags the tape itself. This is literally worst possible scenario... This is actual damage to the tape feed mechanism itself. I don't even know what to do anymore...

Small update, one I am not happy to make... The Radar Altimeter Tape Meter experienced some unexpected lithobraking, and is now non-functional. Shirt sleeve caught a corner and yeeted it right off the shelf where I had it stored. The mechanism is completely bound up, and worse... One of the gearmotor leads appears jammed half WAY into the motor. I get nothing but high current draw when trying to power it. It's completely busted right now. The good news, is most of the warping appears to be the screws and standoffs holding the sandwiched layers of the mechanism together. If I take it all apart, pound the aluminum sheets flat again, and replace any bent hardware, it should be unbound again. As for the motor, rather than order a replacement from China, which will take forever, I'll just disassemble the gearbox from the motor, and as long as no teeth are broken, I should be able to replace the motor from one of the other ratio gearmotors I ordered (remember that I ordered the wrong ratio motor, initially, so I have a spare motor). Even if it is likely recoverable, it still sucks. I had only a limited supply of those standoffs, leftover from my old job, and if I have to replace warped ones, it could cost a bit to order them, as the local hardware store has a limited stock. That, and It's always annoying to have something that's otherwise finished, be set back so severely. Grrr... I'm mad...

Hmm... an idea... Adjusting tongue to most optimal angle for creative thought... So, the Navball is obviously the star of this show, and has been highlighted lately by my working on the power supply for it, and soon the controller for it. For the longest time, mounting it, along with what sits around it had always been in flux until very recently. I'm now quite sold on the current position and the current order of instruments, with the current bezel configuration including three rate of rotation meters and the velocity readout. One issue has been the fact that due to the angle of the front instrument panel, the rear of the Navball housing, and by extension, the tape meter, was likely going to stick out below the plane of the bottom panel, and require a "pan" to enclose. I was fine with this fact. One area of concern was what cutting slots for the rate of rotation bargraph PC boards would do to the overall strength of the Instrument panel. The Navball is the heaviest of all my individual instruments, and was designed to be supported from the front bezel. I was trying to find ways not to slot the panel surrounding where the Navball would mount, but now I think I might have an entirely different strategy for mounting. If I cut a "U" shaped channel in the instrument panel plate surrounding the Navball, and bend it inward, the Navball will have a flatter facing front (which doesn't matter much as the whole ball is round), and this will leave a full gap both at the bottom and on either side of the Navball. If I use a pair of brackets to secure the bottom of the Navball to the front panel to preserve the gap at the bottom while reintroducing rigidity, then I'll have a gap all the way around to support rate meters on both sides, and below the Navball... I can create a bezel that has a much shallower angle, and let the bottom rate of rotation meter sit at an angle that transitions well between the horizontal control panel and the near vertical instrument panel. It buys me vertical room, which makes mounting the velocity readout easier. It also allows a much more shallow mounting angle, and could help reduce the depth of the pan required to close off the hardware on the bottom panel. Reworking the tape meter only involves re-drilling 6 holes, where the belt frame mounts to the main housing of the tape feed assembly. Those holes simply determine the angle the two assemblies sit against one another, at the point where they both attach together. Hopefully you can imagine it... No time to do a sketch up of it. At the moment, I have circuit boards to solder for work again (Thank goodness)! I've not had regular work since October, thanks to the stupid parts shortage, and the bank account has gotten pretty low. I'll be doing more brainstorming than building for the next two weeks, at least. Man, I'm just glad to have work again!

Always be careful around garage door springs... If it's still under tension, and anything looks even remotely off, I'd bail and get a professional who actually knows garage doors. Those springs are normally under enough tension to potentially end a person's free ride on spaceship Earth... Do not take them lightly! They're wound with enough force to basically lift a small wall up and over your head, and they take so much of the brunt of the force, that a teeny little motor and a plastic gear can handle lifting and lowering this "small wall" for however many decades your opener lasted. Another thing to be weary of, is that a disturbing number of modern openers are appearing with "smart" features that are merely ways to lock you into a subscription model, just to operate the dumb thing. Always read the fine print. Corporations in recent years have been getting very greedy over IoT style subscription plans, and are tacking them wherever they can for those added revenue streams.

I spent a little more for entirely enclosed absolute position sensors with a bearing mounted shaft and a fully assembled and closed housing. These are exactly what you have, but with a digitally derived analog output, instead of a serial interface. 0-360° outputs 0-5 volts. Three axes absolute positions can be driven by just 3 signal wires and 2 power wires. They are light weight, have an integrated bearing and shaft, and could be utilized to potentially simplify the overall design, vs trying to mount an open PC board and a loose magnet. I do love these Absolute Position Sensors. They really are a game changer! I do certainly hope you are still pursuing this project. It has great potential, and I feel like you were getting much closer to a working solution for the project. Shortcuts like preassembled absolute position sensors and using PC boards as mounting plates could very much streamline the project. I wish you good luck and good progress. Also hope you're doing well... You've not logged in since last summer.

Ah, me too! Still ate ramen for a month to afford it! I've mentioned before, it was originally part of an Israeli F-4 Phantom flight trainer. I think people were reluctant to buy it, due to it being international shipping, possibly. I spent $70 something in shipping costs alone... Honestly, it was well worth it though. I've never seen one go for as cheap in the years since I originally snagged mine. I took the gamble, mainly because it was pulled form a working simulator, simply because it was being retired... The F-4 is a very old jet, after all! Honestly, three axis navballs are just very rare on ebay. They don't pop up very often, and if they are flight rated, they'll generally be over a grand. Mine was rated for simulator use only, so it sold for way cheaper. It's amazing how many 2 axis balls are out there. They really do clutter up the search results, and it makes finding a good 3 axis ball very tedious. 2 axis balls are less useful for space applications, where orientation can easily be situated in all three axes. The two axis units also can be misleading too... If they utilize an integrated gyroscope that is vacuum or electrically driven, then the indicator is 100% useless. If it is a remote sending unit... that is a remotely oriented gyroscope sends signals to control the two axes, then it can still potentially be used... Displaying pitch and roll is typical for commercial and small aircraft, along with having a heading indicator display yaw separately. For space applications, one could have toggles to toggle yaw and pitch, or yaw and roll on a pair of such indicators, but it's universally less intuitive for space operations than a unified three axis navball. That's why I've been so determined to get it up and functioning!

And it's fully assembled! The silicone pads and the standoffs arrived, so I did the final assembly today. The silicone pads simply provide some compression to hold the transistors against the heatsink. The big pair of transistors use just one pad. The bridge rectifier used two pads. I had to cut pads to make a thin second layer to match the correct height of the smaller pair of transistors. Once everything was physically assembled, I soldered the transistors to the board and conformal coated it to protect it. What remains now is to do some basic testing to ensure that it works properly, and I can then move on to the next stage of the build. As I said in an earlier post, I'm in a board design mood, so designing the boards for the rate of rotation meters and for the synchro emulators should be next up. I may do both at once and order them together, or do one at a time... I'll feel that one out. The LED decoders for the DSKY are super simple... I'm not even sure if it's worth the cost of ordering boards. Might do protoboards for those, might not. I'm also getting pretty antsy about the Vertical Velocity meter. That's been just needing a diffuser plate and scales to be printed. It's disturbingly close to done, and I kinda wanna just get it checked off the list. Really isn't any good reason to put it off. The tape meter is functionally complete, but I still need to print the tape. That's going to be an exercise in tedium... To do that, I need to make a jig that can hold the tape in exact increments of each number line, and find an appropriate flexible ink. I need some manner of stamp holder on a hinge, that will apply even, level, uniform pressure on the tape. I'm also gonna have to practice plenty... I ONLY have 2 tapes... If I ruin them, I can't replace them! The final individual assembly for the instrument panel is the Delta V carriage meter, the type of part best done with an LCD I am choosing to do it the hard way! All in the pursuit of that sweet, sweet Apolloesque electro-mechanical glory! I have a few different concepts for how to do it, with none set in stone. A LOT rides on the available space left in the enclosure. The way I'm doing things, I know I will have some space left, but due to the variability and uncertainty of how it'll all come together... It may not actually be much space. That determines how wide I can go, whether it's limited to 4 or 8 digits, etc. What I have decided, is that printer parts are my best bet for a compact carriage mechanism. The Brother word processor I found ages ago has some nice parts from the printer that I think I can use. I also have the perfect cable for powering and transmitting date to the smart displays. Really flexible stuff. Once that's all done, it pretty much becomes time to wire and mount all the bits together inside the enclosure. The control panel is mostly just physical construction... Drilling, filing, etc, finished up with soldering the bits together. Ultimately, the biggest hurdle for me will be coding the software t actually run everything. Getting things finished and assembled, and having all the logical I/O mapped out will greatly aide in the learning process. I've also encountered many people who have expressed interest in the coding side of things, so I hope I'll have guidance as I learn. I'd like to finish this update with a quick thank you... I noticed, while editing my top post today, that I had the Thread of the Month tag. Sure enough, I was selected! This has been a long, slow process, but It's getting there! I just wanted to thank all of you... Those who enjoy the build process, those who have pitched in with advice, ideas, or help, thanks! I also wanna say it's been my pleasure to share in the actual process of creating all the various bits of this project.

LOL, I had no idea I'd gotten a TOTM till I edited my top post to update my progress chart, and saw this funny looking tag that I knew I hadn't put there! I've always tried to share how I do things, whenever I actually I do them. I think that's why it took me so long to actually make my own thread. For the longest time, I hung out in the Simpit Repository, which I'd like to shout out, since that's where I learned this was even possible! I know there have been long idle periods, but this is a project I've definitely not forgotten, and idle time has meant a lot of progress in the past 2 years! I used to joke that the game would go 1.0 before I finished! Now I expect 2.0 to come out before I finish, LOL I do intend to finish though. Current progress of the instrument portion of the build is moving faster than ever! I still need to build the synchro emulator boards, the Delta V carriage meter, and my rate meter boards. The DSKY displays only need some LED drivers and decoders, the vertical velocity meter just needs a diffuser and scales printed. Anything else that remains is mostly minor assembly work left on existing portions of the build or machining/3D printing. After that, it's a matter of assembling all the bits into the front panel, wiring everything into a controller, and programming it. At that point, I'd have functioning instruments, and could in fact make them function stand alone with some hidden power switches. The control panel already has a support structure made, and is mostly a matter of very carefully drilling and populating the control surface. I'd need to mount switches, the T-Bar fader, the joysticks, and some annunciators and misc hardware. I have a relatively simple 3 layer plan... A rigid aluminum plate to mount hardware to, an acrylic layer to provide illumination and annunciation, and the contoured surface. The control panel portion is designed to be easily removed, for ease of transport, and would add functionality to the instrument panel when attached. Anyway, I just wanna thank everyone who enjoys my build process, and those who have pitched in with advice, ideas, and aid! I also wanna say it's my pleasure sharing the actual methods I use to create what I've created

So, I was looking for ways to control the bar graph LEDs for my Rotation Rate meters, and I'm learning that the old school analog LM3914 isn't actively produced anymore, and is getting a little pricy, and I don't trust Chinese sources that much, due to the counterfeit problem. It seems that people like to repurpose the very popular PCA9685 16 channel PWM 12-bit servo controller to drive LEDs instead of servos, and it works well, however, thanks to the parts shortage, that particular part is kinda hard to come by right now, except pre-built on Chinese sourced servo controller boards. To use the chip, I'd have to buy 15 boards, and desolder the surface mount chips, and reuse them that way. Less than ideal... Eventually I did find some in stock, but still, I wanted to see if there were better options out there. Honestly, my coming across these other chips was purely accidental, but apparently the same company makes a number of dedicated LED controller chips... PCA9532 https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/PCA9532.pdf The PCA9532 is the budget LED controller. It has less features, but no fewer ports, and honestly, is probably simpler to control. I2C bus 16 outputs 8-bit (256 brightness steps) GPIO capable (unused outputs can be read as inputs 8 chips can be addressed per I2C bus (8x16 = 128 LEDs) PCA9955 https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/PCA9955B.pdf I2C bus 16 outputs 8-bit (256 brightness steps) Advanced blinking controls Three quinary address pins allow 125 devices to be addressed (125x16 = 2000 LEDs... Woah...) PCA9959 https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/PCA9959.pdf SPI bus 24 outputs 6-bit (64 brightness steps) Advanced blinking/fade controls SPI daisy chains data output via a series of shift registers, so no addresses. All three of these chips require a common anode, so they could only directly drive the red LED segments of my meters. TO drive the green segments, I'd have to invert each output using a transistor... That would be a LOT of transistors, but I haven't found a common cathode variant of these yet. Still, considering how many annunciators I'll be having on this thing, It might be worth it to use these types of chips, specifically because of the set and forget nature. Once set, an LED remains lit according to the characteristics programmed into the chip. This frees the microcontroller(s) from having to hold digital I/O high or low, or to keep up a PWM output. I figured I could share these with others. Maybe someone else can use them to light up their LEDs, or maybe someone knows a common cathode variant of this style part. I'm not nearly close to being through this companies entire offerings, but I've not had luck yet. Honestly, I'd love to know if anyone has had experience with these chips, how they liked using and controlling them, etc.

Much like the Harris Stereo 5 chassis fit was meant to be, so too, this was meant to be... This is the CPU/GPU heatsink from an iMac G5. Ancient tech, but this heatsink is built quite nicely! Had to be... The G5 was the toastiest of the Power PC CPUs! So, I woke up, and it was COLD here... It was -14°F/-25°C and windy out there! Yuck! I knew I had an old heatsink laying around, and I REALLY did not want to drive out into that weather to go rummage around in my storage unit... After checking a few spots around the apartment, I remembered I had the old G5 heatsink around... I had it stored 6 inches away from the California Intruments 850T Precision Oscillator that will be DRIVING this board! My next shock was the fact that a board designed by a stranger just happened to have mounting holes perfectly lined up with he studs on this heatsink! At least the width, anyway... I'd have to drill two more holes, but that's fine, cause both those studs line up with empty board space. Truly, this was meant to be! Wild! Man... Even the fins on this heatsink are made from copper! This thing REALLY is primo! It's got 3 heat pipes as well. The plan is to mount the transistors on the bottom of the board, and fold the leads 90°, so the thermal tabs face the heatsink. I'll be using silicone pads between the board and the transistors to compress them into the heatsink. I'll be using a thermal ceramic plate as an electrical insulator, so the transistors don't short to the heatsink. I ordered M2.5 standoffs to raise the board up, so there's room for the transistors underneath. When the board is screwed down, the silicone will compress the transistors, thermal compound, and ceramics into the heatsink. I've desoldered the bridge rectifier, and marked the transistors and removed them (they were only lightly soldered by one pin, to keep them in order)... There is one problem though... The board was designed with the transistors fanning outward, not inward. This heatsink is ideally fit for folding the transistors inward, but for the thermal tabs to face the right way, it flips the leads. Given that the boards were made so quickly, and were cheap, and I need to mod them anyway to work... I may just simply run a Rev 2.0 board. I gotta wait for silicone and standoffs and screws in the mail anyway... Why not the board 2. ===== EDIT ===== It has occurred to me, that all I need to do is desolder the through hole components, solder them to the other side of the board, and then just flip the whole board over, and the transistors will be correct. Rather than have two differing variations of the board for people's differing heatsink mounting methods, i'm gonna simply add the additional 2 mounting holes, and add silkscreened component labels to both sides of the board, so a person can build the board one way or flipped, depending on their desired heatsink configuration.

I recall one of my classes at college, an AV repair class (I feel that this dates me... ), and I just so happened to have a friend come over to toss ideas for a troubleshooting session at me, and I was focused on him more than my soldering. He went back to his spot across the room, and continued working on his device, and I powered mine up, and POP!!! - - - w h i z - - - TINK - - - w h i z - - - OWW!!! My buddy had just gotten a capacitor can ricochet off his cranium. The capacitor, in the most perfect case of RNG ever, had managed to target the person who had distracted me from noticing I'd soldered it in backwards! It sought out it's vengeance!

Now THAT is a fine sight! This has been trapped in my mind for a very long time now, and it is good to see it in a physical, tangible form! For the time being, I have the 4 power transistors tacked in place by only a single lead. I wanted to leave them repositionable. I still need to find a heatsink that will be suitable for this, and have yet to finalize the orientation of the transistors. A happy surprise! I can't believe how closely this lines up with the transformer dimensions. I could probably make an enclosure to contain the high voltage bits, and it'll all fit nicely in a simple, uniformly sized box! Definitely a neat little bonus! ... Now for some bad news... Here is a shot of the front and back sides of the PC board, and the mostly completed unit... Notice the location of the negative stripe on the Electrolytic Capacitors, and the (+) marking on the PC board. (-) faces the rear, and (+) faces forward. Notice the (+) marking for the Bridge Rectifier on the board, in the rearmost through hole? Now look to the left side of the image, to the back side of the board... The traces for the bridge rectifier and the capacitor banks are all parallel. There is definitely a case of crossed polarities! That's BAD! I took a look at the schematic, but it correctly shows the (+) of the Bridge Rectifier, all the (+) leads of the Capacitors, and (V+) all properly connected. Likewise, it also correctly shows the (-) of the Bridge Rectifier, all the (-) leads of the Capacitors, and (V-) all properly connected as well. This was definitely the schematic linked to the board layout, and yet the board layout CLEARLY showed the (+) and (-) of the Bridge Rectifier flipped... When the files for this design were originally sent to me, I tried to open them with an older version of KiCad, and the software was unable to open the files. I proceeded to install a current version on my tablet, but when I opened the files, I had all sorts of issues with broken library links. Furthermore, the 3D models were not associated with the part footprints at all! And it's here that I think the mistake occurred... I had to reallocate all the parts with their footprints and 3D models, and I suspect I either grabbed the wrong Bridge Rectifier, or flipped it. That is the good news though... The board is fine... Just labeled wrong. The solution to fix the problem is to simply flip the Bridge Rectifier! That's it! I'm just very glad I spotted the error! I'll just leave this example of what happens to capacitors when they are powered from the wrong polarity... As a side note, I may have found a suitable means to control the LEDs for my rate of rotation meters... The PCA9685. The outputs are persistent, so you can set an output LED or meter, and forget it, as it retains the output till the output value is updated. Because the outputs are also PWM, this chip can not only drive varying brightness LEDs, but also control analog meters! The PCA9685 is a 16 Channel, 12 bit, PWM Driver, with a highly addressable I2C Interface. Unfortunately the chips are also "semi-unobtanium". Unfortunately, most stocks are depleted for the chip alone. Fortunately, there are still many circuit boards available using the chip. Fortunately, you can still order servo controller boards using these chips, but it's one big board plus an inflated price, per chip. The boards are also not ideal for me, as I still need to design a compact board to drive the LEDs in the bezel that will surround the Navball. I'd have to desolder the chips, and at that point, I may as well just buy the one weird package in stock and do a board around that. 16 channels is a fair bit, but it'd still take

Unbelievable... The guy that helped be out with this circuit board design, he specifically designed the circuit using components that were IN STOCK at the time of the design... I have been so tied up in doing projects for one particular friend who is so freakin' nitpicky about every little thing... combined with a short fuse... has meant that a 2 day project has been turned into a 2 week project... and he's got me on half a dozen different tangents, all with freakin' deadlines! One project, in particular should have been 2-3 days work... Instead, it's been over 2 weeks, nearly 3 now, because he keeps having a fit over the cost of the hardware to build the dumb thing! What should have been two visits to two stores, has become FIVE visits to those two stores, with returns included... We'd go into a store, and get something we needed, then leave before we had everything, because he'd get all huffy and riled up cause "this store's too expensive... I'll go shop somewhere else", and walk out before we finish getting all the parts. Oh Lord help me... He's the one hounding me about when he needs this done by, and yet I went three days without a response on supplies, and ended up going myself... I got supplies that I would have selected, had it been my own project... Apparently my choices were too rich for him. He actually whined about eye bolts that were 50 cents more expensive than the ones he so quickly found, once there was a dollar sign attached to the project, and of course he had to prove my choices too expensive... GAHAHDSJUUJHSSHAHDAH!!! Now I'm up at 7am, with far too little time, trying to finish off this one project... But NOT BEFORE I VENT!!! His stupid delays and wasting my time has cost me the window of opportunity to buy all the parts for my Navball reference amplifier power supply. The first major part is now on backorder at multiple suppliers, and if I'm lucky, I might get it by February, and worse, after March, if I order now, which I just do not have the time to sit down and do till at the best, this afternoon or probably tomorrow! His screwing around has cost me SO much time! I haven't touched my PC case build or the computer within it since the end of November! There's this parts shortage situation! AHHHRGHHGHH!!! I am SO angry about ALL of this right now!

I have officially ordered the board(s). I'm getting 5 identical boards, just cause that's how the manufacturer does things. Total cost was only about $22, and that was with the faster shipping. Even if I manage to order parts tomorrow, I'll still possibly get the boards before the parts... possibly. More than likely, I won't have time tomorrow, so the board has a solid head start. Unfortunately, me incessantly working on other people's projects has screwed me over... The board design took into consideration parts that were in stock at the time of the design. Because I have myself tied up in half a dozen projects that aren't even my own, my board revisions took some time, and getting the board ordered took some time... It's also been enough time that one of the two main power transistors is out of stock with a month+ lead time... I hope... I can't win... At least I actually got the board design finalized and ordered. Since I'm already kinda in a board designing mood, I think I wanna try to come up with a board design for those Russian bar graph LEDs I picked up a while back. Huh... I thought I posted about that, but i didn't see it. Anyway, I had debated for a long time if I could justify getting the LEDs... I just went ahead and got them several months ago. Anyway, the big issue with the boards, is that they don't have very much space to sit, and there are a LOT of pins I need to break out, which makes through hole mounting iffy at best.. Furthermore, orienting the board endwise, while it could work, also likely means slots in the aluminum panel, on three of 4 sides of the Navball, and I want the maximum physical support in that area, so I wanna minimize the size of any slots I cut into the surrounding aluminum. I pretty much expect to be multiplexing them, but the red and green LEDs have to be multiplexed separately. The reds are common cathode, and the greens common anode. No idea why they made the parts that way, but that's how they are. The Rate of Rotation Meters will consist of three bar graphs, one for each axis of rotation. Each LED module is 5mm long, and has five 0.5mm x 1.6mm LED segments. Each bar will use 10 of the green modules, and 6 of the red modules, for a total of 80 segments in an 80mm (3.15 inch) bar. If space or electrical complexity becomes an issue, i might be willing to go down to 9 or 8 of the green modules. I'd rather not though. i could cut one red module of either end too, and have less red portions of the bar graph. honestly, depending on the complexity of it, I might look into a 4 layer board, if that helps route all the connections. Routing is such an issue, because of the limited space and absolute number of connections to be made. I feel like I should make a small addendum... These might look like standard DIP style chip packages, but they are very much smaller than the standard DIP package. A standard DIP has 0.1 inch spaced leads. this has 0.049 spacing, converted to the same units... as small as the part is, close enough to 0.05, or half the pin pitch.

Made a few minor updates to the PC board. flipped the power transistors on the left side, so the heatsink tabs face outwards. Just needed to rearrange a few component locations and trace routes to make that work. Really despising the parts shortage right now... I am very low on hours at work, and I don't know how long it'll be before we get parts again. I'm not sure if I should order these parts right now, given my hours, and thus income right now, yet at the same time, I have nothing to do, plenty of time, and once parts do show up at work, I'll be slammed playing catchup, and have no time for any of this, most likely... It's very frustrating...

Made some massive progress on my Instrument Panel build! I have the power supply for the Navball designed, thanks to some major help from an internet bystander! This part of the build stood out as difficult, because it's not simply a power supply that needs to be made, but a line voltage supply with a 400Hz synchronized sine wave output that matches the reference frequency that also goes to the DAC board. In essence, I needed to take an external analog signal, and boost it up to 115 volts AC, but where the AC frequency matched the input signal. That design is now done, thanks to one "Dr. Rockzo". He got curious about the project, and had experience in the field of line level power supplies, and lent a very appreciated hand in designing this circuit! I only know the absolute basics of line level power supplies. They are not my area of expertise. All that remains is to order parts and to tweak a few last second changes to the PC board layout, and send it off to be made, so long as I can budget it. Honestly, just hoping for parts/hours at work soon... Finally got hit hard by the parts shortage. Starting to feel that sting... All the details are in the build thread.

Finally made some real progress again with my Kerbal Instrument Panel... Parts shortage has left me with only a handful of hours of work a month. If I work less, there's more time for projects, but also the looming threat of running out of money, period! If I work more, I can afford to buy all the project goodies I like, so they can sit and collect dust while I sleep off the day's efforts, after a long hard day working. Can never win...

Here it is! The 115vac 400Hz Amplifier. Takes my 10v p-p reference sine wave from my California Instruments 850T Precision Sine Oscillator, and boosts it up to enough voltage and current to drive the Navball! This schematic doesn't show the rectifier or the bulk capacitors that create the +/- High voltage rails, but those portions of the schematic are textbook. Also since added is a resistor and coupling capacitor to a shutdown pin on the primary op-amp. I caught that one. The HV rectification is done at the top. The center area with all the surface mount parts is the primary input. The high and low portions of the circuit are the tri of transistors on the left and right sides. I believe the center transistor may (but I'm uncertain) be involved in foldback of the current if it exceeds over-current limits. I'm not 100% certain on that, but I think that's the gist of it. A huge shoutout to Dr. Rockzo, who decided to clown around with some high voltage analog circuitry after we clowned around about Chrome tabs! I'll try to make sure the files are available, whether he has a repository for the stuff, or whether I set up something. For now, he's happy sharing it. I don't know the exact license, but basically build it freely, no commercial. We've still got a few tweaks... I noticed the orientation of the left set of transistors makes heatsinking awkward. He's flipped them on his file already. I haven't had time yet. I need to do the same, as well as get him my modified files with the shutdown circuit tied to enable. I'm really excited to have this high hurdle knocked out of the way! This simplifies a lot for me, and lets me Finally power up my Navball!

Small update, which may likely lead to a major update soon. The TL;DR is that I posted the schematic above to just the right place... Turns out it caught the attention of an individual with far more extensive analog design experience than I have. They got curious enough about the project that they seem to have taken a genuine interest in coming up with a solution... For the fun or challenge of it. So far, the guy has already reworked the 1977 circuit into a modernized circuit concept, has run the circuit in a SPICE simulation to confirm operation, and verified it can be put together with commonly available modern components. The most expensive part is likely to be a transformer... 120vac primary, 230vac CT secondary. I suppose just a 230/240 to 230CT for other regions of the world. That's probably only a $20 part. I was thrilled just having a circuit that ought to work. Later today, after I got home, and I asked how he preferred to be credited, he tells me that now he's trying to design a PC board for it as well! Like... wow... All this started over a humorous post of how many tabs I had open in Chrome (All of them) That lead to the inevitable question of... my sanity, but then to the obvious question of why... That led to "Interesting..." I'm beyond grateful. even if things don't pan out, I've gotten some great insights out of this! I wish him all the success, cause that translates into success here!

Well, I bought a CPU, Motherboard, RAM, and an M.2 NVMe drive. I was fed up with my perpetual lack of upgrades, and I managed to get some good deals... Only problem is all the money I also dumped into upgrading my old boards, particularly the RAM and an extra CPU, which I'll now never use. I hate selling stuff online. So, the board is a Gigabyte Aorus Elite z490, the CPU is an Intel i9 10900K, the RAM is 64 GB of DDR4 3200 (2x 32GB sticks), and the M.2 is a Mushkin Pilot 2TB. Okay UPS, USPS... I'm waiting! CPU was supposed to arrive today. Tracking doesn't show a single arrival since it left it's origin, and it wasn't ion the mail today. RAM should have shipped last week, but didn't even get sent out till yesterday. Might get the M.2 tomorrow., and the theremal compound still hasn't shipped... I've had the board for a whole week! Hurry up and wait...

I went to a local computer shop because I needed an Ethernet to USB adapter. Decided I'd rather support the local computer shop than help fund another Bezos launch... I know, I know... but still... I got there, and low and behold, what was on the shelf at the shop, but an Amazon Basics Ethernet to USB adapter, plus small markup. Oh well, I needed it, so I bought it anyway. I guess Bezos is funded to launch another day.