richfiles

Yeah... Short notice announcements that whole masses of data will be purged, without giving people a means to back it up is NOT acceptable! Followed threads and contacts being gone is a MAJOR ISSUE to... oh, you know... A forum. A place where people with like interests socialize and follow each other's discussions. How this ever got to this point is ridiculous. There needs to be a WHOLE archive of the old forums, that people can log into, and recover their data from, even if only for a few months. I'm not happy about losing track of all the mods and threads I followed, including stuff I was following, but had not installed, cause I was waiting for post 1.1 developments to allow for my use of ALL my RAM. Not. Cool. Of course... what am I saying... This is the place that suffered a purge once... Not like user data is viewed as that important anyway...

also couldn't help but notice that they killed off our thread subscriptions... I have NO idea what threads i've lost now. Little up and coming mods who's author's name and mod name i can't recall, but WOW, that was cool, to just some random topic I held and interest in, to discussions I've been deeply involved in... All gone! Is there an archive of the OLD forum that can be accessed, so that we can scrounge our old data out? I mean, the timing was perfect, but the announcement was insufficient. Doing the upgrade when Fallout 4 released was genius! I didn't KNOW the upgrade was happening! That's also the problem... I didn't know, and have no idea when the announcement and warnings actually posted. We should have had like over a month's warning, with BIG BOLD RED LETTERS or something...

PSA: Your precious thread subscriptions all died in the forum migration ^ Subject says it all. I figured there'd be a small flurry of activity once the forums came back, waited patiently for my email notifications to start pouring in... and I just sat there, waiting... Eventually, I looked under the Fanworks section to find a big thread I follow (the simpit repository), and low and behold, people had returned to it, but I was not subscribed to it anymore. I go in to check things, that find that I have no subscriptions to follow any thread. Long story short, any thread you've ever followed for the sakes of keeping track of, whether it's the thread that goes to some mod you were considering installing, to some challenge you planned to do, or anything really... It's all gone. Not the threads. They're still there, but that notification that tells you to check it out again. That was lost in the migration. So this is a PSA to everyone who thinks their favorite thread is dormant... It might not be. Check them out manually, and resubscribe to those threads if you wish to keep following them. They certainly are not set to let you know of any updates anymore.

So, I just ditched the cheap toggle switches I'd previously bought from China, in favor of these puppies: All Electronics - Toggle A little research indicates that it's the Dorman 85904Z (35 amp) switch manufactured primarily for automotive applications. I am really uncertain about All Electronic's listed 50 amps. It really looks like a Dorman 35 amp toggle. Regardless, we don't care how many KC lights this puppy can power on! We just care to toggle Arduino I/O lines. All Electronics got a supply of these and at quantities over 10 (you'd use at least 15, right?), they're only $3 each. These are surplus, so cheaper than retail. More expensive than the cheap Chinese ones I got... But then again, half those Chinese switches housings wanted to pop open and didn't wanna stay snapped shut. Also, those doorman switches, they seem to be available on Amazon right now for a little bit more than All Electronics has them. Even if they run out in surplus, it looks like they are available from a number of auto parts retailers. Just search for "dorman toggle switch", and you should find them. Anyone with eyeballs should notice that these have a metallic colored wedge shaped tab lever for a toggle... I suspect this switch is the CLOSEST I will get to an Apollo "looking" toggle switch, PERIOD! The lever is actually plastic, with a "chrome" finish. I ordered a couple extras, and I might play with a triangular file to see if I can easily groove these to look even more like Apollo switches. I can just hit them up with some silver paint to fill in the new grooves. If it's a real pain, I'll skip it. If it's not so bad, I might mod them all! Expect laziness to dictate the result of this experiment as "meh, good enough". The wedge is longer than the Apollo switches were, but I won't complain if none of you guys do! I also ordered some $0.50 14 segment alphanumeric green LED displays. I'm going to use them to display "m", "Km", "Gm", etc after the displays that actually display distances. I think i can crate ∆v on them as well, for the readout that will sit beneath the navball, and with 3 of the displays, m/S above the navball (unless I just find one of those thin rectangular LEDs and mount it diagonally for the "/", or I do "m.S", using the decimal as a separator). I'll post pictures of the finished DSKY display board when they show up and I solder them in. Unfortunately, to get them that cheap, I had to settle with common anode, so they are NOT compatible with the MAX7219 LED driver chips... but that's okay. I have over 9000 33 volt zener diodes on a reel... I need to use them for... something... An Arduino will never generate a voltage over 5 volts, so I can never, EVER possibly reverse bias those zeners passed their breakdown voltage. In other words, they may as well technically be plain old signal diodes at Arduino voltage levels. I will use a technique called diode steering to control the LED segments. It's kinda like making a ROM lookup table using discrete diodes. I can then control it with a few binary values outputted from the Arduino. This actually WOULD be a good use for shift registers. 4 bits can easily cover states on any display for m, Km, Mm, Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm, Ym, ∆v, and m.S given that only one state exits at a time. The above is 11 states, plus 0000 being off. It also leaves me room to add 4 more states, If I need them. Inclination and time will be in fixed displays, and already have their own custom indication (the Time to: X indicator and the flat topped LED masked in the center to form a ° symbol). All Electronics ALSO had impedance matching transformers that appear to have windings almost perfectly suited for driving the FDAI synchro inputs! Best of all, they were only $1 each! WIN! I'll probably still have to look for a larger transformer to power the reference, but that shouldn't be hard to find. I just need to find a 5-6 volt AC brick. The last thing isn't so much a part of my Kerbal controller, but I wanted to share anyway, It will sit between the joysticks, after all! I got my plates that I had custom made for my keyboard! Blue anodized aluminum. I disassembled every single keyswitch (Gateron MX Blue) and lubricated all the sliding parts, but I also experimented with dyes, and dyed all the top keyswitch housings blue, to match the Danger Zone blue and grey theme. A lot better than a bunch of milky white switches exposed between blue and blue grey key caps and the blue anodized plate. I REALLY LOVE how it turned out, and I can't wait till February, when the actual key caps will arrive! **EDIT** Looks like Dorman does make a 50 Amp rated version of the switch, but couldn't find a currently listed part number... If they discontinued it, in favor of only doing the 35 Amp switch, it would then make plenty sense why the 50 Amp switch just hit the surplus market.

Yeah... I miss the BBcode, and it wastes SO MUCH SPACE! Double line enter is ridiculous... SERIOUSLY... if I want an extra line, I'll press enter twice. I tried sizing the page scale down to fit more on screen at once, and it's just too small and blurry to read. I don't even get it! It's like the site suddenly expects everyone to have a 4K display to view it in any reasonably efficient manner. Also, It seems that all the threads I was following was NOT carried over... Thanks for that, BTW... Cause I wanna dig through the forums tracking every little mod and topic thread that interested me... Oh look, that dumb auto return spacing junk... Not fixing it... You can stare at it! Finally, Us hardware guys have argued and whined that hardware belongs in the ADD-ONS forum, you know where software add-ons like mods are put. Instead of giving hardware it's own place or sub forum in add-ons we've been stuffed in Fan works. This was tolerable, until the forum move wiped out the Tags. If they are still there, I don't see an obvious way to search for them, or to view only a specific topic (there was hardware, art, screenshots, writing, etc)

That just happened! WOW!!! I have to actually try to get stuff to turn out that nice! It looks very awesome!

It's cool, I can wait for all the mods to update... Fallout 4 just came out! **checks back in a month to play KSP** DAMNIT!!! All the mod makers were playing Fallout 4, and only half the mods are up to date!

* Contract Decline Penalty: A small reputation penalty is incurred when a contract is declined, to prevent Mission Control from being abused as a slot machine. I really don't care much for this one. I absolutely hate "ferrying tourists". I'm a SCIENCE MAN, man! I ain't got no time to spit Kawaiian be-shirted, camera toting unscientific nobodies (that believe storms on Duna could actually be violent enough to cause a mission abort) into space, only to risk uber rep if I end up roasting them on a Rockomax spit! Or likewise, having a ton of part testing contracts. It eats up space for real contracts, like station and base and satellite stuff. NASA ain't lost no real reputation for turning down tourists. Since when has any organization been obligated to accept a contract they don't want any part of? I could see canceling a contract that's been taken resulting in stiffer penalties, but to actually lose rep cause you don't see any contracts that are fun to you? That's the LITERAL definition of a game adding a thing that kills fun. I literally do not want to be punished for clearing out a list of not fun things, in the hopes of getting fun things. * Save and load kerbal trait in save games, trait is generated from name hash only if not specified in the save. HALLELUJAH! I have been SO SICK of adding random spaces and periods into the middle and end of names to make them do the jobs I want them to do! For some ODD reason, some of my characters from 0.90, when I created a new save file for 1.0.x and renamed a few new recruits to match my old characters, I found the jobs were not the same. I LOVE the idea of the initial job being still based on the name hash, but saving it as an actual attribute in the save file, that can then be changed! I've been asking for this! THANK YOU! * Flags no longer count as active flights on the Resume Game interface in the Main Menu. Again, THANK YOU!!! I've been asking for this since 0.25! Really made it confusing to actually have a clue how many real flights you had when loading anything!

Is this working in 1.0.5? I'm gonna go for it... I have a quicksave as recent as my last play session, and multiple manual saves. I'll let y'all know if all my ships asplode when loading physics!

Your "life" is officially over... Your friends and family will say "What ever happened to Netskimmer/insert real name for family and IRL friends*? Haven't seen him for a month now!" ... *Unless your friends and family already call you Netskimmer, in which case, no major changes to your "life" will occur!

I forget, are you working off of zitronen's original version, or marzibus's Mac/Linux compatible variant? Dang... Your work could make navballs in simpits and consoles downright simple! With how cheap these Arduino and OLED or whatever parts are... Anyone can have one! I better hurry up and make my hardware version while it's still a cool thing to do! Truth is, I am TERRIBLE with coding. I haven't done this kind of thing in a decade and a half, and prior to that, I only knew TI-BASIC and BASIC. Everything is new to me again, and I've been either so busy, or so busy screwing with hardware that I've genuinely not had any time to develop my coding skills since I initially got those 8 displays all lit up. Ugh... Just terrible! Hardware... I know hardware...

I haven't been following KSPserialIO for a bit, cause I've been focusing on the hardware... Last I looked, we didn't have the vectors yet, only the attitude. I take it you are calculating these somehow, or is it a version of KSPserialIO with those values incorporated? I, sadly, can't display the classic icons, but I do have crosshairs on my FDAI, so I figure I can have a selector to select the vector axis, and another to select the pro-pos/retro-anti aspect. Doing that would let my crosshairs display the selected vector. I might also use the pushbuttons on my DSKY keypad for that, but I REEEEEALY want some rotary switches somewhere! One can not argue that glass cockpits are versatile, but physical navballs though... Are just plain cool!

I got my PC boards in today, and soldered my DSKY display. It's all green LEDs, except for the half width rectangular bar LED next to the Periapsis indicator. It's red. I want it to light up on any flight where the Periapsis us negative (It will be labeled "LOW"). If the plugin outputs a state for sub orbital flight status... I might consider having it light for that too, to indicate that a trajectory will eventually bring the craft down. I could also have a table of minimum safe altitudes and have it light it if the Pe goes below the minimum safe altitude of the current SoI. Haven't exactly decided what the exact behavior will be used in the last display. If I order more of those long bar type LEDs, I could toggle display on it. The bar LEDs will have text overlays over them to display the function of each display. Top will be APOAPSIS, followed by PERIAPSIS, LOW, TIME TO: followed by the small display generating A, P, S, or n for the time to mode, INCL, ECCN, and then the last display. There will be three displays above and or below the vertical velocity meter. The top will always display altitude, and will essentially sit right of Apoapsis, but on a different "panel" segment than the DSKY. The DSKY will be bordered by some type of plate made to resemble the frame of the Apollo DSKY. The annunciator panel is not made yet, as I don't have the LEDs I need yet. I also need to assemble the controllers to the LED board. As of right now, it's just the LED displays. As crude as it will be, I'll just be desoldering the sockets from my MAX7219 boards, and wiring jumpers from board to LED, mounting them directly not he back of the LED board. I know it's not as elegant as some of the amazing custom displays I've seen here, but I ain't mass producing these, and all the wiring will be strait forward, as the LED modules I got share the pinout of the modules that came with the MAX7219 modules. It'll be direct pin for pin wiring, with no crossed wires. Nice and simple. Three changes I'll make though... I'll install a small electrolytic capacitor onto each board, considering the Chinese manufacturer cheaped out on these things. I will bypass the incorrectly designed reverse polarity input protection diode (they should be in series with ONLY the power into each individual board circuit, but the power pass through that connects power tot he next board passes THROUGH the diode... meaning each board loses 0.6 volts... After 8 boards (the limit of the library, without defining a second SPI bus), you'd be looking at losing 4.8 volts out of 5 volts by the end of the chain... half the boards wouldn't even be able to power on if wired the way the manufacturer suggests! Finally, I'll alter the current set resistor. It's wired to literally pump the maximum current the chip is rated at. Sure it makes for a bright display, but I don't want the display to over drive anything. I honestly don't know if the current output was too high for the Chinese LED modules... Could that be why so many burned out? I don't know. Despite the high current, it was multiplexed, and the datasheet claimed the display ought to have handled that level of current twice over... Basically, I don't know. I don't wanna take chances though, and I don't wanna risk my LED modules. Doesn't help that it NEVER OCCURRED TO ME to desolder the SIP sockets not he MAX7219 modules and solder them to the LED board, so everything would be socketed... I know what they say about hindsight, but hindsight in KSP means the pointy end is aimed the wrong way. Anyway, the display that sticks out tot he side, I have a plan for that... It'll either be covered by the panel, so the time display will only be 7 digits, or I may consider adding a few 16 segment alphanumeric displays to the right of Ap, Pe, and the last display, and desolder the right short display and add a round LED (with a center mask) to form a degree symbol... That'll separate the two 4 digit numbers better. As much as I hate adding ANOTHER digit in width, one digit is not a significant amount, and I like the idea of going full alphanumeric display to display my units. I intentionally left room not he PC board for the addition of those, should I choose to add them. Here is how it looks with the keypad, with the narrow arrangement where I mask the extended digit... I'll probably just add the extra digit anyway... I really like the idea of more informative displays. The ° symbol for inclination will be super simple. Take 1 green LED, file the top flat. paint an opaque dot in the center, and boom... Degree symbol! That will also serve as a good separator. It does mean pulling out the Hakko 808, to desolder that one LED module so i can slide it on down... I guess I gotta slide down the one short bar LED to align with the new spot as well. I'll figure it out. It's a good quality PCB, so if I ever do blow an LED module, I have no fear desoldering it and replacing it. The board will hold up. Full plated through hole proto board! I just wish I'd have gotten one a bit bigger, I had to really... Puzzle together the top row. Didn't quite fit. It would have almost worked vertically, had I abandoned the possibility of doing the alphanumeric magnitude portion of the display (Almost, cause I'd have had to run a snippet of PC board not he right side to accommodate the last three or four pins of the offset displays). What I really needed was the next size up, but that was the size I could get ordered from the USA, and not have to wait nearly a month for Chinese shipments... Of course I still bought a stack of boards from China... i just bought a few local, to get them fast. The last issue, is the size. It'll work, i'm sure, but I was aiming for that meter not he left being the height definition of my panel. I wanted that to BE the defining trait. Now I'll have a bunch of dead space between he meters and the horizontal segment of the control panel. It means instead of being about 6-6.5 inches tall, it'll be about 7.5-8 inches tall. and extra 1-1.5 inch in height. Not terrible. Mostly an aesthetic thing, and not wanting this to close to the edge of my monitor. Regardless, I am looking forward to putting it to good use!

Man, this is gonna look SO GOOD once it's done and installed! Mine is still doing zip!

Quick update. I went down to the local Radio Shack (yes, we still have one) to pick up some more protoboard... Nope! They don't carry the large ones anymore, only the small ones. That means I had two days off, nothing to do... and I didn't get anything done. I just "cleaned"... nothing done at all... I did go online and purchase a LOT of protoboards. Most of them are coming from that far off land we know of as China... Delivery dates are listed as between Nov 20 - Dec 28... Ouch! In light of that, I also ordered 2 large proto boards from a US seller. $5.50 for 2 boards, plus $3 shipping from the US... to the US... Or $20 for 62 boards of varying sizes. Needless to say, I don't think I'll be running out of boards any time soon once they all arrive! Anyway, I should be able to start soldering up the display in about a week or so, as long as my US seller doesn't sit on their hands and procrastinate. I'm gonna make sure the post office gets authorized in advance to leave the package, as if it's on schedule, it'll be delivered an hour or two before I get off work on Saturday... I do NOT want another wasted weekend. I did lay out two rows of my displays on a smaller protoboard, and came up with a very nice arrangement for the DSKY though. I have some salvaged LED indicator bars. These are large rectangular LEDs with either 2 or 4 individual LED dies inside. I think I'll print very small mask labels to go over them to actually mark APOAPSIS, PERIAPSIS, TIME TO:, Incl, ECNT. I have a super tiny 7 segment display (also green) that I think will make a perfect indicator for the "TIME TO:" function. I can display "A" for Apoapsis, "P" for Periapsis, "S" for SoI, and "n" for Maneuver node. I can cycle through those displays, and have the tiny LED indicate what I'm actually looking at. Adding these indicators will ad FURTHER height to my display, but at this point, I figure it's well worth it just to have it look nice. I think it'd only add about half an inch so (just over a cm). These indicators will mimic the "Noun", "Verb", "Prog" indicators on the original DSKY. I just really like how it looks! I can tuck the little LED display in, if I either order a 3 digit 7 segment display, or better, I can just shift the LED displays one digit over and physically cover the last digit under the edge of the panel. It's wasteful, but it'll work. Already measured it, and it'll work!. I will just not wire in the last cathode, and wire in the little LED display in it's place! That way I can ALSO drive it using the same MAX7219 that runs the other 7 digits of the time display. Turns out, with 7 digits, I can do the following time formats very easily: [99y365d] [9999d6h] [999d 6h] [99d6h59] [9d 6h59] or [9d 6-59] [6-59-59] This allows long scale time displays up to 99 years and 365 days. I guess I could have a years only mode to cover longer times. I can dynamically change it to suit the scale of time needed. I suppose I could have a years and days mode. When I get to times less than one day, I can switch over to an H-MM-SS format for the final countdown* *Admit... Europe started playing in your head, didn't it... If it didn't, it did now! So, here is a mockup of how I will try to arrange it. Like I said, to do it like this, I'll have to order a single 3 digit wide LED display. I'll delete this image once I have it actually built, and put up a post with the real deal. Gotta wait for those boards... Oh yeah... ECCN or ECNT for Eccentricity??? I can't decide!

toasthall, A friend of mine convinced a buddy of his to buy a nice 3D printer... Hmm... Maybe I should go begging... This needs to get put up on Shapeways, I wonder though, would the aluminum ones on ebay or 3D printed ones be cheaper? Either way whatever works best! If a person has the 3D printer it's easers to just set it loose and print some, I would suppose. I plan to weld my own, styled after the Apollo capsules. So, I got my latest batch of parts, the 74HC4066 I already had on hand, and the MCP4922 DACs came in the mail. I still need to create a sine generator. I can either buy a MAX038 off ebay, or construct a discrete component sine generator (as in with transistors and stuff). The Intersil ICL8038 (which the MAX038 was sort of a successor to) has a VERY detailed datasheet, complete with the transistor level schematic of the chip itself. It actually shows the 16 transistor sine converter that cleanly shapes a triangle wave into a very good quality sine wave, and triangle waves are very easy to make. I could also just try to do a basic sine generator... But wow, that transistor circuit actually looks kinda cool! In all honesty... I haven't decided. There is a CLEAR market of knockoff MAX038 chips from China... We KNOW they are bootlegs, cause there's a never ending supply, and Maxim themselves discontinued it. The nuts... That is a popular chip! CHINA KNOWS THIS! Anyway, I also ordered my LED 7-segment displays... and BOY did I make a serious failure to grasp their size... I ordered an 0.56 inch display, since I thought that'd offer far better visibility than the meager Chinese 0.36 inch displays (the ones I had crazy dead segment troubles with)... That is 35% bigger... I REALLY did not stop to consider just how much 35% would mean... Let me show what I mean... Thanks to my exquisite not-photoshoping skills, you can see the approximate height I had intended for the vertical section of my controller, measured between the two bottom yellow lines. For the sakes of, you know, seeing my monitors over the edge of this thing, I had originally planned on limiting the height to the height of my tallest instrument (the edgewise meters), plus any underlying structural framework. The top yellow line is how tall it'd need to be for a 5 row DSKY, a height I had not planned on going with, but I may have to. The issue, as you might be able to see in the image, is that considering enough room below the DSKY keys to accommodate a DSKY bezel and internal structures, and the fact that it can't sit flush with the level portion of the controller, as there will be a row of switches in front of it, I'm not left with very much room for these huge displays! I can only go 4 high before I hit the height limit I set for myself! Also, even hanging passed the end of the buttons, the LEDs are taking over 70% of the width of the DSKY... The real DSKY had a 50-50 split between the annunciator panel and the numeric readout panel. It was also 5 rows tall. I honestly REALLY wanted to at least have 6 rows... I mean, I'm not aiming for perfection here, just that overall "look", but it IS a huge deviation. There are STILL 2 more displays (8 digits each) left from what I had ordered! I had considered The Altimeter and Radar Altimeter as ideally placed over the round Vertical Velocity meter. Those are all related datasets, so I think that should work. I'm also aware that the MAX7219 chip only supports 8 chips on an SPI bus, while I'm already talking about using 10 (plus probably an 11th one to handle annunciator lights). Fortunately, the library allows the setup of multiple SPI busses. I may actually offload the numeric display controls to some Pro Minis, just simply to keep the main Arduino as responsive as possible. It'll have to read and write over the USB to the game, as well as distribute Yaw, Pitch, Roll, and any node data(once/if that gets implemented) over serial to the Arduino controlling my navball), read the various controls (toggles, joysticks, etc), and distribute data to any other secondary Arduinos. Since the numeric displays require you break your numbers into each digit and send each digit to each correct location, I figure I can speed up the responsiveness by passing on those numbers without processing, to let a second unit handle. I was going to also go with 4 digit displays on a few of these meaning I'd want a gap between the two halves. That makes the 70% width of the LEDs even worse! I need annunciators to indicate these, and was going to model the labels as shown here, using rectangular indicator LEDs. Basically, instead of having indicators for Noun, Verb, Prog, etc, I'd have lights that show Ap, Pe, Time to Ap, Pe, SoI, and Node (One "Time" symbol, and 4 indicators after it), Incl (Inclination), Ecnt (Eccentricity)... I also wanted to have Semi-major and Minor Axis as well. Using the small LEDs, I was thinking of squeezing 7 rows in there, and having my indicators be the right side of the annunciator panel. That's clearly not happening with the larger displays. I barely have room for the displays as is! The only real option is to have my DSKY be significantly wider than just the keyboard. The annunciators will hang over the end of the left side of the keyboard, and the LED displays will hang over the right. There is simply no getting around it. Good news, is I can purpose a few of the DSKY keys to some of those time options. Time to Ap/Pe will toggle automatically, based on whichever is closest. There will be a "TIME Ap/Pe" key, a "TIME SoI" key, and a "TIME Node" key. I realize that any SoI transition is going to alter any orbital characteristics passed it. Modes will probably auto select to the nearest, but a key can manually bring up any one you want to see, toggling AP and Pe, and showing SoI or Node, if they exist. So that brings my button usage up to... SAVE, LOAD, QSAV, QLOD, WARP STOP, WARP -, TIME W+, PHYS W+, TIME Ap/Pe, TIME SoI, and TIME NODE... That's 11 of 19... Not bad usage, so far. 8 left to assign. I could free up 2 buttons by having a single button cycle through available "Time To" events. Then I'd just have a TIME TO button, and have 10 buttons left to assign. I do still need to be able to select Prograde and Retrograde, Normal and Anti-N, Radial and Anti-R, Target and Anti-T, Node and Anti-N, in order to indicate which vector I want the crosshairs on the navball to display (again, when/if that feature gets implemented). I wanted my ONE for certain rotary switch to select those... Actually 2 rotary switches, one 5 position, and one 2 position, the second to select Pro vs Retro/Anti, and the first to select the vector axis. I COULD use the rotary method, but I could also use the last 10 buttons for it too. Actually... IDEAS!!! I need ideas for the 8-10 remaining buttons of the DSKY. Already, I can think of toggling Orbital/Surface/Target velocity. that brings me to 5/9 buttons left (based on if I have individual buttons for each mode, or cycle through modes with one button). Ugh!!! So many uncertainties! I'm asking for ideas, people! Now it seems I'm limited to 4, unless I raise the height of my controller top, or sink it lower into my desk. I'm already seeing issues with the pull out keyboard tray. I moved the staging and abort buttons to the far left, and to the back, to avoid accidental presses, but also to accommodate their depth. My diagram is definitely not to scale, but even as an estimate, I already need more thickness for the base level of the controller, to accommodate the throttle and joysticks. I may abandon the keyboard cutout, in order to have a less cramped control space, but I really like being able to put the keyboard tray away and still have the keyboard out. The joysticks only require 1 inch of depth, which is not unreasonable for a mechanical keyboard with retro spherical key caps. The level surface actually is supposed to have a sloping taper, so with the joysticks set back from the front, the front can indeed be less than 1 inch thick. The general idea is to have the control surface not be much higher than the typing surface, for maximum comfort while playing. the throttle is particularly bad, as it requires 3.1 inches of depth to mount, and I REALLY don't want to set it further back than the joysticks. Even if I remove the existing connector and directly solder leads to it, I still need 2.4 inches depth. The Abort and Stage buttons also require 2.3 inches of depth, so right on par with a modded throttle assembly. There IS a possible option, but it significantly increases the complexity of my chassis. I was considering having a single sheet of aluminum bent at a local metal shop to form the profile of the entire thing. It'd have the keyboard cutouts cut out and folded down, so I could mount a [ shaped insert (not metal) so I could insert the keyboard without scratching it up on aluminum edges. A second aluminum plate would be bent to enclose the bottom. The front section could have the sides bent toward the opposing half and bolt together on the side. That'd make the front very strong. two small panels could then close off the sides on the back, with appropriate tabs bent over to allow mounting. The depth solution offers two possibilities... A: I end the keyboard tray at the left joystick. It'd go no further than that, and the bottom of the console would extend further down. This could just mean a hole to accommodate the throttle and two big buttons, with a square "pan" bolted to enclose it. That's the easy solution, but it cuts my keyboard tray off. The other option would actually give me a little more room on the vertical section of the console, but it requires I either raise the top ere a bit, or drop the bottom a bit. Either way, option B would have me add a diagonal taper to the top controller surface, that thickens the front of the controller the further left you go. This would add the depth required for the big buttons and the throttle, but adds some weird geometry that I really don't care for. I still have not actually figured out interfacing my VFD displays... I don't know... Maybe I'll to the Semi Minor/Major axes on the top level of my desk, on the VFDs. The primary use of the VFDs sitting above my monitors, would be to display more complex data... SoI name, Biome name (if possible), Lat and Long, Landed/Flight/Sub-Orbital/Orbit, etc. The fact that it can display 2 lines of text, 20 characters wide, and I have two is a big selling point for using them for data like that. I know Lat and Long, and SoI are transmitted, but I don't think Biomes are available in the packet. I have considered a separate controller for the VFDs, and the possibility of using Telemachus to get that data. It'd probably run both KSP serial IO and Telemachus, as I'm far more familiar with the latter. I have not decided if I will use both VFDs, or if I will retain one as a spare for the other, and just use one. They appear to both be new units, so I don't have concerns about their lifespan. Even if I play thousands of hours in KSP, I can dim them when not needed. The side panel that's shown is basically going to be a Metal Box o' CRTsâ„¢. No, seriously... my ultra wide amber CRT will go there someday. I also have a tiny 3.5 inch color CRT, and I have a couple micro camcorder viewfinder CRTs. Literal Metal Box o' CRTsâ„¢! I wanna create just a cool... aesthetic add-on at some point. It'll be for a later date, and that's why it's separate. I won't actually NEED it. I'll have a small USB keyboard controller in it, nothing fancy, and set up some macros to trigger Chatterer sounds, display audio waveforms of the game on the viewfinder CRTs, maybe have random animations of some of the various Mission Control Kerbals that pop up on the color CRT (I think I'll mount it in portrait mode). I would LIKE to eventually devise a map mode of some sort on the wide amber CRT. The orbital graphic used in Raster Prop Monitor would be a good idea as to how it would display. Simple lines, circles, arcs, etc. No fancy graphics, just 2D, but usable. I think it'd be wise for me to, if I ever get to it, interface a USB or Ethernet jack, for Telemachus, and an SD card slot. The ROM would have a boot loader, bitmap fonts and symbols, drawing routines and the basic map program. I'd want to have it read a config file off the SD card, so it knows if you're running stock, RSS, Outer Planets Mod, Kerbol+, etc... Basically, I don't wanna hard code the actual solar system. That should be loaded from a memory card. As an earlier post mentions, I discovered that the word processor it comes from is FULLY documented, with the most detailed service manual I'd seen to date for a device like it. It uses a 12 MHz Hitachi 16-bit, extended instruction set successor to the venerable Z80 processor, and has a PGA chip driving a full bitmapped graphic array that automatically handles the display in hardware. The best comparison to it would be the original Macintosh black and white display. I'd need to learn how to program the thing, compile a new ROM onto a chip, and I could use it to display rudimentary orbital paths. That will not be soon. Thus, why it's not even designed to be included as a part of the main module. It's just an add-on, incase I ever get good enough to program just such a thing. I simply don't know coding that well, though. It might actually never happen... I guess the big debate, is what now. do I suck it up and go at least 5 displays tall? Add height I didn't want to add and just deal with it? It looks like my navball may be sized just right to support a single display above or below it. This is a big deal, as Maneuver Node Delta V is one of the datasets transmitted, and it'd be nice to have velocity by the navball as well, since that IS where it is in KSP. If I add enough height to add a 5th row to the DSKY, I can then support 2 rows by the navball, and 3 rows by the Vertical Velocity gauge. That also bumps me back up to the 10 total displays that I actually have. The other nice bit about bumping up to 5 rows on the DSKY... Is that's how it really was configured!

I've been hoping to install OPM after 1.1, as a reward for finishing my sim-pit. What better way to fly out to new distant worlds than with actual flight instruments! I'm curious about how your install is, and how OPM and K+ get along. I'd rather have both be stock, if they get along, but I don't know if any planets have unnaturally close orbits, etc.

And just for the heck of it, here is the DSKY keypad with the FDAI navball, for size comparison. The width of the keys are exactly 5.5 inches (13.5 cm wide), and from top to bottom, 2.3 inches (5.6 cm tall)

I know, right! That DSKY replica is a dream! Running the real software makes it SO much better than just being a boring static display! Anyway, I have 86 switches total. Only used 19 for my DSKY keyboard, so I have 67 switches remaining as spares that I am not using for anything in the foreseeable future. I also have switches 2/3 the size of these, but otherwise the same. I have 127 of those. So, I soldered 19 of the switches into a proto board, and wired it up. The proto board had room for two complete DSKY keyboards, so I split it in half. I'll probably use a layer of dense foam and a metal backing plate to keep the module from flexing. The photos show the column wiring, the row wiring (with diodes), and the connector. It's fully functional as a keyboard now. keys are arranged in a 4x5 matrix. There are 4 rows and 5 columns. the 4 side buttons are each on the two outermost columns, and share a common row. The middle column only uses the first 3 rows. It takes 9 I/O lines to interface it, and you can use any standard keyboard matrix library to read it. I actually used a 33 volt zener diode for the matrix. Since a 5 volt circuit can NEVER reverse bias a zener above 33 volts, they effectively function as normal switching diodes. I used those, because I have over 9000 of them on a reel. Trying to use 'em up. 19 down! I still have to wire up the LEDs. Have not decided if I will light up the whole keyboard as a simple backlight, or if I will have the lights be individually addressable. If I go the latter route, I could actually, in theory, drive them with one of my MAX7219 boards. That still leaves me with 5 usable digits, and 5 more individual segments that could be used as indicators, assuming I optimize the LED matrix. Pardon the poor quality labels. I BADLY need to replace by 2006 era printer. The camera shot actually looks WAY better than it does in person! I also did not measure the switch or the labels, so that's why some are not sized correctly... 5... I'm looking at you! 0, no slouching! And the real deal, for comparison.

i was screwing around with some of my parts, and I salvaged these switches. I know I LOOOVE the clicky switches I have and wanted to use... but for this ONE THING, I think EVERYONE here can agree that this is FAR beyond necessary! My "DSKY" won't necessarily be identical to the real deal, but I want to mimic the key layout. I'm considering using it's keys to handle game specific functions... Time Warp, physics warp, saving and loading, etc. It's 19 buttons to play with. I'll give them some reason to be! On a side note, I have 67 MORE of these switches, in addition to the ones pictured. That'd make 3 more DSKY keypads, plus some spare switches. These things are COMPLETELY Re-Legendable, and backlit! Switch face is about 0.67 inch square (17 mm square). Even the LED is socketed, so I can change them out with green ones or white ones (to match the real deal, or to suit preference). The switches will also fit onto proto board. You'd have to slightly drill out the hole for the plastic alignment peg, but it doesn't take much, and every hole lines up with the standard hole spacing of proto board! I also have a second switch type. I have 127 switches that are 2/3 the size of these, with the face being about 0.4 inch square (10 mm square).. They are also backlit and re-legendable. A little something to do while I wait for my new FDAI controller parts. I ordered the new DACs... Holy green grazing kows! I spent only $13.80 on the DACs! The "cheaper" DACs ended up costing me $30, and I wasn't able to even really use them! All that's left for me to buy is the MAX038, or make an analog sine generator. Here is the switch disassembled. And why throw up the requisite DSKY pic, when a video of this AMAZING replica will do! It may not be an original, but WOW, this thing is one of the closest imitations I've ever seen!

You say that like it's a bad thing! When I forget an antenna... or sufficient batteries... or sufficient solar to charge them... I just stack up, up, and away! Nello and Teddo thought their landing was cool too!

You know what... THANK YOU! Not for the method you suggested, but for finding THAT particular part. I don't know why, but for whatever dumb reason, when you search most manufacturer's websites for a multiplying or attenuating DAC, the search results tend to start with some spendy little buggers. Digikey has been no better. Manufacturers and distributors trying to push the high priced items first!? Inconceivable!!! Turns out that nice CHEAP DAC not only has two DACs in one package, but even MORE important... It has a proper voltage reference input that makes this DAC capable of multiplier/divider applications... In other words, you found me my sub $2 attenuator DAC! THANKS! Shoot... I still have enough in the bank to actually ORDER that! BOO-YAH! Some of the search results Digikey and Analog Devices were giving me had SINGLE DACs priced higher than FIVE of these chips price combined! Digikey has the 10-bit version priced at $1.83 per chip! PERFECT! Hold on... **checks parts drawers for analog switches** WOOT! I have 90 pieces of 74HC4066 on hand (20 DIP, 70 in various SOP and SOIC SMT packages). The 74HC4066 is a quad bilateral switch. That means I'll need two switches per channel, with 9 channels, so 18 switches. 5 chips will get me that. 5 of the DACs you found, 5 of the chips I have on hand, and one MAX038 (or an analog sine generator). I can also get the chips in DIP packaging, which while not as elegant as surface mount, does let me very easily and quickly throw it together on a proto board, without needing to buy PC boards. I'm sure I have some op-amps on hand too to invert the reference to feed into the analog switches, so I can flip the wave polarity every half rotation of the virtual synchro, when the DAC goes down to 100% attenuation (0% signal passthrough). That leave me with the only remaining thing being the power drivers. I think I might be able to use the LM675 power op-amps I already have on hand to do this. Because I don't have enough parts for differential pairs, I'll just have the sine wave sit above ground, with the zero crossing being 1/2 Vcc. That will let me have one output of each of the three signals (per axis) go to one end of a Y wound transformer's primary, with the center tap being referenced to ground. The secondary will have a floating center tap, and only send the three wires out tot he FDAI, stepped up sufficiently to drive it. As I said, I'll probably wind my own transformers, because aviation transformers are expensive, despite being SMALLER, due to less material being required for higher frequencies (why aviation instrumentation uses 400 Hz AC instead of 60 or 50 Hz... Lighter power components). SWEET! That still leaves me without the green LED 7-segment displays though. I won't even use the GOOD displays I have left... I don't trust them. I had a LOT more "good" displays when I first got them... That means I need to look at PROPER BRAND NAME green LED segment displays. Vishay makes a similarly sized (0.39 inch, 10 mm) 4 digit clock module in green that costs $2.579 in the quantities I'd need, while Avago makes a bigger (0.56 inch, 14.22 mm) 2 digit display for a very low $1.10 at the quantities I'd need. The bigger displays actually cost less than the smaller ones, but they are still about $52.80, and would require VASTLY more wiring. NONE of the displays are drop in compatible with the Chinese MAX7219 display module's sockets. Since nothing actually FITS... I've also considered getting a few different sizes of display. The price breaks would actually STILL allow me to get the discounted prices on BOTH sizes. I also think I want a large 0.8 inch display for the altimeter. Needless to say, this is gonna be a LOT of work! Unfortunately, I don't think i can spend that right now... I just learned one of my two job's won't have product orders till January... I MIGHT have some troubleshooting/equipment modification fork to hold me over, but that could be a couple hours to a couple days of work, depending on the nature of the problem. Not the same as production... ====== **EDIT** Found some LED displays at Mouser. The DACs are a little more expensive, but I had a cart there sitting waiting for parts that are no longer backordered, and I was able to snag 4 digit green LEDs for only $42! They're PIN COMPATIBLE with my MAX7219 boards too!

Happily un-hitched, so nope to that last one... The other points... INDUBITABLY yes! Sadly, it doesn't work that way. There is no phase difference between the 10 sine waves. It's amplitude differences only. Fortunately, I went through how to actually do it with an external reference sine wave source, as well as all the parts and stages needed to offload all sine wave generation and attenuation to physical hardware. All the Arduino has to do is determine the attenuation value for the 9 DACs, and it only needs to do that 20-60 times a second. That's snagging 9 lookup table values, after two additions (and a conditional subtraction, of 360, if the value equals or exceeds 360) performed on yaw, pitch, and roll. MUCh less work. All realtime waveform generation is removed from the Arduino. The arduino's job literally becomes "set the 'intensity' dial for 9 outputs, and is it flipped or not". I also am aiming for the cleanest sine waves I can, because square waves have crazy harmonics... These nav balls can hum when in motion, or sometimes even when just idle, depending on... reasons? I'd rather deal with an occasional clean 400 Hz sine hum, than a square wave and all it's harmonics, trying to squeeze passed. A filter will definitely help that, but i don't even see a need to do any waveform generation in software. My circuit would end up being the functional equivalent of 9 "volume" knobs attached to one hardware sine wave generator. The DAC only serves as a "volume" control for the reference sine wave.

If you really wanna push your over clock, get something like one off the nice Corsair water coolers, or the Noctua NH-D14 (what I have). Either one ought to get to to at least 4.5 GHz. maybe another point higher in an air conditioned/cool room, and another point yet with the water cooler. The Noctua is a BEAST of an air cooler... You need a thick case to even hold it. It has a 140 mm fan and a 120 mm fan mounted VERTICALLY from the CPU, and you can fit another, if your RAM is low profile! Windtunnel that air through!!! 6 double ended heat pipes worth of heat suckin' madness...

Skip to 3:55 to see an EARLY MechJeb screw up... I eventually figured it out, and these days, rarely use Ascent Assistant. I tend to manually launch, now that I've had practice. I've even launched (and Landed on Minmus) a 250 ton torus with the cabin rotated 90 degrees from the launch trajectory! But this is about narrow escapes... Enjoy! (again, Skip to 3:55)