[PART, 1.0.2] Anatid Robotics / MuMech - MechJeb - Autopilot - Historical thread

[sarbian]

Can you explain the problem a bit more ? What was happening ?

[federicoaa]

Hi sarbian, I found something strange with the maneuver planner. The option to make an interplanetary transfer usually does not pick the nearest window if it is a couple of weeks after, instead, it picks the next one.

I checked this quite simple. Select a ship in LKO and plan a transfer to duna (or wherever), check the date of the launch (suppose 101 days and some hours), then switch to a flag to time warp 100 days, go back to the previous ship and select again the duna transfer, it won't say 1 day and some hours but something like 200 days.

It's quite picky with the windows.

[boywithumbrella]

Is the reason why MechJeb doesn't work with TT Modular Multiwheels known / is there a solution?

[sarbian]

If you mean they don't work with the rover AP then it most likely because they don't use the stock control scheme for wheels.

[Woodstar]

Love mechjeb for when I don't want to "math", is there a newer version coming soon? Just curious.

[Pontiac]

I don't have access to the craft file at this time, however, I'm having an interesting time with MJ, my tug, and RCS. MJ only seems to want to work with RCS on, otherwise it acts as a completely dead stick. Sometimes, I have to toggle RCS off, then on, to make MJ react. No movement on the pitch/yaw/roll pins until I do the toggle. This typically happens when I undock from my fuel station, and start to use the auto-land function. For example, if I turn on RCS after undocking, I back off manually from my fuel station, and then if I turn off RCS, tell MJ to turn retrograde with Smart ASS, I get a dead stick. The craft doesn't rotate, and the P/Y/R icons don't move. If I manually rotate, everything is hunky-dory, but MJ is just dead. If I toggle RCS on, MJ wakes up immediately starts to rotate the tug. Turn off RCS while its doing the maneuver, dead stick. When I use the auto-land feature, it lands as expected, (I don't remember if I have to toggle RCS on descent to wake MJ up) I hit the action group (Brakes toggle - Figure this would work since I don't have wheels on the tug) to kick off the mining gear, and then wait. RCS is usually manually turned off at this point not waste fuel as the SAS is able to keep the craft straight, or I've landed on a flat enough area to not worry about it. Once mining is completed, I auto-launch to a 25k orbit. MJ launches the craft, does the initial ascent, gets onto the right trajectory while burning, all the way up and starts turning at about 3k up, but on ascent if RCS is off, once it shuts down the engine to wait to get to AP, I get a dead stick again until I toggle RCS on, then it wakes up, reorients, then time-warps and gets into the orbit. Nothing is assigned to the RCS action group.

There are a couple of other things as well.

- I've got the ActionGroupManager installed, and have used it to assign the ABORT button to undock the tug from the station. There are no other assignments to ABORT.

- With RCS turned OFF on the station, tug docked or not, MJ is still able to rotate the station to the orientation I want. The P/Y/R icons move as expected.

- Both the station and the tug are robotic. The station has SEVERAL robotic control modules. No Kerbals installed. The tug has way over 3,000 electrical charge, with a single RTG to ensure an "always on" state.

This particular tug has its days numbered. After about 20+ landings (Some fully manual just to keep practicing, other times fully automatic because I'm watching Danny or Manley or Goosexi) I've got a few modifications I need to do to the tug which means this one is going to get 'expired' or used as a landing point until I can get another Kerbal up to mark a new landing spot.

Any thoughts to what might be going on? I haven't looked at the persistence or quicksave file to see if something else is going on.

[Itsdavyjones]

Okay, the problem I am having is when I separate a radial craft from the main craft (a hauler) the radial crafts smartass and maneuver planer will not work. I did a few experiments and found that turning off Mechjeb's autotune for torque and switching to stock sas is a workaround to this problem at this time.

[sarbian]

Love mechjeb for when I don't want to "math", is there a newer version coming soon? Just curious.

I am still busy with an other project but I want to do an other stable before .24

I won't give an ETA

Any thoughts to what might be going on? I haven't looked at the persistence or quicksave file to see if something else is going on.

Beside the obvious "do you have electric charge ?" it could be the bug I have on some ship on undock since .23. Try to "control from here" on your probe after undocking and see if it's doing better.

Check the log for an error spam too.

And is that with the official or dev release ?

Okay, the problem I am having is when I separate a radial craft from the main craft (a hauler) the radial crafts smartass and maneuver planer will not work. I did a few experiments and found that turning off Mechjeb's autotune for torque and switching to stock sas is a workaround to this problem at this time.

Same reply. Try to "control for here" on your probe to see if it unstuck it.

[Itsdavyjones]

Gave that a shot and it worked. And this was with the dev releases. A little odd though, because I am sure i tried that before.

[Pontiac]

I'll poke at it tonight. @Work right now.

[boywithumbrella]

If you mean they don't work with the rover AP then it most likely because they don't use the stock control scheme for wheels.

Yes, I mean the rover AP. Could you elaborate? From what I see as user, in "Rover Mode" the Multiwheels respond to the rover controls I set up in settings (WASD as default, as well as my joystick bindings) - is there another level where the control scheme is customized / can differ?

Seeing as Multiwheels have not been updated since 0.21 asking for a compatibility patch by either you or TT would probably be pointless; but it's a pity, because I really like those wheels and would also like to use the rover AP.

[1of6Billion]

I have a request for a feature

In the Landing Guidance module, it would be *very* handy to be able to offset your landing spot with a few meters. Preferrably in any direction.

Now, because of the precision of Mechjeb, when you target another lander, you will literally land on top of that.

Will you consider that?

[codepoet]

I have a request for a feature

In the Landing Guidance module, it would be *very* handy to be able to offset your landing spot with a few meters. Preferrably in any direction.

Now, because of the precision of Mechjeb, when you target another lander, you will literally land on top of that.

Will you consider that?

I started to impliment that (it is not hard), but then got distracted with another project. I have not completed that other project as I have now become distracted with a third project. Sorry

[1of6Billion]

I started to impliment that (it is not hard), but then got distracted with another project. I have not completed that other project as I have now become distracted with a third project. Sorry

Well..... at least it's nice to read it's not too difficult

[Galane]

Re: several posts about control problems. KSP .23 appears to have a bug where it does not correctly set a command part as control when separating crafts, either from a decoupler or docking port. Right click a command parts then click Control from here. Now MechJeb will be able to control the craft.

A feature I'd really like to see on rendezvous autopilot and landing guidance is an option to choose the time of day to finish, or at least be able to get there in daylight, sometime between dawn and mid-day.

Seven rendezvous assembling my Eve ship and the autopilot brought every one together on the dark side of Kerbin, no matter when I launched. I didn't use launch to rendezvous because it rarely gets close enough for the autopilot to just scoot over to the other ship without going through the whole thing of raising the orbit, running around Kerbin a few times then lowering the orbit - and ending up in the dark anyway.

Being able to select a daytime or nighttime, or dawn or sunset landing would also be quite nice.

[Pontiac]

@Galane> Interesting. I'm not doubting you, but have you got a reference for that? I wonder if a mod could be written to verify that a root part is selected, and if not, find the command pod, and make it active. At least THAT'D be better than a dead stick.

[sharpspoonful]

I'm having an issue with an error I'm getting fairly consistently on my probe construction. For whatever reason, whenever I load this probe in flight and mouse over the AOR205 case, the camera zooms out and makes in neigh impossible to find my craft again. I checked the debug window and saw this error had printed:

[ERR 09:31:28.916] MechJeb module MechJebModuleRoverWaypointWindow threw an exception in OnLoad: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at MuMech.MechJebModuleRoverWaypointWindow.OnLoad (.ConfigNode local, .ConfigNode type, .ConfigNode global) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MuMech.MechJebCore.OnLoad (.ConfigNode sfsNode) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

Anyone have an idea?

[BloodyRain2k]

I'm having an issue with an error I'm getting fairly consistently on my probe construction. For whatever reason, whenever I load this probe in flight and mouse over the AOR205 case, the camera zooms out and makes in neigh impossible to find my craft again.

Anyone have an idea?

I just fixed that error yesterday and threw the pull request at sarbian already but I doubt that that's the source of your zoom problem because that error happens as it says itself OnLoad and at that time is it a bit hard for you to hover the AR case so if your problem happens after physics have kicked in on the launchpad (or whereever) for example then these two are totally unrelated.

So maybe it'd be an idea to post the full log in a pastebin or so and a list of all other mods would also help.

[sharpspoonful]

I just fixed that error yesterday and threw the pull request at sarbian already but I doubt that that's the source of your zoom problem because that error happens as it says itself OnLoad and at that time is it a bit hard for you to hover the AR case so if your problem happens after physics have kicked in on the launchpad (or whereever) for example then these two are totally unrelated.

So maybe it'd be an idea to post the full log in a pastebin or so and a list of all other mods would also help.

Done and done.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g79lw4c8auz4hsb/KSP.log

List of mods:

000_Toolbar

AIES Aerospace

ASET

B9 Aerospace

[Exsurgent Engineering, Firespitter, Kinetech Animations]

Texture Compressor

CactEye

Chatterer

Crew Manifest

Fustek (Dev build)

HullCamera VDS

Raster Prop Monitor

KAS

Procedural Fairings

KW Rocketry

LLL-lite

MapTraqll

Mechjeb2

Mods by Tal (Cubic Struts)

Near Future

Part Catalog

RCS Build Aid

SCANSat

SCANSat RPM

Scene Jumper

SDHI

Texture Replacer

Most of these mods have been truncated of parts I don't need/use to save on RAM.

The error happens on load, but i see the camera zooming far out, and then focusing back on target when I time warp.

[Mystique]

Found very strange thingy during docking, can someone else try to reproduce it?

Mothership and lander both have MJ. Mothership was left in KILL ROT mode after undocking lander. When lander returned (and I think it started when I targeted docking port), mothership started to respond on lander's controls, like pitch/yaw/roll (thanks Kthulhu not throttle). It was definitely responding on lander's key input and it stopped when I switched to mothership and turned it on stock SAS. Any ideas?

[Galane]

@Galane> Interesting. I'm not doubting you, but have you got a reference for that? I wonder if a mod could be written to verify that a root part is selected, and if not, find the command pod, and make it active. At least THAT'D be better than a dead stick.

This has been mentioned quite a few times up the thread. Also the issue where when two ships get close enough for docking (where you can select each other's docking ports) you're unable to right click on command (pod) or control (docking ports etc) parts to get the control menu until going to space center then back to the space view. I didn;t run into that one until I tried to rendezvous two ships in Eve orbit, loaded from the same craft file. Now it happens quite often.

The problem with auto selecting when more than one control capable part is present on a craft is selecting the right one. Should it just auto select the one closest to the front *and* aligned with the thrust vector? What about ships where not all the engines or control parts are aligned on the same vector?

I think the best fix (aside from Squad fixing it) is for MechJeb to be able to detect that no control/command part is set as the active one then popping up a warning like it does when docking autopilot is enabled and control is NOT set to a docking port.

I first encountered this with my kethane satellites around duna and Ike after upgrading from .22 to .23. the satellites wouldn't change orientation, nor wout their thtottles work, until I set the OKTO2 to control from here. Every ship now I have to explicitly set a control part when the ship it's on is separated from the main ship, even when there is only one part with command and/or control capability.

There's an oddity with MechJeb and control where it can still control the orientation of ships via reaction wheels even after all the electric charge is gone. RCS and throttle don't work but the ship can still be flipped this way and that. I haven't tested every part individually with reaction wheels, might just be some in the ReStock pack, but no charge should be no control, no how.

[Starwaster]

Found very strange thingy during docking, can someone else try to reproduce it?

Mothership and lander both have MJ. Mothership was left in KILL ROT mode after undocking lander. When lander returned (and I think it started when I targeted docking port), mothership started to respond on lander's controls, like pitch/yaw/roll (thanks Kthulhu not throttle). It was definitely responding on lander's key input and it stopped when I switched to mothership and turned it on stock SAS. Any ideas?

I've seen that quite a bit when undocking. When it happens, you'll probably have to switch to another craft/scene to unload the afflicted ships. Then switch back.

There's an oddity with MechJeb and control where it can still control the orientation of ships via reaction wheels even after all the electric charge is gone. RCS and throttle don't work but the ship can still be flipped this way and that. I haven't tested every part individually with reaction wheels, might just be some in the ReStock pack, but no charge should be no control, no how.

Something is providing control authority without costing power.

[LawnDartLeo]

In the Smart A.S.S sub of MechJeb there is an option to force roll. How about a force roll in any of the autopilot subs? Shuttle type craft would benefit from this. Seems they hit the coast point of ascent and then they just start tumbling until they need to line up the prograde vector.

[shaun3000]

In the Smart A.S.S sub of MechJeb there is an option to force roll. How about a force roll in any of the autopilot subs? Shuttle type craft would benefit from this. Seems they hit the coast point of ascent and then they just start tumbling until they need to line up the prograde vector.

I second this request!

[Neutrinovore]

In the Smart A.S.S sub of MechJeb there is an option to force roll. How about a force roll in any of the autopilot subs? Shuttle type craft would benefit from this. Seems they hit the coast point of ascent and then they just start tumbling until they need to line up the prograde vector.

Me three!