richfiles

I started test fitting the LED assemblies, securing a wire, and then pulling them back, applying epoxy, and then lighting the LEDs up, in order to test the alignment with the color accents on the scale. The epoxy sets in about 5 minutes, so that gives just enough time to get the alignment corrected before the LEDs are locked into their final places. This was a real jumble. Next time, I'll plan things ever so slightly differently, and try to be a little more uniform with how I do the wiring. Once again, a resistor per LED. I tried to aim the LEDs to best spread out over the diffuser, and I may still try to adjust the alignment for best spread. I used 10 of the aqua/teal colored LEDs I picked up in bulk Too much side spill of the light... But there's a simple solution for that! I figured out the geometry for a light shield It installs nicely over the LED assemblies, and doesn't intersect with meter operation. Once side installed, and it's doing the job nicely! I'll paint the edge of the plastic to further contain light spill. And here we have it... One finished backlight mod! One down, four to go... I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out. I've been up all night working on it, but after just a few more tweaks, It'll be ready for the movement assemblies to be reinstalled, and the cover closed up. I knew exactly what needed to be done, but my goodness, getting it from in my head into reality just took forever! There are ways I can streamline, and I do expect the next 4 meters to go faster, but boy, it's gonna be slightly tedious. I'll make it though. A lot of the most tedious things have already been completed too, like sawing the green LEDs and measuring the shields, so there's that.

I got started working on my analog meters again. This task proved far more complex than my brain had planned for. After a test, realized there was a lot of light spill from the color accent LEDs, so I decided to use the dremel to cut out channels for those LEDs. I also secured the scale by drilling and tapping holes for it to be clamped down to. On a side note, I looked for a week for my 4-40 screws and nuts, as well as my Dremel bits. Bought the Dremel bits Sunday, and the screws a day before. I found my bag of bulk 4-40 hardware and my Dremel bits Sunday evening... While at the hardware store, I saw the epoxy, and thought, I got that at home... Took me hours to find it. It was hiding in plain sight. In fact... ALL of it was... A screw and washer might not seem like enough, and that scale might look like paper, but it's not. It's Nekoosa Synaps XM synthetic paper, which is a textured polyester sheet that can be fed through a laser printer. It's very difficult to tear, and the four screws and washers holding the four tabs keeps it tightly in place. I cut, drilled, and mounted a small piece of protoboard to the meter, where the old incandescent light sockets were originally mounted. This will be where all the LEDs mount. Small snag... I already prepped my red and yellow LEDs ages ago. I had a massive pile of 1x4 rectangular yellow LEDs, but no other colors. I needed 1x2 LEDs, so I used my mill to cut them into two. I DID find some 2x4 green LED packages, but these were too wide, so I used a tiny hack saw blade to saw four of these 2x4 LED modules into eight total 1x4 modules. Had I used the mill, I would have 1: had to clean up the space to use it, and 2: ruined half the LEDs. The mini saw blade went through the center without harming the LEDs on either side of it. It took a while... There's a fiberglass reinforced board inside these, where all the LED dies are bonded to. It really slowed the blade down. Took a while, but the alternative was spending money to wait even longer. I tested every LED die with a small coin cell battery, to verify that none were damaged by the sawing process. Since these were cut, I had to paint the exposed side to contain their light. Bent the negative leads... I kinda went nuts, and gave every LED it's own resistor. For this application, I just went overkill. One issue with assembly, is that the ideal resistors in my collection were pre-bent resistors, meaning I had to un-bend them for all of these. Lead forming actually wasted way more time than I expected. Such is the cost of free-form electronics. Made sure to test every LED assembly. Test fitting the Green LED into the carved slot behind the scale. Likewise, testing the red and yellow LED assembly. Gonna split this post, cause it's already pretty long...

I already despise Take Two with a passion... If KSP 2 doesn't have Linux and Mac OS support, it won't even be hard for me to deny that company any of my money. How many mods are developed by Linux players? Has anyone ever figured that out? I feel like that's an important number to consider. If KSP 2 doesn't support Linux, then I can already just make the assumption that mod support isn't being given priority, because I feel like those most willing to dig into coding are also likely the people who most likely consider Linux as an OS of choice. Oh, I could absolutely be wrong on that, but I feel it's a factor that might hold weight.

Aliexpress, the bastion of grade C Chinesium electronics, has the second worst search algorithm, after Amazon, bearer of irrelevant results from A to Z. Trying to see if I can ease my navball controller design by trying to buy a pre-made power inverter module that will take a low voltage sine wave, and produce the 115vac amplified output. Honestly, my specialty has always been digital design, and analog, while I have worked with it, is an area I have far less expertise. Most inverters simply generate a simple square wave at 50 or 60Hz and feed that into the inverter circuitry. Some feed an actual sine wave through. I'm looking for a module that lets me send in my own waveform, and have it amplify that. I keep finding irrelevant results, and it's infuriating. I specify 115 volt, and I get 30x the results in 220v. It's just an exercise in frustration. I've had my navball for 5 years, and I want to finally bring it to life! These shoddy search engines are NOT helping!

Downloadable video: https://i.imgur.com/euAwlXP.mp4 I must apologize for the audio quality on this video... Seems my mic's gain is cranked so high that you can even hear "wind" blowing across it as I move left and right. It picked up the audio of me tapping my phone screen... Weird, but okay... No idea why it was so sensitive. Now that that oddity is out of the way, just a minor update. I got the new motors in the mail yesterday, and I installed the slowest speed model of the two to see how it worked... I like it. Good low end speed control. I can drive it on as little as 0.65 volts, and with PWM, I should get even better low end control. At low speeds, it's actually nearly silent, though I imagine once all the parts are assembled, I might get chassis amplification of noise. It's one reason I plan to mount this to the chassis using rubber grommets, and plan to use foam to keep any metal parts from making contact with anything else directly. For reference, each number on the tape will represent the height of two numbers in the final tape meter, once the tape has been properly printed. Each of the lower altitude increments will be in 10 meter increments between 0 and 1000 meters, 100 meter increments between 1100 meters and 3000 meters, and 500 meter increments between 3500 meters and 8500 meters, with the final unit being >9999 meters. It's a total of 135 total increments. I might tweak that a bit. I need to see how quickly decent can happen at 1000m. If it drives the tape too fast, I could have a transitional region with 50m increments, and get some finer resolution farther up the tape. Ultimately, the real goal, is to keep the tape speed low, and thus the noise low, and ease in reading high. I also got some, but not all of the taps I recently ordered, as well as a pin vise. Still waiting on the rest of my taps, and the screw assortment. I waited to mount the absolute position sensor, till I could get the taps, so I could thread the mounting holes. I want to be able to loosen the sensor and adjust it, to fine tune it, relative to the tape meter position. So yeah, that's where things sit. Soldering circuit boards for work, so I'll mount that sensor after that's dealt with.

Those hall effect absolute position sensors really are a game changer! I used one on my Radar Altimeter tape meter. I have a motor driving two timing pulleys, one to the 6 turn tape meter input shaft, and the other to a 1:6 ratio pulley attached the the sensor. I'd lost track of this thread a while back, so coming across it again, I'm very happy to see you're still working at this, bit by bit. Man, I kinda wish I'd have kept track... I didn't discover those absolute position sensors till early this year... I could have had a half year head start on this... When the Covid hit, getting parts shipped became an absolute nightmare! I realize that the security camera gimbals I have could easily have their 128 step encoders swapped out with Absolute Position Sensor units. That would leave the only part requiring manufacturing to be the ball and plate itself, and the yaw and pitch motors to drive it. I never looked into developing that, since I had the ARU 11/A FDAI I bought back in 2015. Good luck with the project!

I play Pokemon Go as an excuse to occasionally get out and move, and to collect a quarter century of older Pokemon that I never collected cause I didn't play the old games. Last year, I decided I wanted to use Pokemon Go to start collecting them for the (then) upcoming Nintendo Switch Pokemon game (which itself was a massive disappointment, that aside from laughable graphical and animation quality, actually cut some of those very Pokemon I'd just started to collect)... Anyway... I only play casually, and in order to not spend money in the game, I try to do the bare minimum and put Pokemon into gyms to "defend". The basic premise, is you can collect up to 50 free "coins" per day by having pokemon defending gyms for a cumulative total of up to 8 hours. It used to be, that you could easily go out once and load up 20 gyms around town (the max you can occupy), and then just forget about it for a few days. A couple gyms would be defeated each day, and that'd usually cover you for a few days, so you could just ignore it. Queue spoofers. Spoofers use apps to spoof GPS data and effectively travel in game without actually physically going anywhere. It's a ToS violation, but there needs to be some kind of proof to report it, and this person is known for still physically going out to gyms too, so there's always the "well you just didn't see me" excuse. There can certainly be "courteous" spoofers. People who just play casually and only spoof for some convenience. ToS or no, I legit don't care how people play, so long as they play nice... This woman does not play nice... Everyone hates this woman. She is obsessed with this game to the point that she's had near violent scuffles with people, and has personalized license plates on her truck based on her username. She has *zero* courtesy for other players as well. I go out of my way to try to not defeat gyms that haven't been occupied for at least the full 8 hours. I've watched her camp a gym and take it out within minutes of it being loaded... She also doesn't stop at just one or two gyms... Nope! She'll go around and wipe out the entire town, loading 20 gyms, and leaving gyms she can't load empty. When she hits her limit, it's not enough to call it... She actively denies other users gym time! It's not an understatement that most of the people in my town's chat group despises this woman. Yes, I'm complaining about this toxic player, but I'm also complaining about our local chat group too... One of the two prominent players that helps lead the group is a high ranking player in my state (at one point, she was 13th ranked in XP across my state. Not sure where she stands now). The other player is an old friend of mine that I've known over a decade. Last year, I watched them drive a few players out of the group, and actively target them within the game, for spoofing... When I say spoofing, I don't mean this aggressive type of play that this woman I described above engages in... I mean very casual convenience play. For example, if a gym was already being defended by a fellow team member, they might remotely add another Pokemon into it to defend it. They were not actively battling gyms, unless they were present, that sort of thing. Convenience play, as opposed to predatory play. That was enough for these people. People I consider friends, to be completely cut off, banned from the group, shunned by the group's leaders, and aggressively harassed in game into being unable to actually make progress in the game. I had posts talking about my phone shaker deleted... Just simulating a workout, for the purpose of hatching eggs in game, was too much for them to tolerate... Mind you, they never cared about ToS when it explicitly says they couldn't multi-account... That detail is conveniently ignored... The hypocrisy, is this top level player I mentioned... She's old friends with this aggressive spoofer, and has been constantly dismissive to us in the chat regarding this woman's behavior! It's beyond hypocritical. Last night, she had the absolute gall to actually complain about the frequency of complaint threads that pop up in the group... It inconveniences her, because her phone is exploding with notifications, and she thinks something actually relevant is going on... I have not been as livid as I was last night in a LONG time. The absolute gall of her to pass off this other woman's actions as nothing big, when she herself actively drove people out of the group and targeted their play, until they simply couldn't engage with the game anymore, for far less. The hypocrisy is so glaring... I honestly have no idea if she can't even see it at all, and just doesn't realize, or if she just don't care, and is fine being that hypocritical, because "them, not these" mentality. Honestly, the game is becoming inconvenient to play between lockdowns and aggressive spoofers, and apparently, we can't even communicate about the issue, because oh no! ONE post resulted in a notification. I'm just disgusted... It's garbage like this that makes me wanna just drop it. I only ever picked it up in the first place because I never did the Pokemon thing years before, and wanted to build up the collection from older games, so I could eventually migrate them... Ugh... And that's a whole other can of worms... Even migration to \other games has now been heavily monetized... The fact that Pokemon is the single largest grossing franchise of ANYTHING in history, and the absolute sad state of it's creator, and the gross monetization of it all, is proof that humans will raise mediocrity and greed up on a pedestal without even a second thought...

I want to pick up an 0-80 SAE tap for use in both my model railroad hobby, and just so I can use small hardware on my projects, in general. For those who are not aware what a tap is, it's a bit that allows you to create screw threads in a hole. Drill the hole, then turn the tap in, and back it out, and you get properly sized threads in the hole. Given that my smallest SAE tap is 4-40, I decided I should look for a set to fill out that micro range of SAE sizes. I'm also wanting to do the same for metric sizes too. I go on Amazon and do a search... Plenty of metric sets, between $10-14 for a 10 piece set... Nice. I then search for the SAE sets... and Amazon returns metric sets. I try to refine the search, nothing improves, so I use Google to search Amazon I do end up finding a couple sets, but the first set is of abysmal quality... Like, I've never in my life seen a more cheaply made tap... Won't touch that garbage... Second set is good quality, but they package two of every tap, and toss in dies (I don't need dies), and charge 5x more than the metric set... I don't need that! Last set is only the 4 smallest SAE sizes (00-90, 0-80, 1-72, and 2-56... Nothing between 2-56 and 4-40 though)... But it costs 2x the price of the metric 10 piece sets. At this point, I am so frustrated with Amazon's awful search engine, and search elsewhere. I find a better SAE micro tap set that has all the smaller sizes I'm looking for (6 taps), but this is 3.5x more expensive than the 10 piece metric sets. Another source had exceptionally high quality bits, but each bit individually is 2-3x the cost of the whole metric sets. I only need to work with plastic and aluminum. I doubt I'll ever need to use these on steel or anything harder, so I don't need anything so high end. I'm just really frustrated with how utterly impossible it is to find a good complete SAE tap set in sizes under 4-40, or for decent prices. Guess I'll just overpay.

So, this is a pretty old thread, from way back in 2017, but it popped up in a search on Translation Hand Control (the official NASA term for the RCS controller), and I learned a few things about it that I'd forgotten. Apparently there was a mode switch of some kind tied to rotating the controller, making the Fairchild Channel F controller even more relevant! Reading that thread again reminded me that I wanted to use rotation to emulate the scroll wheel... Might still do that. We'll see. One issue that was brought up, was the lack of tactile feedback in the switches, and the fact that the controller is purely digital. The one single reply that I had not read, from way back in 2017... Is actually a GREAT idea! If I want tactile switches, I only need a solenoid to "tap" the mount that secures the THC unit. That would give both an auditory and tactile feedback when any switch engages or disengages. Honestly, it's a super simple solution, and it would definitely work, and I like it VERY much! Hmm... Now I need to either start saving for a 3D printer, or find someone with one willing to help me out to make bezels... Particularly the velocity/rate meter bezel. I want that to be perfect. I might just try machining it, if I can find aluminum pr plastic bits that are sized right. I REALLY need to clean up my closet machine shop, so I can get to my mill.

Had a little fun, and took a break from physical construction today. I updated my mockup to more accurately reflect my current forecast plans for this project. Still not shown is my translation controller... Honestly, I'm not actually sure where to mount it. It's literally a stand alone Fairchild Channel F joystick, and it's on a cable with a 9-pin Atari style connector on the end. I have no desire to mod such a vintage video game controller, so wherever it gets mounted, it'll be in what will essentially be a rubber gripped clamp of sorts, that secures it into place, probably somewhere along the front edge of the case, or possibly the control panel edge. Turned sideways, the pistol grip base is only about 1.5 inch wide, which in theory, would allow it to fit in the edge of the control panel, where the throttle and the Stage and Abort buttons sit. My only worry is it sticking out, past the edge. That sounds like a recipe for snagging it and either damaging it, or messing up orbits or maneuvers. I considered mounting it up to the left of the analog meters, but that puts RCS control at literal arms reach... Not a fan of that idea either. I might consider a notch in the desk, to the left of the staging and abort buttons, and side mount it there. A notch makes sure it's not aggressively sticking out, waiting to be a snag in the making... This isn't something I've decided yet, so when I get to it... I'll get to it. For now, it's simply not depicted. The center joystick is the Fairchild Channel F controller. Yes, I recycled yet another front page image. It is one of the strangest controllers I've ever used! You hold the base in your hand like a pistol grip, and grasp the knob with your palm. This is actually exceptionally similar to the way the RCS controller in both the Apollo and Shuttle was configured. In the orientation shown, you can move the knob left and right, up and down, push it in and pull it out, as well a twist it clockwise and counter clockwise. It does not have any kind of trigger or action button, only the 4 axes of movement. Like I said... It's an unusual controller! Heck, thinking about it, I could probably even get away with mounting it into the top surface of the panel, at a slight downward angle, so it doesn't overhang the edge, but is raised above the control panel surface... Think hood scoops, except instead of an air intake, the end is an RCS knob. That has the added benefit of actually giving me hand a rest! I'll have to look at what makes the most sense. Add that one to the ever growing pile of options... Imagine that Fairchild controller embedded in the control panel, starting deepest near the rear of the panel, and sticking out the top toward the front, with enough hand rest space to be comfortable. Man... I really love this shot! That gentle arcing curve of the panel, sloping slightly down toward the front. That was never part of the original plan, but it just came together accidentally, simply because the parts I happened to salvage for use on this project had that gentle arc built into their design. I happily stole it, just like I stole yet another recycled image, this time one from the simpit repository, that I posted way before I ever began this thread! Told ya, today's lazy day! So back to the mockup... And moar recycled images! It should be noted that there will almost certainly be more toggles than what are shown, and the layout is all up for grabs, except for the general location of the staging buttons and the throttle. Those parts are physically deeper, and must sit to the far left, so they clear my keyboard drawer. There will be a small pan underneath those parts to add a little extra depth, to accommodate them. So anyway, what actually changed? Well, the biggest difference is the correct number and type of analog meters, the addition of the Radar Altimeter tape meter (which amazingly had still not been added to the mockup in all this time), and updating the location of all the instruments on the main panel to reflect their final layout. I've also updated the DSKY to appropriately represent just how BIG it's become, and I've also updated the mockup to show the raised Velocity LED module that I had discussed in an earlier post, as well as my latest update for the Auxiliary Data Readout (ADR), featuring my newest idea... Colors!!! There's actually a lot more color everywhere. The overhead module now shows the sky colored Atmospheric Density gauge, as well as the large VFD, the ADR may end up extra colorful, and the DSKY's annunciator grid now accurately reflects it's illumination colors, The DSKY annunciator LEDs normally come in only Red, Yellow, and Green. A while back, I had taken up the challenge to do something useful during the end credits of the last Lord of the Rings movie, so I repaired my milling machine. With it fixed, I milled out the LED dies from a surplus of yellow annunciators I had. I epoxied 3mm LEDs of a variety of other colors into the milled out annunciators. This allowed me to create annunciators that represented the on screen colors of the various navball vectors, e.g.. Prograde, retrograde, Normal, anti-normal, Radial, Anti-radial, etc. In addition to the unique vector colors, I have a blue annunciator to signify ground contact, a reference to the Lunar Module's blue contact light, as well as several standard red green and yellow annunciators for things like High Temp, Chutes Risky, Chutes Safe, Master Alarm, RCS, SAS, Brakes, and stuff like that. Looks like Christmas on the mockup, but it should me much more muted in operation. The entire left column will only ever have a single annunciator lit at a time, indicating what vector is being displayed on the Navball's crosshairs. The right column has a number of conditional and status indicators that could come on in different patterns. Now regarding the ADR... I've been looking at part availability and cost, while also wondering just how do I actually control these displays, and I think i have a great solution! If I can source the parts for a reasonable price, the ADR will now be gaining color coded displays! I already have yellow smart LED displays, and red and green ones both seem to be available for semi-reasonable prices on ebay. The units displays might all end up reading green, or I might get the yellow and red versions. I just have SO many green ones already, sooooo... The basic plan is that there will be a red, yellow and green display, and I'll have a red yellow and green button by each display, to select that display. I will have several additional pushbutton switches (refer to my post on the smart displays to see what I'm referring to) that will each refer to a specific bit of data. Press a display button, press a data button, that data goes to that display. Super simple! I've also been thinking that I'll probably just have fixed data on the overhead VFD, but if I do end up doing anything else up there, I might end up using a similar assignment system. The final big update is easy to miss. If you look closely, you'll notice the raised LED module above the Navball, and if you reeeeally zoom in, you'll see additional LEDs on either side, and on top, just below the velocity readout... These bar graphs will serve as a rate meter. It's one thing to see your attitude and your velocity, but a rate meter tells you how much rotation you are currently experiencing on each axis. It's actually possible to zero out a wild spin using just your rate meters. That's one reason why I feel rate meters are an absolute necessity for my build, and I think I can make them incredibly thin. I've decided that I can take advantage of the raised LED velocity readout as an opportunity to create a pair of "bezel wings", just off off either side of the Navball. I haven't decided which path to take. I could try to buy a bunch of those Russian micro bar graph LEDs. They have red and green varieties, and they look really cool, but they are only 5 segments, and 5mm long, so I'd need to order a LOT of them! The other option is to just buy a bunch of surface mount LEDs and create three identical boards with the SMD LEDs as individual segments. It ends up being a ton of extra work, but they might look okay, and if I'm doing a circuit board for the SMD LEDs, I have the added advantage of routing wiring on the back of the board more easily without through holes taking up space... Either way, I'm dead set on on having those rate meters!

I don't usually post here about my own build, except for milestones, and this is definitely one of the bigger milestones! I've managed to assemble the mechanism for my Radar Altimeter Tape Meter! Check it out! There's even a video of it!

https://i.imgur.com/eqIMg49.mp4 - Downloadable video I've done it! The tape meter is functioning, if only mechanically at the moment. There are some issues I have to deal with, and there's still lots of work, but I can say that the mechanism is more or less done! So first off, what's left... I still need to actually print the correct numbers on the tape itself. Right now it just shows degrees, but when I'm done, it should have 0m - 10000m in stepped increments (not a true logarithmic scale, but close to the ground, will be 10m increments, further up 100m increments, further up yet, maybe 500m increments, and so on, divided into 144 individual markings (minus a space the size of about half the window, to allow for an "end of tape" even though it's in a loop.) A lot of this was merely test fit, so I'll actually have to pull it apart and re-assemble it with Loctite. Reason I haven't, is threading the belts can be quite difficult with some parts assembled fully, and I know I'll have to tweak a few things, so I'm saving final assembly (with Loctite) for when it's done. Other bits that have yet to be done, are the teflon/felt washers for the tape sprocket. You can hear that the whole thing is a tad rattly, and that might help. All minor bits I need before it's Loctite bonded. Finally, the big issue, is I grossly misjudged the motor's capabilities, and how much friction would be in the system. It spins fine at higher voltages, but I have nothing at lower motor drive voltages... It just stalls. I didn't account for the added friction of adding the tape and it's 5 plastic rollers into the mix, nor properly estimated the added friction of flexing taught belts, and I realize I really should have ordered a gear motor with a much higher gear ratio, and more torque. It spins extremely fast at full voltage, but it stalls on lower voltages. The solution is simply to just get a motor with a more appropriate gear ratio. The existing motor spins at 280 RPM at 6 volts... I'm debating whether to go with the 130 RPM or the 70 RPM. Honestly, I'm erring toward the 70 RPM... Any vessel that comes into the atmosphere at a speed that requires more than 5.1 seconds to go from 10000 m to 0 km is only gonna burn up or hit Kerbin... Poof! The motors are cheap too, only $5.22 + $5.79 shipping, but I did not want to have to deal with Chinese shipping again... Ugh... That's one nightmare I'd rather avoid, but I can't find the motor stocked in the US. Oh joy... Shipping delays, here I come! On a positive note, I see no reason the old 280 RPM motor can't be used with the ∆V Carriage Meter. I can even gain torque just by what parts I get for it's drive mechanism. So, before I go into too much detail on the tape meter, I started my day yesterday by finally notching the analog meter that's gonna have to sit against the control panel support rail. Notching this meter gains me half an inch, and you know what... I need every fraction of a inch, every millimeter of free space if I'm to have any hope of this thing fitting! With this notch, the body of the meter will sit flush with he lip the front panel rests on, and the side bezels should just fit the gap between the meter and the edge of the enclosure. Despite the massive chunk taken, there is no interference with he mechanical operation of the meter. the long metal arm is the calibration arm. It attaches to a front mounted cam, and adjusts the spring tension of the meter. The thin brass looking bit is the movement stop. It's literally just a tiny bit of brass wire with a rubber catch to stop the meter from moving, and that rubber bit is not visible here... Like I said, no interference, despite the massive chunk removed. That bit about milling the three panels together? HA! I was too focused on working on this, and didn't bother to make my mill usable, so it was all dremel work! If the screw hole is big enough, it's always in the right precision location! I spent so much time on this stage. There was a minuscule, but measurable taper on the back of the tape meter body's primary casting. Had to strategically use lock washers to maintain both the right alignment, as well as serve as a buffer to make up for that taper. Starting to take shape! It was critical to mount the outside pulley with enough shaft to secure it safely, as well as to actually align it. Once I was ready for that last panel, it all went together quickly. This was one area I didn't properly consider when estimating friction losses. Those are just plastic rollers on steel posts. Least I can do is find some teflon washers or something. All this crazy mechanism, just so that I can squeeze an uncommon instrument into a narrow gap in my panel! Like a glove! The navball can sit right on that ridge, and never have to worry about space. The motor and the primary drive belt are all contained in the space of the tiny gap. And here, in the rear, we can see how even though the magnetic hall effect position sensor sticks out past the analog meters, it doesn't actually occupy the same space. it sits well behind the meters. The motor sticks out 2/3 of the way under the navball, but it's non-intrusive. I'll likely add an extremely thin layer of foam between the Navball and the tape meter, with hopes of trying to control vibration and motor noise. Looks beautiful, doesn't it! I really have zero complaints with the fit of this. I managed to actually succeed in fitting it all in!

I failed to take the added friction of adding the tape and it's 5 plastic rollers into account, nor properly estimated the added friction of flexing taught belts, and I realize I reallty should have ordered a gear motor with a much higher gear ratio, and more torque, for my Kerbal Instrument Panel's Radar Altimeter Tape Meter. It spins pretty fast at full voltage, but it stalls on lower voltages. It's okay though... the solution is to just get a motor with a more appropriate gear ratio. The existing motor spins at 280 RPM at 6 volts... I'm debating whether to go with the 130 RPM or the 70 RPM. The 130 still allows a very rapid reset, but I'm concerned it won't have sufficient low end speed at lower voltages. The 70 RPM will have tons of torque, but a much lower top speed... Honestly, I'm erring toward the 70 RPM... Any vessel that comes into the atmosphere at a speed that requires more than 5.1 seconds to go from 10000 km to 0 km... Just... isn't. Not for the full duration of those seconds anyway... Poof! Anyway, the motors are cheap. $5.22 + $5.79 shipping... I just have to deal with Chinese shipping again, and that's a nightmare and a half that I'd rather skip. Sadly, I can't find the motor stocked in the US, so shipping delays, here I come! On a positive note, I see no reason the old 280 RPM motor can't be used with the ∆V Carriage Meter

Man, that's a tough day you had. I don't think you should take away a feeling of unworthiness though. You know the person that you are. I think a better lesson to take home is to not let pride rule you. A drunkardly snob's opinion shouldn't be the thing to take over your life. If anything, learn from this that it's best simply to not feed the trolls. People like that crave attention, and they crave the feeling of holding power or superiority over others. When you ignore them, you deny them the satisfaction they seek. They might try to turn the heat up a bit, to try to ruffle your feathers, but hold strong. If you want to have the satisfaction of pride... let yourself revel in the pride of not being phased by what is basically, a bully, and let them whimper off to go bother someone else when they become bored of your resolve. The moment you realize you can take far more satisfaction in frustrating the bully than trying to out argue them, you'll find you tend to come out better in situations like this one. It can be hard, but resist that first temptation to let pride lead you deeper into a bad situation, and instead, reward that pride with the satisfaction of simply denying your adversary any satisfaction. Beat them by boring them. I hope your situation settles down for you. As for my own issues, I had some great ideas for different ways to do displays for my Kerbal Instrument Panel. I've got a bunch of these awesome smart LED displays that I salvaged from the video effects panel that I also salvaged my T-Bar fader (my throttle lever) and my DSKY buttons from. Thing is, these parts are all the smallest size character option, a measly 3.8mm tall character. When planning my ∆V meter, I realized I wanted a bigger display for the actual ∆V readout, and I could use the smaller display for the time readout. When I saw a surplus store selling a larger 5mm character version of these, I jumped at the sale and bought two pieces. Both size displays are green LED dot matrix displays with a built in decoder chip. All you do is send data to the display, what symbol you wanna show, and what position to put it in, and it handles controlling all the individual LEDs to create the symbol in the right spot. Anyway, I decided that I wanted some distinctiveness from the DSKY for my Velocity Readout, and for my Auxiliary Data Readout. Going with dot matrix displays instead of segment displays is definitely a nice option to differentiate them. I don't want the Velocity Meter or the Aux Readout to just look like a "DSKY MINY"... I want it to have a distinct look. So, regarding the two displays I actually bought... What I received was not the standard DLG 2416... I got a DLG 2416-20 Z... At least I'm assuming those extra symbols mean something relevant, cause they don't quite match up to what I expected to receive. I measured the size of the LED pixels with my caliper, and it's definitely 7mm, not the 5mm as described by the datasheet! 7mm displays on these smart LEDs are rare! For this style display, those are absolutely huge! Apparently, these are not a run of the mill DLG 2416! I also can't find ANY reference to a -20 Z part anywhere. Maybe these are mislabeled DLG 3416s, which are 7mm parts? Who knows. Anyway, here's my negative thing... I only bought two... I needed 4 digits minimum for the ∆V meter, and hoped I could fit 6, even if it meant hiding a part of the display for the ∆V meter. That's all I bought it for, and so I only ever bought just the two pieces. Of course, this was a good long while ago, back in 2016. Now I'm looking at my Velocity Readout and Auxiliary Data Readouts, wishing I'd have bought 6 or 8 more of these unusual large displays. The only 7mm character displays that I can actually find are $53 for an 8 digit unit, or $47 for a pair of 4 digit units! YIKES!!! I'd want either 3 or 4 of either the eight digit units or pairs of the 4 digit ones! (it would all depend on whether I have room for either two or three lines of displays for the Aux Data Readout). There's just absolutely no way I can justify that price though! Definitely not just to get an extra few mm worth of character height, or to stick with green LEDs. Here's the thing... I already have displays that would work perfectly fine, as is... Only smaller, and some less green. I already have three 5mm yellow 8 digit smart LED displays, and I've had 'em for so long, I can't even remember where I even got 'em! I could maybe justify going with the 5mm yellow for the data readouts, and the 3.8mm green for unit readout. The dual color setup might be interesting enough to make up for it not being all done in the Kerbal color... I did find some slightly larger than 7mm (almost 8mm) single digit displays that would be great for the Velocity Readout, but they are not smart displays. It'd cost $22 in single digit LED parts, and then $35 in control chips... even not counting having circuit boards made. Ultimately, it ends up being more expensive than the already simple 8 digit smart LED solution... Which is itself spendy... I'm just frustrated that I accidentally stumbled on an absolute gem four years ago, and only bought two of 'em... I could have got more back then, when they were readily available, but they are gone now... Not even an ebay completed listings search shows any of the relevant 7mm part numbers, much less the current sales. Even if I had just ONE more, I could settle on only the Velocity Readout and ∆V meters having the 7mm green displays, and then just use the yellow 5mm displays on the Aux Data Readout. As it is, I'm stuck with new part prices... Even with that particular compromise, I'd still have to buy at least one. $24 isn't actually a bad a price at all, when it's just the one piece... But let's be real... It's not one piece that I really want... It's seven of them... Getting just the one is simply me settling on the compromise solution.

I've cut the three plates. Next step is to drill the holes for the struts and the guts. Basically, the next step has to be perfect. I don't want any bits walking on me (that's where the drill bit flexes and drifts off to one side as it starts drilling out the hole). For that reason, I'm thinking that maybe I should start off with two opposing corner holes, and screw all three plates down to a block, throw that block in my mill vise, and actually use the correct size endmills to precisely drill out the remainder of the holes. That, or I could just hand drill the plates in the block... Still accomplishes alignment. My mill is only slightly a mess right now. I need to move a bunch of things out of my closet machine shop and into my storage room, so I can actually get to my mill again. One of the critical steps, and the reason I went to the hardware store the other day, is that many of the holes need to be counter sunk. I bought a pack of tapered head screws. I'll drill the holes, then use a larger bit to drill a cone shaped recess for the screw head. I need to do this for the screw holes inside the tape meter, as well as the screw holes that are butted up against the navball. The middle plate will sit flush against the side of the navball housing, and there's not much clearance inside the tape meter, and the LAST thing I want, is for the head of a screw to snag the tape, EVER! It should be fun, cause the right plate will attach to the back side of the tape meter using angle brackets... and if you look closely, there's not a lot of space in there. It may be necessary for me to counter sink those holes using a dremel grinding wheel and come in at it from an angle. It's gonna be awkward, but more than doable. A few final details regarding assembly... The tape drive motor will sit beneath the navball. The sensor wheel will sit beside the navball, and the sensor itself will stick out past the back of the analog edgewise meters. I've double checked that there would be clearance. I would like to try to find some thin teflon sheet washers to put on the bushings of the tape meter. I had for a long time assumed it had ball bearings, but it just uses a brass bushing. I want a washer and possibly a teflon washer to make the sprocket shaft spin nice and smooth. I don't want side to side play, as that might introduce a rattle, and if I make it too tight, I get slight binding. Barring a teflon washer, a felt washer would also absorb any rattle from side to side play. I may pick up some thick grease to pack the bushing too... We'll see. I don't want light oil to seep out and get on the tape. That tape is old, and has held up well... I'd not like to add random chemicals to it and see how it handles it, not even oil or grease. On another side note, regarding tape meters in general, I saw that you can now buy 35mm film leader in quantities far less than the 1000 yard (almost 1000 meter) spools... $25-40 is a far cry from the $100-200 for the big spools. Film leader could be very useful for creating home made tape meters, so just a thought for others who might want to try something like this. The nice thing with film leader, is you can spool as much as you want, so in theory, you could have a much longer tape meter than I have. Just some random thoughts... Now, thinking about the Velocity Readout and the ∆V Carriage Meter... And maybe even the Auxiliary Data Readouts... The ∆V meter is already going to be using some unique "smart" displays as it's readout. I have a large number of salvaged Siemens DLG 1414 displays, and I purchased a pair of Osram DLG 2416-20 displays. Both are from the same product series, green variants in two different character sizes of quad 5x7 dot matrix alphanumeric smart displays. They are different manufacturers simply cause there are multiple part suppliers for the same series of part numbers. These displays are not cheap. New, the 1414 displays are about $20 a piece. I salvaged them from the video effects panel that I also salvaged my DSKY buttons and the T-Bar fader I plan to use as my throttle lever, so that was quite the deal! the pair of 2416-20 displays were bought from a surplus supplier that had them on sale... And I'm regretting not getting more of them now... I have no idea where I got the HP HDSP-2531. That's a yellow 8 character 5x7 dot matrix smart display. I've had those parts for probably a decade and a half??? On Digikey, that's a $42 part. I really need to power them up some time and test to see if they even work. They are NOS, but with how old they are (1997) it appears that either the clear plastic has shrunk, or the grey epoxy on the bottom has expanded. Either way, it's caused some cracking of the sides of the clear plastic. I'm hoping that is purely cosmetic, and hasn't affected functionality. Anyway, I was reading some older posts today, trying to find earlier mentions of the two green smart displays, and came across a mention about the Apollo's system of driving their navball. I found this mention of the Apollo's ORDEAL system: "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!". I've always considered the ORDEAL unit as my inspiration for the Auxiliary Readout Display, in that it was intended to "add on additional data readouts". Now, I do want it integrated into the panel, not just be some strap on box, however, I do realize that the smart displays I have could indeed give it a sufficiently unique look, so as to differentiate them from the DSKY. This is where I kick myself though, for not getting more of the DLG 2416-20 displays... I've measured the LED die spacing, and that's a 7mm tall character display. The DLG 2416 is listed everywhere as a 5mm tall character display, but I can't find active part number references to the 2416-20 anywhere. I think the -20 is a variant with larger characters, and they have long since sold out from the surplus part supplier I originally acquired them from. Seriously kicking myself... I looked online, and the largest display available in this style, in green, that produces a 7mm tall character, costs a crazy $52 each, and has a 24 week backorder. I can't afford that price right now, no way! I need a minimum of 3 of them, maybe 4, if I can fit 3 rows on the Aux Readout! That's why I'm considering settling on the yellow 5mm tall displays that I already have. The smaller size (compared to the LED displays I used int he DSKY) means I might be able to fit three rows instead of just two, and I'll have room for buttons on the side. I can use my smaller DLG 1414 displays to show units. Maybe mixing yellow data with a green unit would look interesting??? I dunno. I really, REALLY wanted to have the larger 7mm tall characters for the Velocity Readout. The two DLG 2416-20 displays would be perfect for that, but the problem is my limited quantity... I already am committed to using one of them for the ∆V Meter. Had I bought 3 or 4 instead of just the two, I'd be in a different boat. I could deal with Aux data being only a 5mm character, if the Velocity and ∆V were 7mm. Two pieces is just not enough though, and I can't find ANY more of the DLG 2416-20 part anywhere! The only option for a 7mm character is that backordered $52 part... Ugh... The only other alternative for that style display in a 7mm tall character is to use row-collumn driven dot matrix LED displays, which will require me to still add a controller, I'd need 47 I/O lines to multiplex, or I'd need to double multiplex (run 5 columns through a 1 of 8 decoder, which would require a bunch of logic to switch between 8 banks of 5, or I need to source controller chips, and in all of this, I have to code the character generation too. That's what I LOVE about the smart displays... You just send the ASCII code for a character, and the position you want it displayed, and that's it! They're simple! By the time I add decoders to drive it... The LEDs would cost $22... A pair of MAX6952 quad 5x7 display smart controller chips would cost $35 for the pair, I need to add boards too... By that point, it's already a few bucks over the $52 smart display... It's not even worth it anymore to mess with anything else. Even the DSKY displays are using smart controller chips to drive the 7-segment displays, and the units displays are all done by my diode ROMs. All the decoding is automatic there too. I still want all those 3.8mm, 5mm, and the rare 7mm displays to be a bit more prominent though, and I found the simplest solution... A bar magnifier. These days, you see 'em used as reading aides, but back when these smaller LED displays were normal, it was common to have bubble lens or bar lens magnifiers over the LED to magnify it. I love that retro look, and I think I'll mimic it here too. Still, I'd rather magnify a 7mm tall character into a 10.5mm character, than a 5mm into a 7.5mm character, particularly for the Velocity readout. Man, I am SO kicking myself for not getting more of those DLG 2416-20 displays... Those pushbuttons have such a satisfying click. Bought 'em a decade and a half ago for another project that never happened, and I've wanted to use 'em for ages. I was originally gonna use 'em for my DSKY keypad, till I repurposed the video effects board buttons for a more authentic look. For the Aux Readout Panel, these would probably be perfect, as I want that panel to not look like DSKY 2: The Samening. I do like the LEDs too... Don't even know what I'll use the LEDs to show. Might just tie 'em to button presses. Who knows. I got other colors too. Pretty much picked Digikey and the surplus store Axeman clean of every available variety of these pushbuttons, back in 2006.

Part of "over" is the general population gaining herd immunity, either through having caught the bug, or having taken the vaccine. It'll still exist, and it'll still keep mutating into novel ways to give us the coof, but as the general population starts carrying the antibodies, it'd be harder for it to spread unchecked, and it'll be thwarted by people who have immunity, or at least a partial immunity, who shouldn't be as affected. It's a matter of time really. Over isn't really "over"... It's just getting over the uncontrolled, rampant spread through a population with absolutely no resistance.

I think everyone, particularly those in charge, and those too self absorbed to put in any effort do their part and think about others, may have forgotten (or never even understood) what "flatten the curve" meant. Sadly, I see people like my brother digging his heels in on not believing there's any problem at all, and on the other end of the spectrum, people wanting to freeze the world in it's tracks. Neither is reasonable, nor sustainable. Flattening the curve was never intended to stop Covid, nor was it going to protect everyone. Most people are going to catch it at some point in time. How many of us avoid the flu, or the common cold? You will catch Covid. I will catch Covid. This is an inevitability. Flattening the curve was always meant as an effort to reduce how many of us all catch it at the same time, to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Back then, we didn't have a good understanding of it's dangers, we didn't have a good grasp on the percentages yet, and there was most decidedly a shortage of PPE. In March, April, and May, we were uncertain. Today, we have a much better understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which Covid infects a person. We understand the cardiovascular nature of the disease. We understand that a significant majority of people will have minor symptoms. We understand that it is most dangerous to those who have already compromised immune, respiratory, or cardiovascular systems. We no longer have a serious PPE shortage like we did at the start of this, and the majority of people are using PPE in public places, as well as practicing better hygiene (THIS... It can not be stressed enough, that good hygiene is critical in slowing this!)... and of course, there have been very recent vaccine developments. All those factors combined are more than enough reason to not cripple the economy any further. The best thing to do would be to double down on good hygiene and use of PPE in public spaces. Practice the whole social distancing thing, You know, common sense, and a basic level of due diligence. That's enough to keep things reasonably in check. Now if only portions of the population would stop being unreasonable... Like my brother... On another note, I recently experienced an "aura" for the first time in my life. I didn't get the debilitating headache like a buddy of mine does when he gets a migraine. I seemed to have skipped all that. I did experience what he called "postdrome" though... a minor tension headache, focused in my neck, combined with a general feeling of mental fatigue, and "jello body", as I called it. It was not pleasant, and laying down made it less pleasant. I didn't sleep at all the following night. This led to a series of insomniac episodes that usually stemmed from finally crashing in the afternoon, then finding myself unable to sleep when I actually wanted to go to bed. This has actually been going on for nearly a week, and it sucks. I just wanna sleep at normal times! It's aggravating, and a miserable state to be in. I want to get things done, but find myself without the energy to do them. I got a few hours sleep in the mid afternoon yesterday, but failed to get any sleep last night. I am intent on fixing this, so I'm going out to run some errands, and I'm gonna try and cut a few metal bits and bobs for my Kerbal Instrument panel, and then I'm gonna try and get to bed, maybe around 10pm... Earlier than my normal times, but I need to adjust things anyway. I'm hoping this works out.

Minor update. I may try a three layer plate sandwich with the support bearing in the above configuration. The big difference, is it just allows the sensor belt and pulley to sit completely beside the Navball, as opposed to needing to sit behind. Not a big change, and it's not a certain change, but I kinda like it. I need to order/pick up more spacers. I should be able to go down to the hardware store or Fastenal to find them. Shouldn't have any need to order those. If it works out, I'll likely need to cut down the support shaft on the sensor wheel. I am also going absolutely crazy trying to figure out what thing I clearly have, that I clearly can't remember what it was, or where I clearly stashed it, that I based that LED display idea from my last post on.

I long had suspected it would be necessary, and it's not really a real problem... But my Kerbal Instrument Panel that I'm building... I test fitted a few components and came to realize that I will 100% need a "pan" underneath the unit. Basically, some parts are simply gonna stick out the bottom, so I gotta cut a hole in the bottom plate and screw a pan onto the the panel to cover up the hole. It just means it won't be symmetrical, or sit flat when not mounted into my desk. In all likelihood, given the fact that such an item will already have a "pan shape" with no sharp corners, I will likely find some literal old cooking pan at a thrift shop or a garage sale and screw it onto the bottom to serve as my pan... Part found lying by the side of the road... Also, my Windows tablet refuses to update. It's infuriating!

Not too much of a hijack... I link that on my very first post of this thread! I felt pretty certain my controller was going to need a pan to fit everything... Yeah, that's definitely right. I did some fitting, and yeah, the FDAI definitely protrudes below the bottom, by the tiniest amount. the tape meter protrudes even further. That's no big deal. Like I said. I just need a pan. I might actually use a pan... As in a cooking pan. Already the right shape, no sharp corners... just drill a few holes, tap, and screw in with a few screws! If not that, then I'll find some bit of pre-shaped metal to cover the hole that will need to be in the bottom panel for everything to fit properly. It does mean that if I want the unit to be easily pulled out of it's mount in my desk and used in a portable manner, then I'll likely need to have stands that can be threaded onto the bottom, cause a pan will unfortunately make it not level. There is simply no avoiding that, unfortunately. This brings me to my next dimensional discovery... I apparently don't have that much space between the instrument panel trim and the trim of the FDAI as I remembered. The old .39 inch Chinese LED 7-segment display modules would have fit that gap, but the replacement modules I got will most definitely not fit the gap. Furthermore, my 14 segment LEDs are taller yet, and definitely don't fit between the outer trim and the FDAI trim! Now, they do fit... but I'd literally be cutting into the trim of the housing for them to pass through, and then there's the issue of them being "shaded" by being right up under the overhang of the housing. That, I definitely don't like... I think I have a simple solution to the problem, that also creates something visually interesting... The gap above is what I have to work with. Not much space, if limiting myself to the gap between the FDAI trim and the housing trim, but it I use the whole space between the FDAI's trim and the main housing, It's a comfortable space, but I don't want the housing overhanging it. Simple solution, is to create a fully external module that bolts onto the outside of the panel, between the overhang of the housing and the FDAI trim. There's over half an inch (over 1 cm) of overhang, giving me plenty of thickness to work with. This gives me extra room to work with the LED displays, without cutting into the housing trim, and without cutting into the front panel too significantly. There only needs to be four tapped holes for the mounting screws, and one hole or slot for wires to pass through. Because it would be mounted outside the panel, it won't be situated so far behind the overhang. That will mean it's view should remain unobstructed. I don't know what I'd make the display housing from. Plastic would be super easy to machine, and I can paint it. Aluminum would be more tedious to machine, but it would certainly look really good though. I'm not sure it would really matter though... I kinda feel like painting it green.

Long story short... Ebay. I found my unit on ebay, and I think I spent about 4 months searching, before one popped up that was suitable and fell in my budget. It wasn't cheap. It cost me a few hundred dollars, and I have no guarantee it's even functional, though the seller claimed it was removed from a working Israeli P-4 Phantom flight simulator. Since it's easier to copy and paste, here's what I typed on the Simpit repository a few years ago: So, 3 axis navballs are uncommon, and very expensive. Anything that is certified as a flyable part is pretty much going to cost over a grand, and sometimes a few grand. What you want to look for are the "retired" units. Ones that have had a sufficient number of flight hours on them, and are either not certified for flight, or marked for simulator use. Those tend to remain under a thousand dollars, and can sometimes be found for $150-300-ish. They might not come with a connector, but with enough searching you can almost always find the matching connector, and for cheap. Always try to get one that includes the electronics package. Your life will be miserable trying to figure out how to make it work without it. it IS possible, but I don't recommend it. Chances of finding a lone electronics unit are so much worse than even finding the navball in the first place! If you live near an aviation scrapyard, you might be able to purchase scrap there. Contact the proprietor and see if they have salvaged components for sale. When buying on ebay, BE VERY CAUTIOUS that you don't buy a mechanical navball or a 2 axis electronic unit. Mechanical navballs have a simple power supply connector or a vacuum line hose connector on the back. the vacuum line version uses air flow to spin a gyroscope, and the electric one uses a simple electric motor (usually only 2 or 3 wires) to spin a gyro. These are mechanical navballs, and work by physically tilting the whole unit agains the horizon. There are no electronic controls, usually the only electronics are the lights to light it up, and the motor, if it isn't the air driven variety. 99% of what you see on ebay, and 99.999999% of any with a blue/brown design (like KSP uses), is going to be one of these. You DO NOT WANT this! It is unusable for this application. In the off chance that you are willing to settle with a flight style 2 axis navball, then you can theoretically purchase a synchro driven (remote gyro) 2 axis model, and have a separate display for heading. You can purchase a separate heading instrument, and control it, or make a heading instrument using any motorized mechanism you can continuously rotate 360°, to spin a degrees dial past a fixed heading pointer (most comfortable for viewing) or spin a pointer over a fixed degrees scale (this is easy to make, but less intuitive to read). You could optionally also have a toggle option to swap axes between the heading instrument and one or the other axes of the navball. This would allow you to, say, set roll to the heading instrument, and then read pitch and yaw on the navball, even though normal settings would have pitch and roll on the nav ball, and yaw on the heading instrument... If that makes sense. You can do a more "budget navball" by doing 2 axis + heading, rather than going all out for a 3 axis like I did. If you want a genuine 3 axis navball, you are pretty much not looking at commercial aircraft instruments anymore. 99% of commercial aircraft will use a 2 axis pitch and roll navball, combined with a separate heading instrument, since heading by itself is a crucial navigation element for commercial flight. You need to look at things more suited to old fighter jets, simulators, etc. That's what I did. I just watched ebay for a few months, till I found the right part. The way you an typically tell the difference between a 2 axis and a 3 axis ball, is a 2 axis ball will always follow a centered scale. That scale can tilt up and down and rotate on the center of the scale, but the scale can never turn left or right off that centered scale. A 3 axis ball will always have globe like point or line grid that can not only tilt and rotate, but turn as well. I have seen few 2 axis balls that really looked suspiciously like a 3 axis ball, but wasn't. I also can't stress enough, anything with a small 2-6 pin electrical connector or a fitting for a hose is going to be a mechanical navball. Those are useless. There are alternatives, if you want to do something simpler. One user on the forums has created a virtual navball, using some sort of controller and a small color LCD. This is a much cheaper way to get a navball. Saitek, and other companies also create some LCD based flight instruments, primarily aimed at flight sim applications. I do not know if there is an open source means to communicate with these or not, and they can be spendy, but usually cheaper than going with real hardware.

Since my cat passed away in May, I too have experienced this feeling many times. I hear a creak, a noise, a scratch... and for a brief moment, I think of her... Then I remember that she's gone. I'll step into a room and it just feels incredibly empty. The thing that lets me get past it is remembering the joyful times that I had when she was with me. My cat loved belly rubs, and I can still remember that joy. I know that she had a good life, because she appreciated the contact as much as I did. I'll alway still miss her though.

So you're saying I need extinguisher ports in my instrument panel, cause my pulley wheel is on fire?

They got back to me same day. I was told it's already in their plans to make the switches individually purchasable in the future. I think they wanted to promote the SCE to Aux switch clusters first. they said they'd check up on it next week and try to get me a price. I asked them about numbers for 20 pieces and 30 pieces. Haven't determined how many units I'll end up needing in the long run, as I want to have some switches to switch on different power supplies for my unit. I need a 24 volt supply and a 120 volt 400Hz AC supply for my navball and one of my meters, and also want to integrate a room lighting controler and a port to power my soldering iron into the panel as well... I know... Odd applications, but why not.

An interesting aside... I spent so much time measuring and planning and getting every detail just perfect in the design stage, that I have been able to assemble all of this without the need to actually bring out any measuring tools yet! Oddly enough, the design is intrinsically engineered for each step to support a degree of variability, so that things just sorta fit into place. Align it and tighten it. Just thought that was interesting. Obviously, measuring will be an absolute necessity once I begin to make the two plates. I need everything to line up perfectly, and for all the shafts to be perfectly perpendicular to the pair of parallel plates. Just thought that was an interesting aspect to the way I picked all these parts, and how they've all come together. Now, to continue with the sensor wheel assembly: I've shown the absolute position hall sensor before, but here you see it with the flange adapter. As mentioned in earlier posts, the input shaft of the tape meter makes 6 turns to represent one full cycle of the tape. We need a 6:1 ratio between the tape drive and the sensor. The large pulley was only available in larger ID openings, too large for the 6mm sensor shaft. I got a 6mm to 10mm flange adapter, but the set screws stick out, and it was necessary to grind them down to sit flush with the OD. Since the sensor shaft isn't long enough to pass all the way through the large pulley, and since the large pulley, is well... large, we want to support it. I used a second flange adapter, and more of the 6mm steel tube to create an extended shaft. I used my center punch to mark the flange holes. I then drilled out those holes. Yet to be done: I still need to tap those holes, and get appropriately sized screws to secure the flange to the pulley wheel. Here we can see the fit. Good news, it fits! And yet another bearing block will be used to support the other end of the sensor pulley. This is just to help take the strain off the sensor itself. Finally, we see a rough alignment check. The distances are not representative of the final configuration (the sensor wheel will be set far back). The tape meter itself also has it's pulley wheel mounted. You can see the general alignment of where the belts will go. The right plate will extend to align with the front of the tape meter, while the left plate will only reach the rear of the tape meter. I will cut a custom length set of spacers to align the right plate so it mounts the correct distance from the tape meter housing. The left plate will mount to a 90° bracket, that will in turn mount to the rear of the tape meter. Mounting against two different axes should keep it rigid. Now, for things left to do... I need to get screws and other hardware, as well as fresh Loctite. My old loctite turned from blue to brown... The motor, bearing blocks, none of that came with mounting screws... Of course... The sensor has screws for it's adjustment plate only. I also need to find suitable material to use for the plates. Probably go with 1/16 inch aluminum, but I also considered PCB material too. I need to tap a few holes, based on the screws I end up using, hence why I haven't tapped anything yet. Every screw will get Loctite too. I would VERY MUCH like to put that large pulley wheel on a lathe and take out a large portion of it's mass. It does not need to be so heavy duty. If I can cut it down to be mostly hollow, kinda like a car's rims, with just a thin plate at it's core, then there will be far less mass for the motor to fight against. That's about it for now. I have to catch up on work, so I'm gonna do that before I work on the plates. I'm actually looking at a lot more free time, in the short term... Work is slowing down, due to the primary product I've been making likely not being re-ordered. The other product is kind in limbo too, as we don't even know if it'll get reordered or not. I'll certainly have to start looking for a second job to keep up my finances. It does set me up for potentially having a little bit of free time between a week or two from now, and whenever I do find more work. Maybe I'll even find the time to build a stamping jig, so I can ink the Radar Altimeter numbers onto the tape. Would be nice to get that out of the way.