richfiles

My "B" Team consists of: Billy-Bobdan Kerman Alley Kerman Geofemone Kerman Geofemone... I also had a Wilsy and a Neilmon... Neilmon, I choose you! Neilmon used BOOSTER. It was super effective!

I can run it on my mother's Acer Windows tablet. It has an i5 processor, but even small rockets take the physics into the yellow. It is certainly playable though.

Digikey does do international shipping, so if you get yourself a good chunky order, you might be able to offset the cost. Either way, depending on what country you're in, you might have alternatives. I think I saw an Australian ebay listing, so using that as an example, Digikey charges a flat shipping charge of $34 AUD on all orders of less than $200 AUD. Free shipping is offered for all orders of $200 AUD and greater. It just depends on location and size of order. If you snag several items from them, that one 34 AUD charge might end up less that the cost of shipping several different things on ebay. Or not! YOu just have to do the math and find out what works best for you. Consider though, that it's often possible to search for parts there, and then pick out manufacturer part numbers, to see if they are available locally from a closer distributer.

http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?pv207=680&FV=fff40008%2Cfff801c0&k=hlmp+rectangle&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ColumnSort=0&page=1&stock=1&quantity=0&ptm=0&fid=0&pageSize=100 This is a selection of new LED bars. You can get them in a variety of colors and sizes. I filtered by what's in stock, and what's in a wide package. These are all 19x9 mm (approximately). THey have 8 LED elements inside, so you get a VERY uniform illumination. You can get them in red, green and yellow, and the red and green ones are the cheapest. There's also a good price break at >10 units. Red and green units, are about $20 USD for 10, and the Yellows are about $30 USD for ten. I actually salvage these from medical equipment and photocopiers very often... as annunciator style indicators, illuminating a block of text! I picked up a circuit board from a surplus store for $0.75 USD... LESS than a dollar... that has 4 1x4 LED and 3 1x2 LED half width LED bars. The ones I linked are 2x4 LED bars.

I like this idea a lot! Really do! As a side thought though... Maybe Mission Control could use it too. Every time you click a contract, you could initiate (or continue) a two way chat, as long as things are selected. A Kerbal "yes" or "no" played if you accept or reject a contract, that sort of thing. simple stuff, and limited beepy bits. Obviously, if you're clicking away at stuff, it'd make sense to just keep the conversation going, but no sudden cuts or kerbals talking over kerbals, etc. As for the Astronaut center... Maybe chatter only? No beeps at all, etc, kinda like the squawk boxes NASA used to have for families and such in the early days. No two way thing, just hearing how the mission is going, and maybe at a reduced volume (3/4 or half what the normal setting is)... you know, cause you can't interfere with the music! If there is a way to determine it in game... If you can detect if a death has occurred... No chatter at all in the Astronaut complex... NASA would shut off the squawk boxes in an emergency, and I would think the KSC would too... Time it out for at least 1-3 in game days, maybe even longer, like a week... Is the background music and the background noises separate assets... In such a scenario, I could imagine the sounds of Kerbals getting on with their daily activities, but maybe with the music turned off. Kinda morbid, but you know... If we're going for that feel of realism... ... Of course, if you made this, and he installed it, Danny2462 would have a perpetually silent Astronaut Center...

Reverse engineered. CRTs are really easy. LCDs can be hit or miss... Sometimes, they reduce costs by keeping it digital between the CCD encoder and the LCD. If that's the case, you won't find a composite signal, and would have to reverse engineer the entire digital protocol AND find the pinouts... Not easy unless you do actually find documentation. If you're lucky, it'll be a composite signal, just like the CRTs. composite LCD modules were used, but they became more scarce as the technology advanced. A combo camcorder, that has an LCD and a CRT viewfinder will likely use a composite LCD, since it already has to generate composite for the LCD. The process I go through for reverse engineering a CRT module, is as follows. Start by looking up your chips. Most modern ones have only a single chip, and right there, you can get a lot of your info. My chip's datasheet suggested in the app notes that the video signal needs to be AC coupled across a capacitor, and that prevents a continuity test. The board was also too dense to trace the wire traces. I'll get back to that. Only 3 wires are really ever relevant. Ground, Positive, and Composite video (Luminance, or "Y"). That signal is the same as the yellow wire on the back of most any standard definition video device. Usually... I'll come back to that too. You'll want to REALLY get started by determining your power connections. The chip datasheet can often help, but not always. If a regulator is in circuit, you will have to trace it out Ground is super easy though. do a continuity check between the negative lead (always marked) of an electrolytic capacitor and each pin of the connector. This finds your ground. If you have the chip datasheet, you can confirm this further by doing a continuity check between your newfound ground connector and a lead on the chip marked as ground. Next, look for the other lead of the capacitor, and see if it traces back to either a small semiconductor, or directly to the connector. if direct, or if the small semiconductor has one wire to the positive of the capacitor, one wire to the ground, and one wire to the connector, that will be your positive. To test, start with a current limited power supply and turn up your voltage, starting from about 3 volts. pause around 4.8 volts. Many newer models only require 4.8 volts to run, some use 5, some 9 and some very old ones take 12 volts. The idea is to start low, and see when the screen comes on. The chip datasheet, if you find it, can often help you determine the operating voltage. If the power connections go straight to the chip, then feed it what the datasheet says, or only what makes it come on... More, and you may burn it out. If you see distortion on the screen, and it was fine at a lower voltage, you probably went too high, and should kill power and go back to the lower voltage. Be VERY conservative with this... ASSUME it is a lower voltage device, and if it doesn't work, try higher. ALSO, note the current limited supply... well, if your current limited supply is actually indicating that it is limiting, that means there is a large power draw, and something is likely wired wrong, or the device is damaged. You shouldn't see much more than 200-300 mA on newer ones, and rarely over half an amp on bigger ones. Some older ones might draw a little more... but 200-300 mA is a good rule of thumb to start with. Finally, you need to find your video signal. Many viewfinders have indicator LEDs to show when you are recording, etc. Some have serial data lines for on screen displays. Some have horizontal or vertical sync signals that allow an external OSD chip to overlay text not he video signal before it reaches the CRT driver. Sometimes there is a microphone, or switches. You can ignore any wires that lead directly to such parts, if they are obvious. The video signal will be one of the easier things to find... scratch the unknown wires against ground, one at a time... You should see the screen flicker a little bit when you do that. If that doesn't do it, you can always just try feeding each wire a video signal. Mine was a Samsung unit. It had two connectors. One was for the mic, and I just removed it. The other had 7 wires. I found 2 grounds, one directly wired positive power connection, and 4 unknowns. Here's another tip... Video signals require a ground. They can share a ground with the entire circuit, but it you have two grounds on your connector, there is a highly likely chance the other ground is meant to be paired tot he video signal. Check an adjacent wire first. Sure enough, for mine, it was right next to the second ground! A few more things... First, if you REALLY have a hard time getting a good signal, you may need to add either a 75 ohm resistor in series with the signal, or tied between the signal and ground. not all these units have 75 ohm termination built in. Second, If the viewfinder was the type that reflected the video off a mirror, then without the mirror, the video will be backwards. You can fix this easily by flipping the horizontal deflection wires around. These are a pair of wires that go to a coil around the neck of the tube. There will be 4 wires. two for vertical,a dn 2 for horizontal. Fortunately, mine were marked. If not parked, you need to use an ohm meter to determine which wires are part of one coil. Wen you find one coil, swap it, and see if it was the horizontal. If it flips vertical, undo the change, and flip the other two. Do not cross the streams. Make sure the wires are front he same coil. If the wires, when removed front he circuit, do not conduct, they are from separate coils. So, that's the trick to these things. They are dirt cheap, if you can find a thrift store that doesn't over charge. Some thrift stores haven't figured out that the video tape based SD camcorder is SO BEYOND obsolete, thanks to smartphone cameras... I have a place still asking $20 for them... I've bought them for as little as $4. A camcorder is fun to take apart! Not to mention, if you get the OLD ones... as in the over the shoulder type, from the early 80s, you sometimes find very nice gear motors that you absolutely must send to me! Trust me, it's for a good cause, and also insect like robots! Now we need software that flips through a few frames stored in memory, like a little arduino gif. I hear there is a TV library, that absolutely violates all sanity on the poor little chips, and SOMEHOW makes it generate a somewhat usable video signal. Saw a japanese site that was doing 4 bit greyscale... More than enough for Gene and his coffee mug! I hope!

This page really covers a lot of the details of how to do it right. Have fun! http://www.dairiki.org/hammond/cable-lacing-howto/ Pretty impressive techniques there, huh?

I, for one, am in LOVE with that motorized throttle slider! You've inspired me to go the extra step and see if I can motorize that video effects board fader lever that I'm salvaging for my throttle. It would be curious if you could tie that motor to a control loop that would determine whether the throttle is changed by the lever first or if the value returned by the computer changed first. If the lever changed first, then it should alter the throttle by sending the new position's data to the computer. If the computer's value changed, then drive the motor on the lever to adjust the potentiometer value till it matches the value returned by the computer. I've heard PID is possible on an arduino, so It should be, theoretically, feasible. The benefit, is you don't just have the throttle that slams on and off, but actually finely adjusts itself to match the in game throttle... Unless that gets disabled when the game is reading the inputs... In which case, I typed most of this for nothing! I suppose though, that if you run MechJeb, then having the lever mirror the game's throttle value precisely would be very cool! Your motorized throttle is ridiculously awesome, and that IS worth typing about!

So... someone on another thread suggested using tiny viewfinder CRTs as a unique display option. Specifically, they suggested this little project as an aesthetic enhancement to any control panel: From Hackaday http://hackaday.com/2015/07/07/headphone-amp-features-a-tiny-crt/ That is one smexy little amplifier! So then... I have a few of these puppies laying around, so I decided to fire one up and send it a source signal. Here's my first camcorder viewfinder CRT powered up... There are no bounds to my random epic parts supplies! Check out this itty bitty screen! That is one itty bitty battlebot! I wanna say I have at least two or three of these screens laying around, but I'll have to dig up the other ones. I'm thinking of mimicking that waveform project that was shared with me, and displaying the game audio (should be VERY cool, since I use Chatterer) as a waveform display. On another CRT, I might create some sweep generators to produce random lissajous patterns. I think it'd be REALLY cool to take a third CRT and loop some Kerbal facial expressions through it. I wonder if Gene Kerman's headset would be visible? It'd be a cool "depiction" of Mission control! It just occurred to me... that ENTIRE SCREEN is the same size as the space between a single whole number division on that ginormous meter!

I got a viewfinder CRT powered up today... There are no bounds to my random parts supplies! Check out this itty bitty screen! I wanna say I have at least two or three of these screens laying around, but I'll have to dig up the other ones. I'm thinking of mimicking the link you shared, and doing game audio (should be VERY cool, since I use Chatterer), and another CRT, I might create some sweep generators to produce random lissajous patterns. I think it'd be REALLY cool to take a third and loop some Kerbal facial expressions through. It just occurred to me... that ENTIRE SCREEN is the same size as the space between a single major division on that ginormous meter!

So canceling doesn't count as failure, just a return of the advance, eh? I've honestly not done that before, and was never clear on the mater... I may go that route then. But there is always save files to return to after screwing around a bit! Did I also mention... It's in an eccentric retrograde orbit that reaches a Pe. of 185,180m and an Ap. of 6,196,857m. We love those eccentric orbits, with their super fast velocities at the periapsis, and an apoapsis that's over half way to Mun! Well, I sent up a vessel that rescued the four Kerbal souls that needed saving. Destroyed the wreckage of the stuff I don't need to save... And saved the torus for later. I attached a small remote probe core to it with a klaw.

Ah, rats nest, my old friend... I am studying wire lacing... As in old school cord lacing... I hope it is a skill I can master, so I can bid adieu to my old nemesis "rat's nest"!

One mustn't forget, the new "Is it safe to open chutes" mechanic as well. Truth be told... I think i value the presence of the part in space more than the mere 13 or so reputation, and few funds that I'd loose for failing the contract. My rep is at least in the 700s, last time I looked. That's a total guess, based on numbers I barely glanced at.

GAH!!! IDEAS!!! I have like, two or three of those CRTs laying around. That is... VERY tempting.

Sweet! I never knew what happened to the kerbal/craft, cause I've never let a contract fail before. Good to know! How does the contract system handle a contract with half the requirement fulfilled and half unfulfilled? Does it take the failure costs, but leave the individual rewards for the parts completed? I'll probably just keep this part in orbit for a station, and take the failure hit... Though I might make a save file and de-orbit the thing just to watch it burn!

I went boating. It goes pretty fast, and doesn't require SAS to remain stable, even at turns. 37 m/s here, and I'd hit 43 m/s... I didn't wanna go faster, since the impact rating of the cabin was 45 m/s It has 4 of the small retractable landing wheels in the corners, so it's amphibious. I launched from the runway, rolled into the ocean, and powered my way to the island landing strip. I did more damage flipping it a few meters from the runway, than anything I did on the water. The bottom is lined with air intakes. It's also LOUD! It sounds like a constant stream of capsule splashdowns. Leaves and AMAZING wake too! =================================================================================================================================================== This is my brain, trying to grasp the epic scale of this... Hail to The Mountain King, baby! So... How many parts? How many STRUTS! My computer gets pretty painful once I hit 1500 parts, but it starts to get laggy over a thousand. Did you tweak your physics settings at all to launch it, or for that matter, what settings do you use? I run a quad 3.5 GHz i7, but only have an AMD Radeon HD 5770.

I wonder what will happen to parts generated by a contract that wants recovery of the vessel too, if I fail to recover the vessel and the contract expires. Anyone know if I'm save to reuse and rename those types of parts?

So, i accepted a contract, which asked me to rescue Calzon Kerman and recover his wreckage. No biggie... Accepted! I saw in the astronaut center, under Calzon Kerman, that he was in the 25m Stanford Torus, from one of my mods... What? WHAT!?! Land a TWENTY FIVE METER STANFORD TORUS!!! Okay, a few things here... What is it? Well, the part is the 25 meter, 250 TON Stanford Torus from the BioDomes part pack (last updated for 0.24). It may or may not (probably may not) have functional attachment nodes in 1.0.x, but since it is basically, just a part, plus an IVA, with no animations, and no active .dll elements, it seems to play nice with the new version without being terribly glitchy. It has no parameters for the new aero, drag, or thermal stuff. I would love to see this part pack updated to 1.0.4, but all work has shifted to the Civilian Population mod... And I'm sorry, I just don't like the parts in that one as much. This has such a lovely IVA, with up to 44 Kerbals sitting at tables and chairs, sipping on koffee mugs, likely filled with top quality Kolumbian brew. A small stream runs around the torus, with a grove of trees enjoying the sunlight of space. Beautiful! Guys... Check out how much ∆v I had left when I got to orbit! I always figured, since it's a part that can hold crew, and can appear in orbit with rescue missions, I can essentially get it "for free" by accepting contracts featuring the part, and using the Klaw to attach station components to it. it's a tradeoff... The satisfaction of actually launching one of these is INCREDIBLE!!! In 0.25, I got two of these into orbit, and in 0.90 I succeeded in LANDING one on Minmus! (I am aware that my Minmus base makes NO sense... Torus is for space, biodomes are sideways, and at that, backwards, if it WERE in space). The Asparagus staging on these was intense... For the orbital stations, i launched on 13 stacks of the big Kerbodyne tanks! The stacks were literally so far apart from one another that I had to use structural girders on the outer stages to "hang" oscar-b tanks in mid air, cause I couldn't get fuel lines to stretch far enough to reach between stacks! Alright, so part and history details aside, the real issue... I don't LIKE to fail contracts, but if I must, I must... I simply do not see landing the 25 meter, 250 TON Stanford Torus from the BioDomes part pack with the new thermal model. It's so ridonkulously heavy, and no heat shield could ever protect it. I am thinking of leaving it in space to build an orbital station with, but my question is, when the contract expires, will IT expire? If I start attaching things to it, and I rename it, will that protect it from oblivion, or do contracts leave wreckage alone if they fail? I don't wanna start some huge orbital station and have it's existence tied to a a contract I can't possibly complete? Likewise... For the heck of it... Is there a way to land 250 tons of OHHELLNO!?! I just really don't see it happening. Oh yeah!!! Did I also mention... It's in an eccentric retrograde orbit that reaches a Pe. of 185,180m and an Ap. of 6,196,857m. We love those eccentric orbits, with their super fast velocities at the periapsis, and an apoapsis that's over half way to Mun!

Yeah, i was thinking about the safe to deploy parachute status, and was thinking about how I have lots of lights on my future DSKY that need to actually do something!

I've had these buttons for a good long time, I think since around 2006-07, possibly? Not sure. I plan to use the wide black switches on my DSKY (I really should snag a couple more, but I might just simply do a truncated keyboard). The narrow colored switches are begging to be used for Action groups. I have a pair each of red, yellow, green, blue, and white switches. I think I rather like the idea of having action groups be on these pushbuttons, with LEDs to read out the status. I'll likely have the wider switches manage things like time warp, and other system level actions. I might do a lot of that via the DSKY. Anyway, as a bonus, these pushbuttons have a WONDERFUL mechanical click to them! The recessed part is also good for labels, I figure I can try to find white decal lettering or something (black lettering for the yellow and white buttons). Since that part is recessed, the lettering shouldn't wear off with repeated pressing! I can easily mod the cap to have a pair of bicolor LEDS. ALL the switches are internally capable of having LED mounted. You just push back a dowel and pop the cap off, and you can drill out either the center for one LED, or two adjacent holes for two LEDs. The caps snap right back on. To anyone who wants to use these, Digikey carries many of them, but not all (search for "5500 series", then click the "Pushbutton" category). They are spendy switches... $3.28-4.40 each... Even with price breaks, these add up. I got them for another project, but never used them. Some switches are available in single quantities, but most require a minimum purchase of 500. Selection is spotty, but they do have some in stock in single unit minimum quantities. I managed to snag a lot of the last single unit quantity items with colored keycaps. These buttons are the one big non-Apolloish thing that I'm set on. I know toggles would be better, but i honestly don't care! I've had these for years, they cost me a small fortune, and I wanna use them for something cool! I'll still have toggles, just not not he action groups. I do still think the wide black ones will look nice on the DSKY, even if it's not a perfect style match.

My first Sandbox game... My first rocket was FAR over engineered, and I put my crew into a Kerbol orbit, just escaping Kerbin's SOI, and drifting away from kerbin at the tiniest pace. The orbit nearly was perfectly parallel to Kerbin's orbit... Poor "Challenger Titanic Fitzgerald"... Poor Jeb and gang... I decided to try getting out and pushing... I wasn't THAT far from Kerbin's SOI at the time... Bill got flung from a ladder with only a tiny bit of fuel left... It wasn't enough to save him... He drifted away, as Jeb had to smell Bob's... odors... till they were rescued. Jeb claimed Bill's snacks. Challenger Titanic Fitzgerald II was launched as a rescue mission... It took me 45 in game years for CTF II to reach them. Got to within 1400Km and I shot by, and passed my point of no return fuel point. We... we don't speak of CTF II... Dres does though... Dres does... It will return... someday... But the snacks will have long since run out... It took me over 80 in game years for CTF III to reach them. I fortunately quick saved... I went to rescue Bill first... I got my target lined up real good... I was gonna claw grab him... I hit him head on and he poofed. Alt-F9, and he got better, and I gave myself moar time to decelerate. I got him in the front, but dang it, I could not get the claw to activate! So, I used RCS to perfectly match orientation and velocity and moved the door to Bill! I switched to Bill, and grabbed the ladder the moment the ladder came to me. Did I mention the vessel's mass at this time was still 129 tons? I went after the command module after that. Rescuing Jeb and Bob wasn't terribly difficult at this point. Still had issues with the Claw. I EVA'd them to the CTF III's command module, and transferred their rescuer to the lonely habitation module below. I'm sure they all used the habitation module's facilities to wash up after 80 years of BO buildup though... After burning the last of the giant Kerbodyne tanks for the trip home, I ejected those. CTF III was almost exactly the vessel below, but instead of the lab, was the shorter habitation module, moar RCS tanks, and moar Xenon tanks. I had a total of 79000 units of Xenon on board, and I also had 4 "wings" that had 3 additional Ion engines each. There was enough RTGs to power it all. It also had the claw up front, and a landing leg "catcher". I came into Kerbin's SOI with a 2 day SOI escape, and had to burn off the interplanetary transfer speeds with ion engines, mind you, I think it was 20 of them. I ended up staging the ion "wings" and tanks for kerbin landing with 400ish units of Xenon left! I started my deceleration burn before I ever reached Kerbin's SOI! Below is CTF IV. It had much less fuel, as it was meant to do orbital science around the Mun. I ditched the Claw for sciency stuff, and exchanged fuel for the lab. I got science, decided I had enough fuel to fly to Minmus... realized I had the fuel and TWR to land and launch from Minmus... Said screw it... I landed it on the nozzles of 8 ion engines, using ions and RCS only. No ladder... If I ran out of EVA fuel, I was stranded on Minmus. I got 5 biomes from one landing using EVA hops... I screwed up and poofed Jeb... He got better with an Alt-F9 bandaid. STILL screwed up the 30 km EVA hop that had been previously perfect (almost... stupid dying last time) by hitting my last 5% EVA fuel with 15 km still to go... I aimed Jeb, and set a weight on my "Shift" and "W" keys, and went to bed. Set an alarm to wake me up when Jeb would be done with his long walk... That mission was a wonderful success... Despite the fact that I never planed to need things like "landing legs", or "ladders". Fortunately CTF IV and CTF III were both able to overcome their VERY unfortunate naming scheme... I still have never retrieved CTF II... and to this day, it drifts alone... snackless... passed Dres.

I think you'll find that if you have the knack for it, simpits are a literal pit of awesome that will suck you in, with a smile! Now add moar -b-o-o-s-t-e-r-s- displays!

Does no one here realize the Dual Shock 4 controller features a clickable track pad? Like a laptop? As far a cursor control goes, that's about as simple as it gets, for a gamepad. I imagine they could likely also support plugging a mouse or keyboard in, for those that really prefer classic PC controls.

Except when creating massive science spam satellites, this can be troublesome. Used the three way stack converter to make a stack of 9 Science Jr. and 9 Mystery Goo devices. Tried assigning them to action groups, only to discover that they were assigned in triplicate. I agree that symmetrical parts should automatically be assigned to action groups together, but I think there needs to be a button on the part that lets you manually split the symmetry int he action group window, for cases like mine. I had to tear my construction apart and redo it, and then play with the fine rotation till it was right, since I didn't have the automatic rotation from symmetry anymore. So what I'm suggesting, would be a feature request... Say you have an SC-9001 Science Jr. in 3 way symmetry. I'm just saying that in addition to the reset button, there should be a split/merge button on any part with assigned symmetry. reset would reset the assigned actions, and merge would regroup split symmetrical parts' actions. So what you see now is: ---------------------- SC-9001 Science Jr. < Toggle Doors < Observe Materials ... < Reset materials Bay [Reset] ---------------------- What I propose would be this: ---------------------- SC-9001 Science Jr. < Toggle Doors < Observe Materials ... < Reset materials Bay [Reset] [split x3] ---------------------- If you press the [split xN] button, it would display this: ---------------------- SC-9001 Science Jr. < Toggle Doors < Observe Materials ... < Reset materials Bay ---------------------- < Toggle Doors < Observe Materials ... < Reset materials Bay ---------------------- < Toggle Doors < Observe Materials ... < Reset materials Bay ---------------------- [Reset] [Merge x3] ---------------------- Pressing [Merge xN] would rejoin the action items into a single set of menus for all three parts. I guess that would be really nice in many situations. Symmetry is not only used to make things pretty, but to also keep things balanced. It sucks to have to do symmetry manually, when you need more control. I'd also suggest that since most keyboards treat number pad numbers and the numbers over the letters as separate keys, it'd rock to allow an extra set of action groups (0-9 on the number pad) to allow us extras. Sometimes I like to use RCS, Brakes, Lights, Gear, and Abort for... well, those things! Sorry, just my ramblings on a tiny little change I'd love to see, regarding how I'd like to see this game improved. Not sure if anyone else agrees, but that's my thought on it. ***Oh my! Dis old post... I still think it'd be an improvement. Blame Google for pulling such an old post!

Is there a list of what does and does not work in 1.0.4, cause I LOVE these gauges, and want to continue using them... Least till I finish my simpit!