Kerbin-Aligned Comm Dishes

[Stevie_D]

Did a few searches, couldn't find anything on the subject, so here goes,...

We all know its possible using the stock game to align parts to the sun, due to solar panels; but does anyone know if it would be possible to align a newly created, pivot-mounted satellite dish to Kerbin, using only ingame stock mechanics/modules? So that when the part loaded, instead of facing the sun like a solar panel, it turned to face the direction of Kerbin.

[sebi.zzr]

1 hour ago, Stevie_D said:

using only ingame stock mechanics/modules

Probably is,but i never had enough time to test this myself.If you want to investigate(experiment) yourself,here is link:https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/api/class_module_deployable_part.html

[tater]

This would be pretty cool, particularly as part of a system that fixed the oddball "relay" paradigm in stock.

[TheRagingIrishman]

looking at the api, it seems possible (the tracking can be defined as sun, home, vessel, current. I'm finishing school right now but I'll work on it over the summer

[steedcrugeon]

17 hours ago, Stevie_D said:

using only ingame stock mechanics/modules?

Up to 1.2.2 the answer is not promising. I tried multiple ways of trying to exploit the 'Stock' ModuleDeployableAntenna when I was starting work on building the JX2 model. Just like you I had hopes of making the dish/reflector actively track Kerbin but no amount of clever wording of the config after thorough reading of the API could get it to work.

You are correct that in theory, using the ModuleDeployablePart as the basis it should have the option to track a specified body but in practice I couldn't get it to track anything. I even tried a different approach where I used the dish/reflector with ModuleDeployableSolarPanel and made it generate 0 EC whilst trying to get it to track anything other than the 'sun'. No luck there either.

I haven't tried (and maybe this would work) just calling it ModuleDeployablePart and then adding all the parameter for antennas and such like after (I do like making deployable antennas, maybe I should have a stab at that...).

[Mecripp]

On ‎6‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 7:38 AM, Stevie_D said:

Did a few searches, couldn't find anything on the subject, so here goes,...

We all know its possible using the stock game to align parts to the sun, due to solar panels; but does anyone know if it would be possible to align a newly created, pivot-mounted satellite dish to Kerbin, using only ingame stock mechanics/modules? So that when the part loaded, instead of facing the sun like a solar panel, it turned to face the direction of Kerbin.

RemoteTech along time ago had dish's that track the target but haven't seen any else do it