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

[Gaius]

Actually, once you've used the Rendezvous Planner once or twice and noted how it's done, you can just use the Maneuver Planner from that point forward and never open the Rendezvous Planner again. It does nothing unique, it appears to be a simple teaching tooling showing you how to use the Maneuver Planner properly...

[Ironitaly]

I am having a new problem recently with mechjeb. I am using dev's latest build 61. When I use rendevous autopilot it does some totally wonky things. It will either time warp WAY to much sometimes too T + 1 hour or more. Other times it will say the next burn is 4.7 m/s then procede to burn the whole fuel tank and place the rocket speeding toward minmus surface for a crash. Other times it will do BOTH. I have never had problems like this before anyone else????

[KhaosCorp]

Actually, once you've used the Rendezvous Planner once or twice and noted how it's done, you can just use the Maneuver Planner from that point forward and never open the Rendezvous Planner again. It does nothing unique, it appears to be a simple teaching tooling showing you how to use the Maneuver Planner properly...

^THIS^

plus Ive noticed something else...

just used the rendev planer just fine, no 60+day wait....I didn't however use auto-pilot, simply made the nodes with MJ. Only did it once, gonna try a few more times see whats really going on. Could it be possible that trying to execute is messing with mechjeb? I cant think of any reason why this would be...but im no modder, certainly not a programmer/coder.

Honestly to me it seems like MJ2 is trying to get away from being an autopilot, and making it more like navigational/flight assist computer system used in current RL avionics/aerospace applications...and I approve whole-heartedly. Kinda newish to KSP, and have learned sooo much since starting to play, MechJeb has been a great tool to that end, ive leaned a lot from that lil metal brain =)

[ShroomOfDoom]

I've experienced this bug too. Does your fps drop when this happens as well? It does for me. Sometimes I am feeling too lazy to rendezvous

It does indeed. It drops down to ca. 7 fps after the Hohmann transfer is done and then Jeb will have to wait for 68 years. Poor guy.

[Good_Apollo]

I used Rendevous Autopilot once or twice. I didn't like how it automatically adjusts your orbit either. Especially if I had already done so.

My preference is to use the Rendevous Planner. You can go down the list manually. That way you can skip the orbit adjustment step, and the whole thing works like a charm!

You do, however, have to have your Maneuver Planner open so you can tell it to execute the next node. Would be nice to add that button in the Rendevous Planner window in the future.

Well I second that. At 70KM you have enough warpspeed to me...

[greenjinjo]

I've searched a bit for this bug but can't find anything exactly matching the description. Sometimes when I switch between ships on the map screen (not the Tracking Station), and when I undock two ships, and when I switch between ships using [ and ], MechJeb loses all of my custom settings on one or more of the ships that I've switched from/to. When I try to add my windows back, there are no options listed in the custom window editor (Example). This problem persists through KSP restart / computer restart / MJ reinstallation. I'm using the most recent version (2.0.8) with KSP 0.20.2. Any ideas?

Edited June 3, 2013 by greenjinjo

[The_Duck]

I've searched a bit for this bug but can't find anything exactly matching the description. Sometimes when I switch between ships on the map screen (not the Tracking Station), and when I undock two ships, and when I switch between ships using [ and ], MechJeb loses all of my custom settings on one or more of the ships that I've switched from/to. When I try to add my windows back, there are no options listed in the custom window editor (Example). This problem persists through KSP restart / computer restart / MJ reinstallation. I'm using the most recent version (2.0.8) with KSP 0.20.2. Any ideas?

Thanks for alerting us to this. Do you have any sense of what conditions trigger the loss of settings? Is it related to whether the ship you are switching to is nearby (within 2km)? Does it only happen on undocking when there are MechJeb modules on both parts of the separating vessel? When it happens, are there any red error messages in the debug log (Alt-F2 to bring it up)?

[Ryusho]

I just had a thought for mechjeb Rover use, Why not make it so you can put in coordinates, like the landing autopilot, and the rover will try to drive straight towards those coordinates, That way you can go to precise locations not 'drive in this heading' forever, the only way i could see it being better would be to use a 'way-point' system, where you can put in multiple coordinates, and it will drive to them in order until it reaches the last one, and stops there, so that way if you needed too you could use that to plot a basic course for the rover to follow...

[HoY]

I just had a thought for mechjeb Rover use, Why not make it so you can put in coordinates, like the landing autopilot, and the rover will try to drive straight towards those coordinates, That way you can go to precise locations not 'drive in this heading' forever, the only way i could see it being better would be to use a 'way-point' system, where you can put in multiple coordinates, and it will drive to them in order until it reaches the last one, and stops there, so that way if you needed too you could use that to plot a basic course for the rover to follow...

I like that idea. Add waypoints in map mode the same way you select a landing target, press "add waypoint" and it gives you another target, have a "remove last waypoint" and a "remove all waypoints" button as well.

[sacafe]

Is the 2.0.8 docking mechanics compatible with the large flat docking clamp? I have had no luck targeting the docking port.

[Innuce]

I have not had any trouble with the new Sr docking ports. Still having issues with controls freezing up on smaller ones after docking completes though. Just installed the latests patches yesterday too.

[Noticeably FAT]

Sorry if this has been posted before, I went back through the thread a little bit and didn't see it. I have a ship that is not liking MJ at all. I got the ascent module to get it into orbit, but now that it's there MJ doesn't want to control it. Any Smart A.S.S. input doesn't work until I 1) turn on RCS and 2) use some sort of control input (joystick or keyboard). It then works fine until I turn RCS off. I know it's not the 'locked in position' bug, as the control indicators don't move. MJ just doesn't want to do anything until I turn on RCS and try to turn the ship myself. It also occasionally doesn't like to use the roll and yaw controls with the ascent autopilot. I did some playing around in the VAB, and it seems that not having a pod as the root part is throwing for a loop. I did some part swapping (disconnecting everything from the root, deleting the root, adding a new root then replacing the rest of the ship), and as long as the root part was a pod everything works fine. As soon as I used something else (I tried some of the structural girders, and one of the stack decouplers), it wigs out on me.

[rosenkranz]

Just a quick question. Is there a way to move the main mechjeb UI (the one on the left side of the screen) down a bit. I was looking in the settings config file and it does seem to show screen coordinates for various windows but there is way more there than i wanna just fool with without asking.

[KhaosCorp]

Just a quick question. Is there a way to move the main mechjeb UI (the one on the left side of the screen) down a bit. I was looking in the settings config file and it does seem to show screen coordinates for various windows but there is way more there than i wanna just fool with without asking.

+1!!! would be nice to move the menu tab down about a 1/4 inch

[The_Duck]

Just a quick question. Is there a way to move the main mechjeb UI (the one on the left side of the screen) down a bit. I was looking in the settings config file and it does seem to show screen coordinates for various windows but there is way more there than i wanna just fool with without asking.

Currently the positions of the right-hand button and menu are hardcoded, so unfortunately you can't change it by editing anything in the settings files.

[The_Duck]

I just had a thought for mechjeb Rover use, Why not make it so you can put in coordinates, like the landing autopilot, and the rover will try to drive straight towards those coordinates

We plan to add a "drive to target" feature. I think it will use the same surface target selection system as the landing AP, and will also let you target a vessel.

Sorry if this has been posted before, I went back through the thread a little bit and didn't see it. I have a ship that is not liking MJ at all. I got the ascent module to get it into orbit, but now that it's there MJ doesn't want to control it. Any Smart A.S.S. input doesn't work until I 1) turn on RCS and 2) use some sort of control input (joystick or keyboard). It then works fine until I turn RCS off. I know it's not the 'locked in position' bug, as the control indicators don't move. MJ just doesn't want to do anything until I turn on RCS and try to turn the ship myself. It also occasionally doesn't like to use the roll and yaw controls with the ascent autopilot. I did some playing around in the VAB, and it seems that not having a pod as the root part is throwing for a loop. I did some part swapping (disconnecting everything from the root, deleting the root, adding a new root then replacing the rest of the ship), and as long as the root part was a pod everything works fine. As soon as I used something else (I tried some of the structural girders, and one of the stack decouplers), it wigs out on me.

Sounds like this issue that is on the Github issue tracker: https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/issues/113 . I haven't looked into it, but I guess MJ currently has problems calculating attitude control commands when there is no pod torque or RCS torque available.

Edited June 5, 2013 by The_Duck

[rosenkranz]

ahhh, ok. I was hoping. It's kinda overlapping the resources area if you've got more the 3 resource types. I was hoping I could scootch it down about an inch fix that.

Any chance of making that draggable up-down?

[evilC]

Bug report:

If you have "Auto stage" enabled in "Ascent Guidance", if you then say switch to a spaceplane and use SMART ASS SURF mode, it auto-stages.

In fact, every time I launch my spaceplane, Auto-Stage is ticked again, and I have to untick it

[Hremsfeld]

Question: Will specific crafts ever get separate setups? What I mean is that I noticed in my persistence.sfs file that each ship with an MJ2 case also had seemingly-ship-specific info, but the window layout is identical between crafts.

[Solo Axlion]

I got a screenshot of that issue I mentioned having before when I tried the Landing Guidance.

Aborted the landing when it moved my course too far south and was giving me that -Perapsis.

Also, I sometimes get that wierd absurdly high decel thrust requirement bug with the Landing Guidance instead of the above.

[MTemplar]

Top right corner there should be a little translucent tab to press that brings out the window. When it moved with the newer version it threw me off and I couldn't find it right away.

If its not there, open your debug log and see if there are any red entry's.

OK. So looked at my screen again and nothing, no buttons on the right or anything. I have the MechJeb installed on the ship. I then went to the Debug Console and it's yelling at me about the patcher not existing? I don't know what that is but what ever. All I do know is that I can't get MechJeb to work.

EDIT: Looks like I have to run it in Administrative Mode to get MechJeb to work for me. Sometimes I hate Windows.

Edited June 5, 2013 by MTemplar

[Simplicity]

Hmm has docking been broken in the latest DEV build? (MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-65)

Reason for asking, is that tonight I installed it and tried it out docking one of my ships to my new space station...

I closed to about 140m from the station and then enabled the docking autopilot... - ONE HOUR later, and it had only traveled about half way to docking with the station.. - That's when I gave up..

Using build MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-56 I can close to around 170m and be docked in about 1/4 hour to 25 mins..

I no expert, but those figures tell me there is something a little wrong somewhere, as I was using exact same ships..

[Innuce]

Hmm has docking been broken in the latest DEV build? (MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-65)

Reason for asking, is that tonight I installed it and tried it out docking one of my ships to my new space station...

I closed to about 140m from the station and then enabled the docking autopilot... - ONE HOUR later, and it had only traveled about half way to docking with the station.. - That's when I gave up..

Using build MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-56 I can close to around 170m and be docked in about 1/4 hour to 25 mins..

I no expert, but those figures tell me there is something a little wrong somewhere, as I was using exact same ships..

Try getting closer before engaging the docking autopilot.

The Rendevous Planner usually gets you to around 40m. Sometimes you have to repeat the "get closer" and "match velocities" to get nice and close. Also, you can play with the "speed limit" on the docking autopilot if you want to go faster. But, I find that wastes more fuel.

For me the docking autopilot is great. I just can't control my crafts anymore once they're docked. I have to escape back out to the space center, then reload my craft again from the tracking station.

Still trying to get to the source of the problem. I have heard everything from problems with Octagonal Struts to MechJeb itself as being at fault. I have limited time to troubleshoot this.

[KhaosCorp]

Hmm has docking been broken in the latest DEV build? (MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-65)

Reason for asking, is that tonight I installed it and tried it out docking one of my ships to my new space station...

I closed to about 140m from the station and then enabled the docking autopilot... - ONE HOUR later, and it had only traveled about half way to docking with the station.. - That's when I gave up..

Using build MechJeb2-2.0.8.0-56 I can close to around 170m and be docked in about 1/4 hour to 25 mins..

I no expert, but those figures tell me there is something a little wrong somewhere, as I was using exact same ships..

The problem here is not with MechJeb, its with your docking method. You shouldn't change from approach to docking unless your 90meters or less and realative velocity is zero.

[rosenkranz]

Try this on for size. I was thinking about deadly reentry and the eventual reentry damage we'll see in the stock game.

Would it be to dumb an idea to have an option for the landing AP to do a breaking burn to minimize heating on reentry? Would that even work?

From a 71km orbit max gee's during reentry is about 2.9g. From 150km it's about 5.2g. If the AP option had a field to specify max g-load, would that work?

Thoughts?