richfiles

So glad I have 32 GB and a quad 3.5 GHz i7 with a good amount of overclocking room.

I calculate that we need to add moar struts, add moar boosters, and buy another case of this paper! Love it!

Haven't had a chance to mess with the meters or the synthetic "paper" yet, but I did get some parts in the mail, and I did start work on the DAC + Amplifier board. I still need to find suitable transformers to step up the voltage, and I have enough LM675 power op-amps that if the amplifiers just don't have enough juice on their own, I can boost them even further with more current driving capacity. An LM675 with a proper heatsink can drive up to a peak of 3 amps. I figure I will attach two in opposing polarities to the reference output and attach it's transformer between the two op-amps outputs. One is probably fine, but I have so many of the chips... Enough I could drive differential pairs to ALL the sine outputs! The reason for driving the reference with a higher current is that I believe all the power for the servos and the servo amplifiers actually draws from the reference, and the synchro inputs just produce a small current whenever there is an error between the external signal and the internal receiver synchros (serving as the ball's position sensors). The synchro signals are all being amplified by a simple audio LM386 audio op-amp circuit, straight from China. It was literally SO CHEAP, that it was with spending the money to gamble on maybe not having to do the work for 9 of the 10 outputs. They even have tiny screw type terminal blocks to attach the wires to. I spent like $1.11 EACH on them. For an entire miniature audio amplifier. 400 Hz is WELL within the range of audio amplification. I went up to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a robotics meeting at "The Hack Factory", a maker space, that I WISH wasn't 2 freaking hours away. I did some soldering, and showed off some of my robots, and all that fun stuff, but this is what I have so far... Dumb board was just a hair too short, so one amplifier is sticking off the end, all by it's lonesome... but that'll just be my reference output, so totally justified and I totally meant to do that, just like the time I did my first Mun landing with 2/3 a bottle of wine in me, and I accidentally staged 2 full tanks in my asparagus staged launcher... Nothing to do with my fingers hurting cause I punched a wall trying to reach a light switch... I still got the fuel depot up to the Mun... and made a perfect night landing... Those tanks were just extra weight! Yeah! Just like how that one board is supposed to stick off the end! True story, bro! Somehow, It's $1.11 to buy parts, build, AND SHIP those little blue boards half way around the freakin' world... Including the PCB, there are 14 individual components. Even assuming all the SMD discretes cost 0.045 cents combined (0.00045 US dollars), that means the through hole electrolytic capacitor, potentiometer, terminal block and header, plus the LM386, and the PC board... and assembly, are still so low that they can ship it to the US and still turn a profit... It never ceases to amaze me how screwed manufacturing is in anyplace that's not China... You can't compete with that! That red DAC board was actually more than double the blue audio amp. What's cheap isn't even consistent with complexity. It is literally what has the most volume. The audio amp has more volume, so it's dirt cheap, despite having double the total component count, and being fully assembled, with through hole processes also pre-assembled. had to solder the header to my DACs. Amazing. So yeah... Getting there. I'm just gonna use wire wrap wire (30 gauge solid wire)for my interconnects (power will get heavier gauge wire). I'll solder it, but I'll give it a small pre wrap with my wire wrap tool. The tiny insulation stripper really makes it easy. Hold the wire with a tweezer, slide stripper on, strip insulation, wrap it, solder it, feed the wire to it's destination, and repeat for the other end. I can also traverse the top and bottom of the board using the many predrilled holes to form the wire into a matrix that looks neat and tidy. Kinda reminds be of the wire bond matrices of the Gemini computer. Totally different, but it'll look nice... I should have spaced the DACs a hole further away... It's okay, I can manage it. *** (1) *** Also, speaking of getting things in the mail, an unknown FedEx package3 arrived while I was out of town, and was dropped off with a neighbor... Yeah, not knocking on the neighbor's door at 12:37 AM... That's a good way to make neighbors that aren't too neighborly! All my open orders are from China... AKA, not FedEx. The only recent item i got by way of FedEx, was my 1251 dual edgewise meters. The guy did promise me he'd send a replacement for the one with the broken needle. That might actually be it, since he never sent a tracking number, and mentioned he'd get to it next time he was in his office. If that's what it is, it means I now have 4 single GE edgewise meters, and 4 dual 1251 edgewise meters, with one of those having only one functioning needle. Add my round vertical velocity meter, and that's 12 stand alone analog meters! Krikey! That's not even mentioning the two Flight Director crosshairs (that will be made functional when we get orbital vectors transmitted, and not just straight attitude) and the glideslope meter. I still have no idea what to do with that. Maybe I need to see if we already have enough data transmitted to actually calculate glideslope. Could be nice and useful for space plane landings or something. What would that be surface velocity vs vertical velocity? I think? I think that's probably it. I gotta look that up or something. Man... 12, plus glideslope, and the 2 crosshair meters... A Mega has EXACTLY 15 PWM outputs! Yikes! Talk about cutting it close! As a final note... I also went to the Science Museum of Minnesota before my little meet up... They have a Space Exhibit going on there, and check out what they had on loan... Awesome! *** Edit *** *** (1) *** The package was a wrong address delivery... Not my other meter. I don't think I'll be getting that replacement after all... Oh dear, whatever shall I do with only 10 stand alone analog meters! Oh woe is me I'm totally kidding. I think I'll survive.

Don't know if it's related, but I had a persistent crash every time I got within 1-4 km of the desert surface. I could go to tracking, directly load the vessel I wanted to land, do a straight landing, and boom, crash when I'm close enough to see surface features. The last time it happened, and again recently, I went into Steam and right clicked KSP in my library, selected "Properties", Clicked the "Local Files" tab, and then clicked the verify game cache integrity. Both times I had the issue, i had it detect a bad file. I let it redownload that file, and either it works, or it crashes again and the file fails to verify again. It seems like there is a file that is getting gnarled during KSP's frequent crashes. Whatever is getting re-downloaded is small, as it barely registered as a blip in the Steam download screen, even if you have the download screen already open.

I was only aware of Thunderbolt (which uses the same connector as Mini DisplayPort) supporting daisychains. Looked it up. Cool! Sadly, those hubs are expensive, about $100... A good used card can cost that, so yeah, it looks like it's upgrade time. The good news, is that if your mobo or CPU has integrated graphics, it should indeed be possible to use it as a 4th. That at least gets you up and running for your main displays. You could also temporarily drive just the three, and sit in the one side, till you get the upgrade done. Sadly, Kerbal's physics engine isn't multithreaded, so it doesn't split up over multiple cores. You'll only get one of those eight cores working on the brunt of Kerbal's physics processing workload. If your BIOS supports modes where you can disable other cores, and speed up one or two of them, that's where you'll get the most performance gains.

Awww! Don't get discouraged! You've come so far, so far! It looks AMAZING!!! I can't tell you enough how sweet that setup looks! I so jelly! I must ask though, why 6 outputs? Are there external screens, for spectators, or do you plan 3 screens per side of the capsule? Are you trying to run the tiny CRT with the graphics card? What I have in my Hackintosh, is an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5770, that I bought used for $50 in 2013. I run 3 screens on my card, though I only play KSP on a single monitor at 2044x1100 (I play in windowed mode on a 2048x1152 pixel monitor, with a tiny window border on all sides, and the room for my menu bar on the top. I've built and launched 1500+ part vessels with even a card as old as that one (I think it dates to around 2010ish?), and it supports three monitor connections out of the box. I run at all high settings, except for the anti-alias, which I turn off, cause I never really was bothered by jaggies, and on that high a resolution monitor, I just don't care. I'll take the boost in turning AA off. I imagine it wouldn't take much of a bump to a higher card, and still stay in budget to get a nice card that can double or triple screen that puppy at 1080p per screen! Remember, KSP is CPU heavy, so even buying a cheaper card ought to get you up and running. Just ask around the forums and see if anyone else is running such a large setup, and what card it takes them to maintain it. KSP is the type of game that'd get the biggest gains from a CPU that can shut down some cores to over clock one or two cores higher than it could with 4... That's where the real power comes from. My rig is lacking in GPU, but I get by nicely, cause I have a rockin' CPU, a quad 3.5 GHz i7, with room to overclock. I'm about to drop a Noctua NH-D14 cooler on mine, and crank it into the low 4 GHz range.

Dat last pic... Jebadiah says get tested...

One warning about Windows 10 for those who use Arduino based custom controllers with the Serial IO mod... Multiple users have had failures to establish communication between the Arduino and KSP. One user actually reinstalled Windows 7, just to get things working, cause he was taking his hardware controller to a maker fair, or something like that. Just be aware that it IS a new OS, and that things can break in transition. Time will fix it, but you should never buy a console at launch, and never update an OS at launch.

Wow passinglurker... get poked in the retrograde by the spring loaded flag there, did ya? Cool your jets, man! First... it's just a game. I don't really care if a 2 kerbal capsule employs TARDIS grade sci-fi magic. Seriously though, WHO CARES!!! As for your out of the blue "America" comment, it's clear what inspired the creators of the game to create the various primary capsules. They only are adjacent to the country that launched capsules of that shape. I'm sure Central America was just as excited about the space launches as the rest of the world was. YOU are the only person shouting anything, "America" or otherwise. Since you feel like SHOUTING... How about this: I'M ONE OF THE PEOPLE who suggested Tantares as an alternative, and even PROVIDED THE LINK! Get off you high horse, and stuff your freaking 'Murica hating down a Mohole... And seriously... It's Squad... They HAVE CHANGED the stock parts in the past... You act like they can't do it a second time. For all I care, they could make a 2 crew capsule with an integrated ablator, and just enough extra width, and an attachment node positioned just right to clip the capsule to line with the largest diameter portion of the decoupler. You could have unique parts to fit it. So what if you end up with a decoupler that pairs a mid size capsule to a smaller or a larger tank. Who cares if they create tapered service bays, or even create a low profile separator at a unique diameter. The only one stifling creativity, passinglurker, is you, who would rather run your mouth off at people with ideas, than actually suggest anything productive. I'd HIGHLY suggest living up to your name, and be both passive, and a lurker... I, for one, WOULD welcome new parts. You don't even need a new size of tanks or engines, as long as the capsule comes with either an integrated ablator, a matched ablator, or "magically" fits two Kerbals into an MK1 base diameter. If it is a little bigger than an MK1, you can simply have a tapered service module. Maybe one could even integrate a decoupler on the top end, for simplicity's sakes, so you don't have to create a unique part for one singular task. I've actually seen that done before. There is a radial engine mount mod that has integrated fuel cross feed, and decoupling, all built into the single piece. Why couldn't an "Mk2 Command Pod" have an integral ablator (adjustable int he VAB), or a custom sized ablator, and then a service bay that has built in decoupling from the pod/ablator. You could have two service bays, one to fit the FL-T tanks, and another to fit the Rockomax. You are talking a MAXIMUM of 4 parts to make a 2 crew pod work, and loosely fit a Gemini styling. it can be done in as little as two parts, if you have an integrated ablator (built into the pod), and have only a single service bay size. That forces you to use a C7 adapter to fit larger Rockomax tanks, but you'll still get fuel in the adapter. It would reverse the taper of the service module, in relation to the real Gemini, making it get narrower after the capsule, instead of wider... but then again, who cares about sticking to realism, right? Even if the decoupling isn't built into the service bays, you can still do a low profile decoupler, same thickness as the tiny, tiny decoupler. With that, you are looking at a TOTAL of 5 parts for a complete 2 crew, Gemini inspired tier int he tech tree, with NO additional tanks or engines. Pod, Ablator, low profile decoupler or separator ring, capsule to FL-T service bay, or Capsule to Rockomax service bay. That's it. Sure, if your trying to mimic Gemini perfectly, and you try to keep stock parts, of course it'll have issues, but all I'm saying, is it would take very few parts to make a Gemini like 2 crew capsule VERY feasible in the stock game. Why this isn't feasible??? I have no idea... I'd say that the tech tree should unlock the two kerbal pod and early service bays at near the same level. That was a big thing that got introduced around the time of Gemini. Gemini had the guidance computer, and added a lot of stuff, whereas the Mercury capsules had only the tiniest little retrorocket pack on the back. Unlocking service bays and the 2 person pod makes sense. *Nothing is drawn to scale, i just sketched this as a proof of concept, cause I'm tired of naysayers. - - - Updated - - - You know what... I looked at K2, and I'm in love. I hope Squad sees the need for a 2 Krew pod in stock, but for the time being, I've said all I think needs to be said here, cause I'm just downloading K2 and installing that puppy!

He got monitors installed on the 12th... He started playing, and hasn't been seen since!

Gemini was a pretty "sardine" like can. The only reason it really worked, was because there was no free space inside, and it had large dual hatches, one for each astronaut. The service module was also tapered, and if you refer back to the image I posted, the mercury stat on a tapered segment too, leading to a primary stack that was very similar in diameter. Gemini's Titan II launch vehicle was a 3.05 meter diameter stack. Mercury's Redstone launch stage was 1.78 meters... but the catch was that it only had power for ballistic trajectories... sub-orbital hops. To actually achieve orbit, required the Atlas launch vehicle... which was 3.0 meters in diameter... Narly identical to the later Gemini launch vehicle. The difference was fuel used, and overall length of the vessel, and how it was staged. Or in other words, orbital 1 seat and orbital 2 seat capsules can justifiably use the same basic diameter. If we wanted to really be realistic, both he 1 and 2 seaters would need to sit on fatter tanks to get to orbit, but hey, this is a game, and a tiny Kerbin, so it's all good! What we need, is a slightly longer, slightly heavier two crew capsule, with the same base diameter of the 1 crew capsule. On another side note... Gemini was also unique, in that after it deployed it's chutes, it took a sideways landing approach, landing with the side of the heat shield touching first, and then coming to a rest on it's side. It'd justify such a module having a standard radial chute mounting location just above the heat shield (even if it had to be recessed to withstand heating and aero), in addition to the nose parachute. That would provide the most realistic landing method.

It is true that Gemini's capsule was slightly larger in diameter than the Mercury capsule, but the majority of the larger diameter seems to actually stem from the tapered service module. The other bulk of Gemini's mass comes from it's longer, and larger diameter nose. I would argue that a viable option for a 2 crew Kemini module would be to retain the stock MK1 base diameter, but make the capsule's main body slightly longer, so it has a shallower taper (so as to accommodate two kerbals side by side, add the double door style exits), and make an integral nose that more or less completes Gemini's profile. The part would obviously have more mass than the single seater. The nose tip would be a slightly larger diameter than the end of the MK1 capsule, but taper to the same small diameter at the tip, for reasons of aerodynamics and part fit. it also would be distinctively Gemini like. This would make a Kemini two seater module both viable in the early game, and not require a whole stack of new parts. While not absolutely true to Gemini, a rocket could be built with smaller diameter FL tank upper stages, and larger diameter Rockomax lower stages. As for Soviet capsules... I have a thought that I like... The Inland KSC needs to be an alternate starting point in the game. Furthermore... It'd be cool if you had a couple capsules that were soviet specific, that you'd progress with if you started a game selecting that as your launch site. Just a thought. Maybe a Lunakhod shaped rover body or something! I'm sure you can do it with mods. As you advance the tech tree, and scale up the Administration building, you could get exchange program contracts, like the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. You are tasked to dock with a foreign space agency's vessel in space, and upon doing so, you get the option to unlock some of their unique tech int he tech tree. While it doesn't cover the unique contracts, administration, or tech tree elements, you can setup Soviet parts and have other launch sites (to play as another Kerbal nation) using Tantaresand that one mod that adds a TON of additional launch sites. Those two mods could make that happen. I forget the name of the multi launch site mod though. Oops! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81537-1-0-4-Tantares-Stockalike-Soyuz-and-MIR-29-27-06-2015-PPTS-Dev Maybe that other mod was Kerbal Konstructs? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105247-1-0-4-Kerbal-Konstructs-v0-9-2-My-Ears-They-Are-Bleeding

I think my idea with the engine power, etc, would only deal in the top 20-10% of the hardware's efficiency range. I also think it'd be something where it just mimics the basic concept of engine development and part testing. NASA had a LOT of engine tests done, and my concept is just an attempt to put a reason for all those engine tests we do in the contracts, and maybe flesh those out a bit. I figure no low tier engine would take more than 2-5 flights or tests to max out. I think a logarithmic curve would be fair too. First use of an engine is at 80% total efficiency, but on successful test and recovery (say, with a contract test), it's been boosted up to 88%. I'm not suggesting that it drag out, nor that it provide a huge penalty. Just a touch of a penalty to show that it's new tech, with kinks to work out, and to justify the existence of those early contracts. Testing an engine on the launch pad... This is a thing we ALREADY do in the early game... I say, justify it! I like the idea of the spending reputation. I do cover an aggressive version of that. I could envision a Money + Reputation variant, similar to yours, where you spend extra money on PR efforts, loose a small bit of rep when you launch, recover it with a successful landing, and loose even more rep with a disaster. And whoever moved this discussion... Thanks... I spent about 10 or 15 minutes trying to figure out if there was a feature request section... My 3 AM brain had too few available "processor cycles" left to function... I was too full of C object classes to comprehend concepts like "can I go up one more level in this forum's hierarchy?". LOL On a side note... I think I'm getting closer to understanding C well enough to interface to my navball! Woot! Anyway, I have to say that I feel this firmly belongs in the scope of a feature request. I'd like to request more ideas on how to make that Administration building worth the pool that was built near it. I mean, right now, Admin seems as useless as real life middle management! So... yeah... I'd love to see some different ideas worked out. It's not the first time I've read comments about how useless Admin has been to them.

So, At work I was thinking about how I've gone into the Administration building ONCE since 1.0.x was launched, and I basically just looked around and went "meh". Then I thought about New Horizons. New Horizons, has of course, made big news lately with the success of it's primary goal, to get quality photos and scientific measurements of Pluto. Being that far out, New Horizons required an RTG power source. Nine years ago, when New Horizons was launched, this was actually a very big issue. It's a huge deal when you want to launch radioactive materials into space. If a launch disaster happens, you risk spreading radioactive materials over an area that sits near a population center. There was a story told by the some of the people who were "pitching" the New Horizons launch. They wanted to talk the governor of the state of Florida to okay the nuclear launch, and actually had suggested flying the recently minted Florida themed state quarter, as a publicity move. This actually happened, and a number of the quarters were used for center of mass balancing. Furthermore, they needed to demonstrate that the RTGs wouldn't break up and release radioactive material all over Florida if there was a launch disaster. The point of this, is that it took a bit of politics and sweet talking and proving the survivability of the RTGs to get this to happen at all. So what if... What if there were Administration requirements for launching nuclear parts, like the LV-N Nerv and the PB-NUK Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. There could be different paths to make it possible, and if you fail to choose a path, you're not permitted to launch nuclear parts. A few thoughts I had are as follows: Spend money: Your PR guys wine and dine the politicians, lobby their causes, and fund their campaigns. You convince them that the Kerbal love for all things space is an endeavor that must advance, for the betterment of all Kerbal kind. Maybe you gotta beat those Kruskies to the Mun in this decade, and do silly things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard***. You spend quite a bit of money up front, but once you have a politician in your pocket, you're golden. They'll back you, cause you helped get them elected or re-elected. You can launch and launch and launch... Until you have an accident. If a nuclear accident occurs on the surface or in the atmosphere, you loose reputation, and are docked funds for cleanup. Your politicians turn their back on you, and you have to cajole them again to get them to back you once more. Each accident ups the cost of getting a politician in your pocket. Politics, amirite? Spend money and science: You do a little bit of the same as before, but with one change. Instead of luring politicians with the royal treatment, you focus of the sell, touring the politicians, as well as the press, through the R&D center, showing how resilient your latest nuclear technology is. You spend extra science on reinforcing the RTG and NERV cores, so they remain intact in the event of an accident, and can be recovered (this can be implied, of course. No need to actually alter part physics) safely. There isn't a large initial investment... You're just inviting the press and politicians to tour the R&D facilities. A little money for the catering and the KSC swag bag, and it costs you a little science, cause you're disrupting your engineer's precious research time, but it's worth it! The added safety measures slightly increases the cost of RTGs and NERVs in the VAB, and it actually costs a small amount of science to launch them, but there is no additional penalty if a nuclear device is destroyed in the atmosphere, or on the surface of Kerbin. If a vessel loss normally results in a loss of reputation, that loss is actually reduced by the news of your technology succeeding in containing all traces of nuclear materials. Spend Reputation: "Politics and the civilian public can all go sit on a lit booster! We're going to space, and we'll bully our way there if we must! We push the right agendas, talk to the right people... Or the wrong ones, if need be... One way or another, we are go for launch! We don't care about no little green hippies with signs protesting our launch. Better step away from the launch exhaust plume, cause it's not stopping' for you!" You loose a small amount of reputation every time you launch a nuclear device, but you gain more reputation completing contracts successfully, because no one else presumably could have achieved what the KSC can... Cause they don't have the guts! Alternately, in the case of a nuclear accident, you loose significant amounts of reputation, more than any other scenario. The upside, is you keep that glorious science and funds to yourself. You greedy nut! So? Any thoughts? Is this something people think would actually be a cool addition to the Administration? A need to get authorization for nuclear device launches? I could also totally see some manner of fine for activating a NERV in the lower atmosphere, as well. Not like it has a use there anyway. I guess the New Horizon's story inspired this idea. Apollo was a lot like the first one, with touches of the second one. It was mostly politics and a push of strong nationalism that launched the Apollo to the Moon, but NASA had already lost an RTG over the indian Ocean in 1964, and the SNAP 27 RTG that would have been onboard the LEM to power moon based experiments had been designed to be able to survive reentry intact. When Apollo 13 had it's accident, and the LEM served as the lifeboat to make the return to Earth, the unintended consequence, was that a SNAP 27 RTG made it's way into the South Pacific ocean. In that scenario, science succeeded in a further catastrophe. As another side note... While thinking of the NERV's low atmospheric thrust, reminds me of engines in general. What do people think of efficiency tiers for the engines? When you first unlock an engine, it's ISP and thrust are not maxed out, but every successful launch and recovery, plus a small amount of science spent, grants boosts to performance, up to the maximum. Considering the fact that it's relatively easy to spam science early on, I think it'd be a great way to boost the usefulness of collecting science, and spread out the inevitable max science. It also provides a reason for part testing. Engine test contracts could include selecting the number of points of science you wish to spend on your "research". The more points you spend, the faster you develop a more efficient engine. This could also be applied to a number of other parts. Researching a reaction wheel would bump up it's torque. Maybe testing probe cores would unlock SAS functions. Some contracts could be dependent on not only launching and successfully recovering a vessel containing a particular part, but then subsequently testing said part "on kerbin", so emulate the concept of testing a "flown" part on the ground. This type of contract could grant larger efficiency boosts, or even max a part out. Of course, the option to have part efficiency scale in this manner could be ticked off in the difficulty/settings options, same as any other major functionality. Thoughts? ***Yes, I totally snagged that great parody quote from the epic EVA grand tour video. WOW, that was epic! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/129500-Video-Wednesday-Minds-Blown

The KSC looked at a incandescent flood lighting for the cockpit at one point, but realized there was significant weight savings in going with LED based illumination. They had looked at EL, but realized that it required AC inverters to power. Jeb then suggested saving the weight of the AC inverters to add moar snacks. KSC approved the recommendation. LEDs were also cheaper. On another note, I received the Nekoosa Coated Products synthetic paper. It is ten 12x18 inch sheets, so I'll have to cut one to feed into my printer (8.5x11). I should get two sheets to feed into my printer out of one of the sheets. that'll leave me 9 full sized sheets left. It has good light transmissibility, so it should work nicely for panels, especially if I print black outs on the back as well. The meters may be another story... I may ACTUALLY NEED to get EL strip lighting to backlight them! I can actually read text through it, so it's not enough to diffuse a few pinpoints of light over the length of the meter. I'll need 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch EL strips for my 1251 meters, and I might have to lay some of that side by side for my GE 180 meters. I think it'll work well when it's done. Haha! I might waste a few sheets in the experimenting process. But yeah... This stuff can be fed through a laser printer. Once I have my meters refaced, I'll post pics. I'll see about using this stuff for panels as well. That will depend on if it bubbles or warps under acrylic or not. I might try ironing it to the acrylic to bond it via the toner. we'll see. Again... It's all experimentation!

Look at Stibbon's control panel for an idea of what I'm going for (Stibbons, you beat me to it ). Stibbon's method is also quite popular in the Flight sim community, as it's how a lot of large jet's panels are made too. I'm going for mimicking the Apollo command module's nomenclature panels. They were plastic panels with backlit nomenclature. Those were mounted onto the rigid panel structure. Toggles were mounted to the rigid structure, leaving them recessed, with the guard wickets providing additional protection. I'm experimenting to see if I can find a good DIY method of doing this. It'll still require a good printer, or a copy shop, but that's much more readily available to most people. For me, the nearest maker space is a 2.5 hour drive. I don't have a CNC mill or a laser cutter, but I can drive across town and find a copy shop. I'm also only looking at laser compatible media. I am sure inkjet compatible media exists too, and almost everyone has an inkjet printer. Don't get me wrong, your panels are amazing!!! They really are, but I'm strongly inclined to backlighting over dim flood lighting, and I simply have materials on the way that may permit me to experiment with a potentially very easy method to make this both cheap and easy. On another note, IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!! I made LEDs light up, AND the meter moves! I'm slowly learning to code this thing, and this is progress! I also think i've settled on the keyboard I will mount in my panel. It's small, it's got mechanical keys, and it needs to be wiped clean! it's an Apple IIc keyboard. I will be adding diodes to the matrix, as it only supports 2-key rollover as is. I'll probably get a Teensy and set it up as an HID device. I'll desolder the caps lock and control switches and swap them, so I have control in the correct location (this is a mechanically latching clicky caps lock). I'd like to get another key switch and key cap and place it in the gap at the bottom for an extra modifier key. The small buttons at the top are toggle buttons, like the caps lock. I want one of them to toggle the top row of keys (the numbers, - and =) between their normal function, and function keys. The other one... I dunno. We'll see. Regardless, It's a nice and compact keyboard!

So, I'm trying a product out, made by a Wisconsin company called Nekoosa Coated Products. They make a cavitated polyester "paper" that is compatible with laser printers called Synaps Digital XM Synthetic Paper. I ordered some, with the hopes of seeing how it looks under acrylic. This may be a viable option for those without access to a CNC mill or a laser cutter to create their panel art by printing it on a home laser printer or going to a copy shop to do so. The 5 mil thickness, I'm told by their sales rep, offers excellent diffusion for backlighting. Color reproduction on my printer is crap, considering I need to replace all three color toners, possibly the transfer drum, more probably the whole dumb printer... Dumb thing leaves streaks. My solution is going to simply be to go to a professional copy shop and show them the product, and see if I can run the meter faces and panel art on the specialty paper one of their machines. ALWAYS ASK. Don't just feed specialty paper into a $10000+ photocopier/printer without authorization... You don't want to be liable if something DOES happen! Anyway, the method would be simple. white text, labels, lines, etc for backlight shine through. I don't know how opaque the toner will be, so I may experiment with printing solid black on the back side, with squares left open near where text or art must shine through. It's all an experiment for now. If this actually works, and produces good looking results, then this should be a reasonably feasible way to do good panels without needing CNC or laser hardware! I'll let you guys know how it turns out once the materials arrive. GAH!!! My "Green" MAX7219 LED displays just showed up today... Every single one of them came in RED... Grrrrr... Maybe I can use this as an excuse to buy larger .56 or .8 inch Green digits and wire them up instead. Maybe do two sizes. Large for the main stuff, Altitude, Radar Alt, Ap, Pe, etc. and then do smaller displays for the other things. I dunno. We'll see. Any that I go bigger with, will need me to wire manually. Only .36 inch digit displays will fit the clearances of the sockets. At least the LED displays are socketed!

I don't have an Oculus Rift... I crossed my eyes instead!

Oh, it makes sense, but the worry is longevity. The Apollo CM and LM only had to function for a few days to a couple weeks at best. Painted surfaces are a liability... NASA even points out that paint was a continuous thorn in their side in the article I linked. I'm thinking that laminations are the only way to go that will preserve paint, but I kinda wonder what going with vinyl something would cost. Laminate it to the back of a thin sheet, then lay that on a thicker sheet. I'm concerned about costs and feasibility, vs durability and longevity. And thanks for that other document! That was awesome! I only mentioned the use of electroluminescent light as being the light source used by NASA on Apollo. I didn't link to any mentions of EL cable though. Of course, LEDs are probably sufficient if you have uniform enough coverage.

I have to share this little gem of a document I found... I MUST! A lot of people seem to enjoy modeling their Kerbal controllers, or at least taking inspiration from, the Apollo program. What I've found is a NASA document that was buried on NASA's website. It has INSANE details about the little things... I mean, You just have to read it... https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7919DsplysCntrls.pdf They don't just describe what was used or how it was put together, but often why! Did you know the prevalence of vertical edgewise meters is actually because of crew preference? They said the vertical meters were just easier to read at a glance. They also could be packed tightly together, efficiently using precious panel space. The LEM contains no dual scale semi-circular meters, because by the time they got to designing it, the crew had made clear that those things were awful to read, and so none were used any further in the design. Vertical edgewise meters and single scale circular meters continued to be used on the Space Shuttle, thanks to the easy readability. They also considered designing their meters so the needle moves completely off scale in the absence of power or an input signal. This provides positive verification that the meter is functioning, and if what it's measuring fails, the needle disappears off the bottom of the scale, to indicate the extreme fault, as opposed even, to just reading 0. Not sure if this functionality was actually implemented, but it is discussed in the document. At the very least, all those types of meters would drop their readings to at least 0, in the absence of power or signal. The few servometric meters that were required included a fault light. A servometric meter, in the case of a failure, will read what ever the last reading was... Not a good thing during a fault. Tape meters and scroll meters were types of servometric meters used. The dial faces of all the meters were back lit with EL lighting. The transilluminated markings of the command module meters were made with an etching technique, while the LM meters used a film overlay. In both cases, where color bands existed on the scale, those colors were painted (using translucent paint) directly on the meters. They actually had problems with this paint flaking! This document also led me to find the original switch manufacturer (and the fact that the switches are still manufactured, even if ridiculously expensive), thanks to the descriptive detail of the "wedge-shaped tab handle that provided the crewmen a large purchase area with which to actuate the switch while wearing a pressurized glove". Exact quote! The locking lever switches had "large bat-shaped handles" and both the lever-lock and wedge-shaped toggles had radio-luminescent tips that glowed under low lighting conditions, such as when the cabin lights were dimmed for the crew to take star readings. While they are not locking levers, there are a lot of toggle switches on ebay with LED tips. If you use a larger than standard resistor in series with green LED versions of these, you can recreate the appearance of the lever-lock switches very sufficiently! Basically, you create a VERY dim green glow at the tip of a cylindrical bat shaped switch. A perfectly fine cheap analog of the originals, without devastating your wallet! If you really want to get the look right, you can try to find an aluminum tube with an inner diameter that closely matches the outer diameter of the bat. The true lever -lock switches had a larger handle at the tip. It's a cheap and easy mod, if you wanna put in the extra effort. Other details, include the fact that NASA referred to the switch guards as "wickets". I previously mentioned that the recessed "troughs" that the switches sat in were the result of surrounding the toggles with the plastic nomenclature panels. Those panels were backlit by EL (electroluminescent) panels. Turns out the spill lighting from the edge of those plastic nomenclature overlays was used as the means to light up the toggle switches as well. The document goes into intricate details like the exact dimensions of pushbuttons. They went with slightly larger pushbuttons than were typical on most aircraft, and even the Gemini capsules. They found 0.8 inch (2.03 cm) square switches to be better suited for gloved hands, and also allowed larger, more easily read legends. They state that the master alarm switch is 1 square inch (6.5 square cm), and is actually rectangular, vs square. They even describe the acceptable range for the actuating force (3 - 21 newtons) of the button. All the rotary switches had 30° detents, and featured a round skirt. The knob had either a hole in the skirt or an actual slot in the knob that let the EL backlit panels shine through the knob and illuminate a position marker to indicate the selected position, or in NASA's words "to allow for transillumination of an integral pointer indictum". They liked the rotary knobs for weight savings, panel space savings, and simplification of operation, but were always worried about the fact that if you have a failure, more functions than just an A/B toggle could be lost. All rotary switches were pre-set to the most frequently used or most critical positions pre-launch, just incase of failure during the mission. They even described some manufacturer supply incidents where they failed to indicate the rotational torque desired for some rotary controls, and got parts that were completely unsuitable. They ended up fixing the low torque items with friction washers, and the high torque ones went into sims and prototypes... Aka, non flight applications. The knobs were changed from plastic to metal, to reduce flammable materials inside the cockpit after the Apollo 1 fire. Sadly, I STILL haven't found an equivalent knob. I'd settle for just the pointer portion, as I can always glue a disc to the bottom. That's easy enough to do. They really do have an incredibly distinctive style. I'm a little surprised no one has tried to copy it. It looks good to me! The circuit breakers were generally accepted as the actuator most susceptible to breakage. As most of us realize, this actually happened on the Apollo 11 LEM, where Buzz Aldrin famously used a pen to fix the problem. The circuit breakers used a black plastic push/pull actuator. They originally had a white painted ring that was exposed when pulled into the open position. That was replaced with an aluminum band, because the paint proved prone to flaking. They used a combination of recessed panels and long wire guards that went over the top of several switches, and secured to either end of the row. Sometimes both methods were used. I swear I have seen the shape of the recessed panel dividers... I wanna say I've seen aluminum/vinyl siding use that shape for structures used in either eaves or something like that... I KNOW I've seen some commonly available material in that EXACT shape before!!! Maybe I'll run down to the hardware store this week to job my memory... It DOES make for a rather cool switch arrangement, making it look like "tiers" of switches. Looks good, to me! I'll get back to this later, if I find the material I'm thinking of. While annunciator lights were commonly used for alarms and many status events that were of immediately critical importance, they actually used a good number of status flags. These were mechanical parts, constructed very similarly to an analog meter. Instead of a needle though, they had a "flag". In the off position, it might show white and black diagonal stripes, and in the on position, the flag would cover the stripes, and show solid grey. Some flags had three positions, where the third position would show red, to indicate a fault. They preferred the flags for general status indicators, because it kept the control panel from looking like a Christmas Tree, a major issue if you need everything dim to take star sightings. The problem with flags, is if there is a fault, they are easy to miss, since they don't actively illuminate, thus the reason warnings and cautions used annunciator lights. The majority of the annunciator lights were for cautions and warnings. Cautions were amber, warnings were red. The alarm tones for a CM fault and an LM fault were also different. The CM fault tone was an alternating 750 Hz and 2000 Hz tone. The LM fault tone was a steady 3000 Hz tone. The LEM used several "layers" of annunciator lights to indicate all subsystems gated into each single caution or warning light. The CM used flags to specify what sub system a particular caution or warning came up on. The reason for the LEM going all out, was because if a fault happened on final decent, you didn't have time to look for flags. You needed immediate information. The Lunar Contact annunciator was unique, in that it illuminated blue. It would illuminate if the 3 meter (about 10 foot) long contact probes on the landing gear made contact with the lunar surface. Pretty nifty bit of info. I suppose if you have a blue LED light up any time the radar altimeter reads 3 meters or less, you could actually recreate this functionality in a Kerbal controller! The lights were round, and were 1 inch (about 2.5 cm) in diameter. After the Apollo 1 fire, an addition to the design, were nozzle holes in the instrument panels. They could shove a fire extinguisher nozzle into those holes to extinguish a fire behind the instrument panel. I think those are the unlabeled holes with the red ring around them. I never knew that. One part of the document describes how they had considered using radioactive sources on one side of the RCS tanks of the LM. scintillator-photomultipliers would be placed on the other side, and would measure the quantity of propellant based on how much absorption/scatter of the radiation occurred. They had planned to use nixie tubes to display the results, but the entire method/project was canceled in favor of indirect quantity gauging, based on temperature and pressure. They specified that that system, had it been completed, would have been the only time NASA had ever employed the use of nixies onboard a vessel. Alas... it never happened. Still, radioactive RCS nixie tube fuel gauge. Wow... ORDEAL (Orbital Rate Display Earth And Lunar) was actually developed so late into the design, that it exists as a literal black box attached to the wall... There was never any stage of the design where it was integrated into the instrument panel. It was literally hung on the wall and wired into the FDAI, as an afterthought! It was the device that generated their horizon, relative to the orbital body. Without it, they only had inertial reference. Turns out, it was a very much NEEDED afterthought! The LM design resulted in the development of a nifty little cross pointer meter that simultaneously reported both vertical velocity and horizontal velocity on the same readout. Interestingly, they had considered an EL panel grid (pixels) to display the cross digitally. They didn't build it, because it would have required a lot of extra hardware back then to convert to a digital readout, and the technology in those days generally only had a refresh rate of 10 samples per second. By the time the document was written, they had determined that the technology that currently existed (circa 1975) now made it feasible. Analog was just simpler to pull off back then. Of course, you can easily recreate this with a small LCD or OLED display, or even a grid of MAX7219 LED drivers. Wire up a square of either 4 or 9 8x8 LED matrix displays, and you have a digital readout for both horizontal surface and vertical velocity! Personally, I kinda like the idea of the old analog style. Man... to this day, I regret throwing out an old stereo system that had a cross pointer meter... Dang it... Would have been GREAT for such a readout. They actually brought up a genuine NASA certified kitchen timer (aka an egg timer) at the recommendation of the Apollo 7 crew. The Apollo 8 crew used it frequently! Don't forget to have a kitchen timer at your Kerbal controller... They are great for timing long maneuvers, AND NASA approved! Finally... Some eye candy... Look at that cool, EL glow... I have GOT to figure out how to make those backlit panels! They are just too darn cool! Have some really beautiful pictures to inspire you all!

Cool!!! Knock their socks off, and if their socks remain on, and unknocked... add moar boosters!

There you go, makin' me watch that movie, again!

Aww man! Freakin' Windows... It's wonderful to hear that it's more or less functional, save for minor LED repair and display code! My solution to the desk issue is gonna be a saws-all with a fresh blade!

Well, pics of all the meters below. I took out the scale inserts on the damaged meter, and fed a fabric tape measure through just to see how it looks. I will definitely need to get some teflon sheet to help it slide better, and I'll need two rollers at each end, and two reels. I'll look for a tape with horizontal numbers. I have to admit, I'm a little shocked by the amount of space this takes up. I'm seriously considering mounting the meters on either side of the central controls, on a second tier of desk cutout. I definitely want the FDAI navball centered, and I want the DSKY clone near that. The vertical velocity meter needs to be close to front and center as well... That means DSKY, FDAI, VVM... I only planned the primary cutout to be as wide as a central keyboard segment (letter keys only, no tenkeys or page keys, with arrows arranged below, not to the side), and a pair of joysticks on either side, plus the throttle. May have to be wider? Who knows... This thing's getting big! I'm definitely throwing the VFD displays as an overhead display. I may take the broken meter, and do horizontal scaled for it. If I make a tape meter on the other half, maybe I can make it into a radar altimeter??? The fabric tape I have has a scale of 0-150 on the cm side, and 0-60 on the inches side. Ideas? Of course, there's also still the idea of vector annunciators... Ugh... I think I prefer that to the complexity of building a tape meter. I dunno...

I got my DACs in the mail today, along with my switches. I think I'm gonna try something else with the DACs. I need 10, and the max number you can address is 8. I was reading on another forum, that you can use a bus multiplexer to toggle between two I2C busses. I can also get the uniquely addressed chips from a local company (Digikey is located in the state where I live, so their shipping, even UPS ground, is lightning fast). I'm gonna desolder the DACs already mounted to the boards, and drop in the uniquely addressed versions. I'll do 2 banks, 6 addresses in one bank and 4 in the the other. That will give me my 10 addresses, and leave me able to access a total of 16, for future expansion. Since the chips are under $1 each, I might just get enough to do all possible addresses in a dual bank setup. For my own needs, I can leave 4 chips alone, meaning I only need to change out 6 chips on the 10 boards I bought, and I'd be buying 12 chips total (each chip supports 2 addresses, so with 2 banks the stock chips would support 4 addresses out of 10 needed). It would also mean only having to toggle a single digital out vs strobing 10 digital outs in time with the sequential I2C transmits. I also got my three EIL 1251 Dual edgewise meters... I have a short video of one doing about half range with a sine wave generated by an Arduino Mega 2560 R3. These are 0-10 volt meters, so I'll have to use a transistor or MOSFET to drive them the full range. My four GE 180 meters are actually 4-20mA industrial range meters, so i have to drive them through a voltage to current transmitter. I got the chips for those... WOW, they are tiny... Spent $10 to build it myself, cause the transmitters were $8-9 each... I might have been better off just spending the money on the pre-made ones... I might have to deadbug these chips under the microscope with some 30 gauge wire and my pencil tip soldering iron... I don't think I can etch boards fine enough for them, and ordering proto boards is a no go... They don't have the heatsinking die pad. I may just suck up the $10 loss and order the actually $36 in preassembled boards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OplHSnYCxvo?version=3&loop=1&playlist=OplHSnYCxvo Sadly, one of the three meters has the right needle broken off... They make the long bat from what appears to be coated graphite a thin hollow aluminum tube, to save on mass, so the meter has a faster reaction time. Light, but brittle. There IS a lot of space inside, so I might be able to repurpose it for something else... Maybe I could play with making a tape meter using a fabric ruler (long flexible plastic tape meant for measuring clothing). It'll have an incremental whole number scale with fractional divisions, and is flexible... If I can motorize a pair of take up reels, and then index optically off the markings on the back (it's common to have inches on one side, and cm on the other), then I could possibly make it work! The curved front face adds an element of uniqueness as well, as long as it doesn't rub the markings off the back. My only issue, The motors probably won't fit inside, because of the thickness, so they'll have to stick out the left side... I was TOTALLY gonna have my meters be on the right of my control panel, and I hope the motors don't interfere with stuff I planned to mount to the left of the meters. I don't know... It's a lot of work, and I don't know how durable it would be if it does work. Still, I pretty much managed to get 3 meters for the price of 3/4 of one. Still sucks, but hey, I at least have four single and two dual edgewise meters, plus my round vertical velocity meter! That's still nine enormous analog readouts, even if I set the half broken meter aside. The left meter DOES still work, so I could use it for a 10th meter, but it's just odd, with it being literally only half a meter. I had considered doing a vertical line of annunciators, but I don't want to distract from the DSKY themed annunciators I wanna build. One option may be to use it for orbital/targeting/node annunciators. I'll have operational annunciators on the DSKY clone, but the FDAI can sit right beside the broken meter. Since you can only display a single vector at a time using the crosshairs, it's necessary to be able to select them. I can have 10 small annunciators to indicate Prograde, Retrograde, Normal, ... Target, anti-target, etc. I know that getting these values calculated and incorporated into the packet are an important thing. We don't have them yet, but I plan to build under the assumption we will eventually get them. The navball is not nearly as useful as an attitude indicator without having the flight director functioning as well. ***UPDATE*** WOW!!! The guy already got back to me and they are sending a replacement for the broken meter. Told me to keep the broken one for parts!