stibbons

So this build with the 0.17.3 packet format seems to work for my hardware on OS X. https://github.com/phardy/KSPSerialIO/releases/tag/v0.17.3-1 I had to drop the serial baud rate to 57600, but that might just be because my Mac Air grinds hard running the game. If anybody else has some time to test this release it would be appreciated.

I've only done plugin hacking. This days I do all of that development work on OSX, and test on OSX and Windows.

KSP is saying there's no display found because you haven't yet programmed your arduino to talk to it. And you end up compiling all of the files in the demo folder to a single binary that gets uploaded. Here's how I do it: Download the KSPIODemo12.zip file. Extract it, which will create a folder named KSPIODemo12. Move the KSPIODemo12 folder to your Arduino sketchbook folder. Check the preferences in the Arduino IDE to find out where this is. If the Arduino IDE is currently running, restart it so it will reread the sketchbook folder. Go to File -> Sketchbook and select KSPIODemo12. This should open a new window, with all of the files contained in the folder open in different tabs. If you hit the upload button in this window (it won't matter which tab is showing when you do so), the sketch will compile and upload. You should be good to go after that.

There's been some discussion on the original plugin thread over the last few pages about how to utilise the last 60 or so bytes available in the data packet. Velocity vectors like prograde, normal and radial are popular options, don't recall if the target vector has been mentioned. Probably best to chime in there. And the plugin already contains some code borrowed from Mechjeb. I imagine the fastest way to do the heavy lifting for calculating vectors will be to do that again m

I didn't know that. Cool. I'm just merging HEAD from zitronen's repository, so if a fix has been committed I've got it.

The latest cross platform build is forked from 0.17.1. It should have everything from the VesselData packet except the last three fields, MaxOverHeat, MachNumber and IAS. The ControlPacket is unchanged. The plugin has been providing attitude data for a while (roll, pitch, yaw). But there hasn't yet been too much progress getting any of the velocity vectors in to a usable state except for admitting that it's pretty hard.

For my annunciator panel I'm planning on printing the labels on plain white paper, and laying that over the top of a grid of LEDs with a sheet of clear transparency film on top.

With a silent S.

Another minor update without any pretty pictures. Random bits of electronics hardware are being delivered (to my office, to the bemusement of coworkers), and I've picked up the other stuff I need to mount and wire everything in the enclosure. I'm hoping to be able to get a fair bit of the assembly done over the weekend. I am dipping back in to KSP plugin hacking though. The original KSPSerialIO mod uses some Windows-only interfaces, but my development machine is a Mac laptop. So I've been putting some effort in to updating marzubus' cross-platform fork, which has drifted behind the main release a little bit. My code builds and gets as far as attempting to scan serial ports, but doesn't detect a display. Not sure yet if I've messed up the plugin or my arduino code, but it's getting a little bit confusing.

You can embed an album like this: [imgur]yA5RO[/imgur]

Hey, nice work! That first LED turning on is as much a thrill as the first orbit.

Astronomer's is a very memory-intensive mod, and it sounds like you're hitting the memory limit. Did you install one of the Active Texture Management mods as well?

Keeping an eye on this thread about precision mode could be useful.

Merging the current plugin code to marzubus' branch was indeed easy. The code I have now looks like it's OK and builds cleanly on my machine, but I'll need some more time to test it properly. If you want to try it now you can check out and compile my branch of the merged code. Or just keep an eye on my pull request at https://github.com/unixunion/KSPSerialIO/pull/1

Yeah, no worries. I don't think you'll get PCBs manufactured down under for a reasonable price, especially small run stuff. There's only one local prototype PCB service that I know of, Breadboard Killer. Like most places they batch orders together in to large panels and have them fabricated in Asia. Their prices are reasonable, I've heard positive reviews about them, and the slightly faster shipping turnaround seems worthwhile. But their website was offline when I wanted to order my boards. I ended up using OSH Park. Very easy to use, if you're designing boards in Eagle you don't need to generate Gerbers, just upload the .brd file. Ordered 25th June, arrived 17th July. Got six copies of the display board and three of the controller (most of these places require multiples, OSH only lets you order lots of three). Came to around $125US, and standard shipping is free worldwide. Really happy with the quality of the boards, and you won't find that funky purple colour anywhere else. I'd definitely order from them again, but I do want to try Breadboard Killer, support the local business and all that.

To rhyme with "wraith".

It should run OK, but the last time I checked on github it was one or two releases behind, so won't work properly with arduino code written for zitronen's current release. I use a Mac laptop for my development work, so will need this soon. If marzubus isn't around to update it in the next couple of weeks I'll be running my own merged fork for a little while, that I'd be happy to share.

Thanks. I guess I haven't been advertising it much because there's still so much to be done. I did finally get around to updating the first post though, so I guess that's something.

Been pretty busy on this project over the weekend, but also hit lots of annoying little setbacks. Started by assembling the display controller. This thing will drive four display panels, with a separate Arduino Pro Micro, three MAX7219 ICs and a multiplexer to read button input. The fit was a little tighter than expected. You can just see where I had to carve the corner off one of those IDC connectors to make room for the red arduino board. Unfortunately, hooking it up resulted in a lot of magic smoke escaping. I'd managed to mount the surface-mount multiplexer the wrong way around, resulting in feeding current through it the wrong way and shorting it out. Managed to desolder it again, but then destroyed my only spare trying to get it on. So now I have a board with no multiplexer, one pad ripped up in the mayhem, and some new chips in the mail. :/ Then I got on with painting the enclosure. First a couple of coats of primer. Both inside and out - I want the interior a nice bright white because I intend to fill it with lights for backlight on the panels. I've put two coats of metallic paint on so far. Will probably sand it off and add another coat to try to smooth out the top, which has collected a couple of drips and patchy bits. Some of the painting was done outside, but it's winter and cold and dark by the time I get home from work, so have brought it in to a corner of the lounge room. So far without accidentally painting the floor or the cat. Finally I spent a lot of time this evening trying to create button caps for the little illuminated tac switches below the seven segment displays. I had originally planned on 3d-printing these with clear ABS, and went through a lot of experimenting with different designs for the very tight space. Several failed attempts and I've finally realised that that approach just will not work. It requires a lot more fine detail than I'm going to get out of any printer I have easy access to. I've got another idea for dealing with those, but it's work for another night. (oh, and I'll start uploading these images to imgur instead of trying to hotlink twitter images)

The USI Exploration Pack includes, among other things, a nice little rotating safety light. It's the only other light I know of.

* Buy one of these. * Map it to the space bar. (I don't know how to do this) * ??? * Profit!

The VesselData packet as described on the first page is from the C# plugin code - those integers are indeed 32 bits. The arduino side uses longs to store those. (if c# supported fixed-width data types I'd say just switch to those on both sides and be done, but it doesn't look like it does. )

The printed circuit boards I had made for the displays and the display controller arrived. They're pretty amazing. I'm still waiting on some of the components, but hope to finish soldering them up before next weekend. Test-mounting components finally brought home the fact that s**t's getting real on these displays. A couple of weeks after I ordered the PCBs I realised there was a pretty bad error in the layout. Can you spot it? I think I can correct for it in assembly. But I have four of these displays to do it for. Lots of fudging.

Oh wow, that master alarm is perfect. My annunciator panel is still half-built, and I may end up borrowing your ideas. I don't recall how your LCD panel is hooked up, but driving it from an arduino is always going to be a strain. Did you end up drawing boxes over the previous text before writing new values? Would that be faster if instead you write a string of spaces over the top of the previous string?