KSP Display (Reaching Out)

[ChaseHQ]

Hello all! As many of you may know me as the person developing KSP Display I'm having a bit of trouble and am reaching out to anyone in the community with the expertise of physically creating an enclosure. As I am not sure which portion of the forum this best suits due to the fact that it really is a request as to anyone who can do enclosure fabrication, I decidedly chose the General forum. If there is a better suited sub-forum I apologize. For all of you who have no idea what I am talking about here is the latest video of what has been accomplished thus far...

If anyone who knows of anyone who can create an enclosure or would like to take a stab at it, I would love to see what they are willing to create around such a device. Here are the following dimensions...

The Display Boards are 103.81x41.91 mm, The actual 7 Segment LED's come off the base of that board are 8mm in depth and 25x19.05mm per 2 LED's (They are in packages of 2 so a board with 8 LEDs it's 25mm in width * 4), the Actual Control board is 76.45x76.45 mm. The individual 6 analog displays are 64x56mm and need 57mm of clearance in depth.

The original post for this is Here

Thank you so much! I hope someone can assist me in this area to get this product out to you guys as quickly as possible!

[stringyquark]

Sorry I can't help, just wanted to say your video on it was super cool.

[rodion]

Sorry I can't help, just wanted to say your video on it was super cool.

This exactly...what a fantastic project.

[roosterr]

Wow! Someone should build a full enclosure, as in capsule, with joystick for landing, etc, command module and/or LEM style, with crappy canvas seat, little port hole for your wife and kids to peer in on you periodically

[Masked Turk]

This exactly...what a fantastic project.

Precisely. This is magical.

[dr_jt]

Nice job. Why not prototype an enclosure using foam board which can be found at any craft or office store. Then you only need a sharp hobby knife and a ruler.

[ChaseHQ]

Nice job. Why not prototype an enclosure using foam board which can be found at any craft or office store. Then you only need a sharp hobby knife and a ruler.

Heh, that's why I am reaching out to the community, I'm not particularly good with that sort of thing.

[BubbaWilkins]

I generally do any kind of mock up as a just a quick CAD drawing with a basic dimensional layout. Foam board is an excellent suggestion to basically do the same thing. Just draw out the layout you were thinking of for the various meters and labelling, and then do cut outs in the foam to mock them up. After that, you need to figure out size and shape of the enclosure and what you might want to make it out of.

[daffy]

You could fabricate a small enclosure with some trim wood, 1/8 to 1/4 inch. Simple 45 degree cut and some display glass. A couple of hinges in the back for access and connections. I think everything could be found at the closest hobby store. The first that comes to my mind is the material we use for RC airplane building. Might even get fancy, and build three displays to set up around the system for a more immersive, head turning required experience.

I'm visualizing a bread-box style of enclosure.

Can sounds be added? Like the chatter mod?

And switches! We need switches and stuff. Stuff to click and throw. Landing gear, lights, docking cams! I'm teasing a little there, but would be fun. I wish I had your talent.

Edited September 24, 2013 by daffy

[esinohio]

Ok if my wife lays eyes on this before I manage to buy it I'm in trouble. Haha. In all seriousness, this is just awesome. This reminds me of the hardware available for Flight Simulator X. If this becomes available and had a similar enclosure I could pop this right into my already "I got in the dog house cause I spent too much" setup. KSP stretched across multiple screens with separate digital gauges = heaven.

You could use this : http://www.justflight.com/product/saitek-pro-flight-radio-panel-for-fsx as a guide for the enclosure. Or something similar would work perfect. The knobs could be dropped, unless you plan to add some sort of "heading bug" or "altitude bug" feature like a plane has to visually warn you when you are closing in on your set altitudes. The angled front makes it a tad easier to see in a setup where the gauges are located slightly below eye level. Its a simple box shape that you should be able to easily bang out given the size of the displays involved.

If you have access to a craft store, we have Hobby Lobby locally, you should be able to find small sheets of plastic that are used in crafting. They would be perfect for cutting out a more permanent shape. Relatively strong and easy to cut, drill, and come in any color you can think of. Inexpensive brackets or glue could hold a prototype together. While your at the hobby store I'm sure you could find something to use as labels for the various gauges. Something like small stenciled letters you could paint on to give it that pro look. Someone mentioned switches above... I mean you HAVE to have switches. Cool ones that have covers on them! Like the abort button? That would be a great one to add. Ohh maybe a button for ASAS and RCS that lights up when it's activated. /drool

Currently moving so have zero access to tools or anything really. Having the contents of your house surrounding you in boxes is just maddening! So if you haven't found what you are looking for in say a month from now, drop me a line. I would love to see what I could come up with for you.

Edited September 24, 2013 by esinohio

[Mr Shifty]

I use Front Panel Express at work to make custom aluminum front panels with cut-outs for panels, counter-sinks for flush screwheads, engrave-and-fill for labels, etc. You can easily bolt the panel to a standard aluminum or plastic box to hold the wiring with tie-downs, etc, or you could just put a couple L-brackets behind the panel to stand it up and have the wiring open behind it. With Front Panel Express, you download their custom software, use it to design your panel, then order it directly from the software. It arrives a week or so later. It's easy and they do great work.

http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/index.html

It looks like you've failed to include mounting holes in your PCBs, so that could present a problem. You'll have to use some sort of clips or clamps or glue to secure the boards to your panel, though they're pretty densely populated all the way out to the edges, so clips may not work. Maybe some rubber gasket material around the cutout edges would provide enough friction to just hold the displays in place. Long experience has shown me that it's far easier to design a PCB to fit an enclosure rather than the other way around. Good luck; this is a really cool project!

[ChaseHQ]

There is adequate room for clips on the displays, but the next pass will have mounting holes. There has been adjustment on the Display PCBs so this was just the real prototype. The next pass will be more the final, but i'd like to have a Enclosure to base it around before I dispatch my order.

[M5000]

I don't know if this helps, OP but there's a company named Pac Tec that can do electronic enclosures.

-I don't know what they carry in its entirety, but maybe you'll find it useful.

-A company I used to work for used some of their boxes and they seem pretty solidly built.

-You may need to still cut holes in the enclosures for your displays...

-Really, this is me just trying to throw ideas at you here. You may be able to order them with holes already done, but I don't know. Using this in conjunction with that aluminum faceplate site may be a good start to the supply process.

Like I said, I don't know if Pac Tec will have what you're looking for, but they MAY, so you might want to look around and possibly contact customer service to ask about what you're looking for. All I know is that they certainly can support any supply demand you'll be facing, so there's that.

http://www.pactecenclosures.com/

Check it out, they also have drawings for all their products on the website, so you know exactly what you're going to be getting.

Edited September 24, 2013 by M5000

[Motokid600]

Hope you washed your hands! Oils on your skin are very corrosive and are not good for circuit boards. Lol.. other then that. AMAZING this is great stuff. Id love to see someone make a replica Apollo interior. THIS is the first step. Good luck man.

[Sma]

If I had the money to work on this, and wouldn't get in trouble with my wife I'd give it a go. Another thought I had is you can get sheet aluminium at the hardware store. To start you could just draw a simple layout on paper or even cardboard (like cereal boxes). Then transfer to the sheet aluminium. Of course if you don't have the tools to do the cut outs (drill, jig saw, file/rasp) that could be a problem.

Maybe at the very least I could draw something up in blender, assuming someone doesn't beat me to it before I have a chance lol.

Oh, and it likely goes without saying but it needs a big red button, maybe with a flip cover lol. Maybe you already mentioned something like that though I don't remember from the original post.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Sma

[Payload]

If I had the money to work on this, and wouldn't get in trouble with my wife I'd give it a go. Another thought I had is you can get sheet aluminium at the hardware store. To start you could just draw a simple layout on paper or even cardboard (like cereal boxes). Then transfer to the sheet aluminium. Of course if you don't have the tools to do the cut outs (drill, jig saw, file/rasp) that could be a problem.

Maybe at the very least I could draw something up in blender, assuming someone doesn't beat me to it before I have a chance lol.

Oh, and it likely goes without saying but it needs a big red button, maybe with a flip cover lol. Maybe you already mentioned something like that though I don't remember from the original post.

Speaking of cardboard. You don't need any fancy materials at all. You need fiberglass epoxy from the auto parts store and some cardboard, a bit of tape, maybe some glue.

Build your prototype to fit the base that you have decided on. One you cut out of cardboard. You can then fit each piece to the hardware and make sure it's all even. When you have the holes all right and and it looks good, you soak the thing in the epoxy.

I have built speaker boxes out of cardboard before. Look up SONOTUBE. It's a sub that is made from a concrete form.

[acealeam]

REP, REP, REP. This is one of the coolest things I've seen yet!

[Sma]

Speaking of cardboard. You don't need any fancy materials at all. You need fiberglass epoxy from the auto parts store and some cardboard, a bit of tape, maybe some glue.

Build your prototype to fit the base that you have decided on. One you cut out of cardboard. You can then fit each piece to the hardware and make sure it's all even. When you have the holes all right and and it looks good, you soak the thing in the epoxy.

I have built speaker boxes out of cardboard before. Look up SONOTUBE. It's a sub that is made from a concrete form.

Ahh yes, didn't even think of fiberglass. It's a bit messy though, but then again it that could make it more Kerbal I guess.

I made a speaker box out of cardboard once. It was a speaker oval speaker from an old tv, the box was rectangular (deeper than it was wide). I stuffed it full of paper I think to make the sound waves travel slower, and it had a port at the back on the top, which then had more cardboard forming a "channel" to the front. Not exactly the same thing you're talking about, but I think it sounded a little "better" than it did when it was in the tv lol.

It's just my opinion but subs made from tubes just don't sound the same. Not sure why exactly though other than maybe most of them don't have the dampening ability that boxes made from thick heavy board does. Not that I have much experience in this area though lol The only subs I've really dealt with are a pair of 12" infinitys in a qlogic box, and the little sub from my klipsch promedia 4.1 computer speakers. They're more than 10 years old now, had to replace a capacitor on the amp once, and a pair of resistors twice. Last time I added a spare cooling fan blowing on them. Unfortunately the surround on the pair of 8" woofers in the sub has fallen apart so it doesn't sound the same any more. I guess I should look into getting the repair kit for them, as apparently it's hard to find the right ones to match the specs that the original ones had. Anyway...forgive me Jeb for I have gone off topic... lol