NeoMorph

Just get an Arduino Mega 2560.... Has plenty of ports (54 Input/Output).

I have the same thing... Do you have this strange event on going to launchpad where it is like something "flicks" the whole rocket and then it settles down... but in that time the boosters fall off? Sometimes reverting to launch doesn't cause the flick and the boosters stay on.

Just looked through the SpaceX packs (I was using both the HD versions) and for the life of me, I cannot find any plugins there that would affect what was going on. I think I might go through and reinstall the other mods I have because I liked having Orion, Dragon and Soyuz craft visiting my space station... It was just weird that the game started going nuts when I approached the station with the Dragons.

Well since I removed the SpaceX pack I haven't seen it happen again. Weird... One thing I did note when it went pear shaped again (before I removed the pack)... I couldn't return to the Space Center or even quicksave. I had to kill the whole game to get control back and the game was running like a dog with one leg. Unfortunately, I must have used something from the SpaceX pack on my nice big space station... and of course removing the pack trashed the WHOLE space station. Grrrr.

Weird glitch for you! Has anyone had a message that says something like "KJR balancing physics load" pop up in the top right hand corner of the screen while moving into dock, only to find that the station you was about to dock to suddenly vanishes and when you go into map view it's now on the other side of the planet? It's happened to me twice in the last couple of days. Both times it was when I was playing with the LT SpaceX Dragon2 and Dragon Explorer. Edit: Arrrggh... Just had it happen again( but slightly different)... I move in close to the station and then the message appears and then suddenly the target relative velocity starts to climb dramatically, followed by lag by the bucketload. Something about the Laztek Dragon and KJR causes this to happen EVERY time I get near to my space station. Doesn't seem to happen when I am flying my Bobcat Soyuz and Orion rockets... so it must be something wrong with the Dragon. Probably the Dragon and the Kraken hate each other.

I can see how you thought that regarding my query... but I did say that I was after figuring out how to check before the fuel in the tank ran out though. Some of the stuff I am putting together means working with multiple computer languages and with all the ones already in my head it gets a bit crowded and confusing. From KSP to SQL to Arduino to VB to PIC programming it gets frustrating at the best of times so if I came off trying to teach granny to suck eggs it wasn't intentional.

As I don't play KSP through Steam I dunno how many hours I've played but I've played about 13 hours so far today alone due to a weird bug with my relative velocity indicator (I can be right next to the other ship and it says there is nearly 2k difference in speed). Don't you just hate bugs due to mods... I've been ripping out mods and checking, putting them back and then ripping out others to see if it makes any difference... and the hours just fly by.

Actually you can't do it with SRBs because like fireworks, once you like the blue touch paper they are gonna go until they burn out (hence why you can't throttle SRB's down). I like the idea of the fuel test loop though... gonna try that in a minute. Nice one.

I'm trying to make a program to handle the things that MechJeb cannot. Eventually I want to make the controls external to the game (ie hardware switches and displays) so being able to trigger sets of things like what happens in RL rockets can be done in my simulator. Making MJ and kOS handle all eventualities can be harder than flying it all yourself. Eventually the system will be kOS, Mechjeb and Telemachus that will all work together. I do all my launches automatically and then do rendezvous and docking manually using things like the alignment guide and the Lazor docking cam. But it was getting the shrouds to peel off before the tanks were empty (ie before the auto stage) was what was bugging me. I did figure out the fuel guestimate method but it varies. I just will have to wait until the throttle reading option in the next update I guess. Love tinkering with the programs through... Made a really nice booboo when a loop didn't break the way I expected and I ended up staging the whole of the rocket in 3 seconds. You should have seen Jeb's face heh.

Here is a simple query... How the heck do you check to see if the engines have cut out? I'm trying to figure out when the throttle cuts out to the coast to orbit section so I can dump things like shrouds so they fall back to Kerbin when the craft is in a suborbital path instead of staying in orbit if you eject them when you reach full orbit.

I love Danny's vids even though there is no commentary other than the text onscreen. I also love the fact that he can break the game in soooooo many ways heh.

... rubbing my backside because it has become numb from sitting at the PC for hours on end.

There are a LOT of people these days that misread words or use them in the wrong context. The one that bothers me no end is something like "The bomb landed amongst the ten thousand and decimated them, leaving only a few people standing." At first look it appears fine... until you realise that decimated IS NOT THE SAME AS DEVASTATED. Decimated means killing 1 in 10 so if that bomb decimated the 10,000 there would be 9000 left. But I still read decimated a lot of the time where the correct word is devastated. So yeah, when I see people thinking Astrology is a science I want to throw a dictionary at them lol.

This is what I am hoping for... servers we can set up to run locally or internet wide... There could then have community servers that could handle friends and Twitch for those who can't log on (ie when the server is full). So many possibilities.

There is a hell of a lot of air spilling out the edges... It is one reason most rounds have a vent hole at the top of the canopy. The air spilling out of the base forces the canopies apart. No special brackets or whatever is needed. There are several types of canopy that have special cutouts to help steer them. A TU type canopy, for example, has part of the rim cut out to help steer the canopy. Oh and the reason I know this... I used to be a skydiver.

Yup.. that's my thought... having a home based star network (yeah, it's actually called that lol) would truly rock. I have several PC's that I would love to hook up like that.

One thing that I would REALLY love to see is a distributed network for tracking spacecraft. What I mean is having a server that has all the current flights tracked in the solar system and then you could use multiple other computers to act as spacecraft control. You could have a mission control linked to the server that shows where all the craft are but the real calculations are done on the controlling PCs... Now I don't know if this is how SQUAD are going to handle multiplayer but it sounds possible that way. What do you guys think? Edit: Further thought... you could implement a delay time for control from Kerbin to the spacecraft... bit like what is done in the RemoteTech mod. So you send the commands to the server which then sends it out to the spacecraft PC after the correct delay. The Spacecraft PC then sends back the data after the delay. So basically it would mean one PC per craft and one PC for the server. You could then have several PC's (or even Arduino based displays) to build mission control.

The reason I want to go with the engraved panels is that I love backlighting them. Nothing that makes a sim more fun than working it in a darkened room. There is a cheat way you can go if you can't afford backlighting though... My first cockpit I made used labels that were UV reactive and had a black light overhead. Was pretty much the way they did it back in the 30's and 40's iirc. My ATR72 cockpit for example (panels that I bought from a Flight Sim parts supplier) used white semi-transparent acrylic which was first painted and then engraved. Light behind then comes through where the paint has been removed. I've got the idea of doing the spacecraft ones using clear acrylic and then spraying the panel black (two coats to block the light), then adding a white and then grey final layer. Then spraying the whole panel with liquid masking and then engraving it. The next step will be to add a think layer of white paint before removing the masking. That SHOULD leave the white lettering that will glow when a backlight is placed behind the panel. But first I have got to get my CNC machine and learn how to use it properly... this is not a project that is going to be finished overnight.

Cool... The more peeps working on Apollo type mods the better. I've been working on my Nav Ball and DSKY for a while now... I've gone the Telemachus way because my brain just doesnt work like it used to nowadays (ex programmer who learned toooooo many languages and now they tend to mix up in my brain). Looking forward to seeing you stuff.

ROFL... I just found I have a couple of them in one of my parts boxes (I tend to buy stuff on ebay that sounds interesting and then forget about them... I'm most definitely a parts whore - I'll take anything). Weird about those 7219's because according to your BOM you use two wide 7219 SOICs (U7 and U8). Maybe you forgot to update it. If you buy a batch of them from China they aren't that expensive tbh. Just a long lead time is all. Mulbin, the reason I had stalled on my project was that I was saving up for a CNC so that I can cut my parts with more accuracy. I'll be getting a four axis 6040Z in the next couple of months and then I will be able to make everything from the engraved panels to the custom mountings for my nav ball innards (which were driving me bonkers last year due to being out of alignment slightly which caused friction drag at one part of the 3D rotation which led to drift after about 5 mins... not good).

OK... colour me VERY IMPRESSED. Where did you get the matrix display from? I love making hardware cockpits and fell in love with the Arduino's simplicity. I've got so many arduino shields (chinese knock-offs) and boards and drivers and buttons and switches ready to build my setup. I've just got to sit down and finish the various bits. Some of my stuff comes out of real 60's aerospace cockpits... should make it look interesting. I've been using Telemachus as the interface between KSP and my hardware. Works quite well with what I have breadboarded so far. Nice to see you are using 7219's to drive the seven seg displays. I've used them for my Kerpollo DSKY... (although I've used the narrow bodied CNG version as I had bought a bulk order from China some time back as I use them in a lot of projects using Seven Seg displays). Have you thought of making meters and such from a servo driver. You can make some nice analogue displays that way and a 16 meter system can be driven using one of these...

I just realised why we don't have COD fanboys here... we baffle them with SCIENCE! At the moment I'm kind of approaching the MOD Singularity... TOO MANY MODS is killing my PC lol.

If you don't know what a Kraken strike is... it's when something pear shaped happens and things blow up for no reason. And yeah, we all get them every so often. I remember my first trip to Duna where two of my crew were stuck in a module where the exit was blocked. Thank god for Crew Manifest mod is all I can say. It lets you move your kerbals without going outside (which is great for blocked doors) - perfect for moving your Kerbals from the interplanetary habitat to the lander internally.

I swear to god... every time I come into one of these threads my jaw drops on the floor (but in a good way). I've learned more about space travel in these forums than I have in my entire 53 years.

This.... Pretty much everything can be changed in the persistence file. Even add new Kerbals if you haven't got the crew manifest mod.