Jump to content

Vehicle Stress Readings?


NeoMorph

Recommended Posts

I was wondering if it was possible to read the stress of the various linkages in our rockets. I've had ships that have bent and broken for no apparent reason... ships that have begun spinning so fast that the solar panels fly off. So could it be possible to make a mod that lists the various stresses acting on the rocket or spaceplane to find where we need to add more support or change things around to reduce the stress levels?

I know this really should be in the mod section but I just wanted a discussion on whether it would be possible and whether it is actually worth it... or even if someone has already done something like this and is hidden away on Spaceport.

Yes, telemetry like this is what makes rocket science fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's my mod design idea that I've had for a month or so:

Flight telemetry

This mod is a radial part that you install upon the upper-most stage of your rocket. As long as this part is present on your active ship, it will record telemetry data to a unique file in the PluginData folder. Only the last flight is kept, all subsequent flights overwrite the data. Telemetry data is per-ship.

Multiple telemetry parts will be ignored. Only the ship containing the initial name (reference id?) of the same ship it was placed upon will be recorded. (In other words, if your ship splits apart or combines due to docking, separation, etc then only one tracking stream is recorded.)

Part uses a small amount of power. If power is lost, telemetry recording terminates.

Accessing telemetry

A new button is added to the space center screen. When clicked, it brings up a list of all telemetry data recorded, based on ship and sorted from newest to oldest. There is a PLAY button and a DELETE button which only work when a telemetry record is selected.

Upon selecting a record and hitting play, the Telemetry screen comes up. (New Unity scene started.)

Telemetry screen

This window is a simple 3d wireframe model of your rocket. When your mouse is over the window, you can use the same VAB controls to move around your wireframe model. There are also several readouts. One is a MET counter, and another is a rewind-to-start button, a pause/play button, and a fastforward-to-event button.

During play mode, as stages are engaged and decouplers are activated, this is reflected on the telemetry window (parts of the model will disappear if they are decoupled). The MET counter increases and you will see the model change as time goes on.

If there is a problem with any part (either due to explosion, overheating, over-stressed, etc) then that part will blink red on the telemetry window, and give a small iconic indicator showing what happened.

The Telemetry window can be re-wound and replayed at any time.

Rewind-to-start button: Rewinds the replay back to the beginning.

Play/Pause: Toggles depending on what mode you are in. MET changes from red to green when moving from pause to play.

Fastforward-to-event: Skips ahead on MET/playback until you hit the first catastrophic event. (Event being overstress, etc.) Always pauses playback, so you can "jump" to each event as it happens.

If the root part is destroyed and/or power is lost, "TELEMETRY SIGNAL LOST" is displayed when final MET is reached and playback stops.

Would be nice if the telemetry also displayed other data, such as thrust levels for engines, biprop levels for tanks, SAS force, altitude, battery levels, and possibly G-stress.

Design Problems

1. Extracting the mesh data from all parts of a vessel. Unsure if this is easily available, or even possible while in the space center scene.

2. How easy is to to pull all of this data while flying? Not too hard, I imagine.

3. Not sure about starting a new scene for the telemetry screen. While this would simplify things, I am not sure if the KSP game would be able to work with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude now THAT sounds awesome... Another option for the telemetry would be to send it off to another computer. I'm using crxTelemetry to grab data for my hardware mod but there is a problem with it needing a telemetry pod on every stage to get the data out. There must be a way around this but I haven't looked at it yet. I'm still building and designing the hardware.

I've just started to put together a PCB prototyping line so that I can stop having to make rats nests when using such things as seven segment displays. Up to now by flight sim cockpits have been made using the ratsnest method but it wastes a lot of time (and a lot of wire). Having modular PCB's means I can use them on multiple projects. If I get a design I am really happy with I can get the thing done professionally.

And then we come to the stress factors... All aircraft have a pair of indicators which are called... Master Warn and Master Alarm. Apollo had Master Alarm but not Master Warn. Warnings were on a rectangular lamp panel.

CSM-CWS-Lights-Location.gif

It was when I was thinking of where to put these that I realised that I needed something to trigger them.

I needed ship state data. . If part of the ship is near breaking point you need the information to decide whether to detach the problem stage (if possible) or burn at a lower rate to not strain a bendy connection (done that a LOT).

At any rate, I'm going to need something further down the line. CRXTelemetry has been awesome for learning how to get the data out to an external system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...