totm june 2019 Custom hardware / simpit repository. For people who take KSP a little too far.

[Freshmeat]

@c4ooo: I would consider having both Ap and Pe on display. You almost always need both numbers when doing maneuvers. To get the space I would move all misc control to the action group panel and take a long hard look at pitch/yaw/roll. You already hae those on the navball, and everything you put in your time, speed, and altitude panel is important to know, often simultaneously.  

The layout looks very promising, can't wait to see how it ends up.

[c4ooo]

59 minutes ago, Freshmeat said:

@c4ooo: I would consider having both Ap and Pe on display. You almost always need both numbers when doing maneuvers. To get the space I would move all misc control to the action group panel and take a long hard look at pitch/yaw/roll. You already hae those on the navball, and everything you put in your time, speed, and altitude panel is important to know, often simultaneously.  

The layout looks very promising, can't wait to see how it ends up.

I have considered the following layout:

Pe Alt [8 7-segment displays]

time to Pe [6 7-segment displays]

Ap Alt [8 7-segment displays]

 time to Ap [6 7-segment displays]

 Vessel altitude (Alt / Radar Alt) [8 7-segment displays]

time to node [6 7-segment displays]

speed (orbit, target, surface, or delta-v left to complete maneuver) [5 7-segment displays]

 

However this adds up to a total of 47 7-segment displays, and doesn't look as clean IMHO

 

Edit: so it will end up being a big price tag

Edited December 5, 2016 by c4ooo

[Freshmeat]

2 hours ago, c4ooo said:

I have considered the following layout:

<snip>

 

However this adds up to a total of 47 7-segment displays, and doesn't look as clean IMHO

Edit: so it will end up being a big price tag

Consider these

[c4ooo]

Consider these

Hahaha thats dirt cheap compared to what i found. In the description it lists these pins: VCC, GND, DIN, CS, CLK

The first two are self explanatory, but what exactly do the last 3 do?  Also is there a built in resistor for the LEDs? Thanks

[richfiles]

It's SPI serial communication. You control these by sending serial data, and you daisy chain them, on display after another, up to 8 displays per chain. You can set up multiple chains though. The LEDs are controlled by a chip. You don't need to worry about resistors. There's an Arduino library specifically for controlling the chip these use.

Edited December 5, 2016 by richfiles

[Stoney3K]

On 11/13/2016 at 7:25 AM, richfiles said:

The problem is the Arduino itself. People are accustomed to big modern computers with huge memories... We are sending a 256 byte packet (0-255), but that little tiny packet is ACTUALLY 1/4 the entire memory of an Arduino Pro Mini or 1/8 the memory of an Uno. The SRAM of most Arduinos is not that big! We're running out of room in the packet, AND you have to consider that everything in the packet needs to be divvied up and dealt with in your code, before the next packet can be dealt with. Simply doubling the packet would drop available memory significantly, and that memory also needs to be used for executing your code! More data sent means the Arduino has less time to sort out the packet. Even switching to a Mega, for example, while it solves the memory issue, doesn't change the fact that you need to now split up the packet's data into different tasks, and perform those before the next packet.

The Arduino is a very simple device, after all, when compared to the computer we run KSP on.

That's not even mentioning the issues we see with communications.

Minimally, if you want more data sent over... You need more horses under the hood, so to speak. You'll need a more powerful microcontrolelr than just an entry level Arduino, or you'll just give yourself nightmares. Consider things like the Due... something or other... The one with the much faster CPU. You'll need to work in 3.3 volt signals, so don't you be feeding it no 5 volts!   Same goes with a Teensy 3.1 or higher, a Raspberry Pi, etcetera.

Well, if we want to cram more data to more Arduinos, there is no reason to send everything to all connected devices, all of the time, right?

Since Arduinos process serial data on a byte-by-byte basis you can connect them on a bus (just wire the serial input pins together) and send bytes which are received by all Arduinos. Sending an address byte first would give you the option of sending different bits of information to different controllers. If the address byte is different from the Arduino's address, it's simply ignored and the packet does not take up any memory.

Giving the users an option to configure what is being sent and received in a packet is also a pretty useful thing. 255 bytes of information is pretty big, and I wonder if all of the information is necessary in all use cases. (If you have a display that shows Ap and Pe only, why send information about the remaining fuel to it?). So a configuration file which can tell KSPSerialIO which pieces of information it can send where (e.g. orbital information on COM1, fuel status on COM2, action group buttons on COM3) could be a useful thing.

That does require a little more intelligence on both endpoints, though, but I suspect it's worth the effort if we keep expanding on the features in a simpit.

[Kotagi]

On 12/5/2016 at 6:09 AM, c4ooo said:

I have considered the following layout:

Pe Alt [8 7-segment displays]

time to Pe [6 7-segment displays]

Ap Alt [8 7-segment displays]

 time to Ap [6 7-segment displays]

 Vessel altitude (Alt / Radar Alt) [8 7-segment displays]

time to node [6 7-segment displays]

speed (orbit, target, surface, or delta-v left to complete maneuver) [5 7-segment displays]

 

However this adds up to a total of 47 7-segment displays, and doesn't look as clean IMHO

 

Edit: so it will end up being a big price tag

I am accomplishing this with a breakout board for the raspberry pi. This can run the analog meters

 https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-16-channel-pwm-servo-hat-for-raspberry-pi/overview

This can run the displays, buttons, leds, and such

https://www.abelectronics.co.uk/p/54/IO-Pi-Plus?CatName=0&c=18

And if you absolutely have to have a ridiculous amount, you can get this...but it looks like there is less documentation with this

https://www.tindie.com/products/land_boards/64128-channel-digital-io-card-digio-128/

I dont have any experience with arduinos but the raspberry pi has been working awesome for this. Using krpc, it was pretty easy to get everything set up, with very little coding knowledge

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2016 by Kotagi

[c4ooo]

While waiting for parts to arrive I have built the IO expansions:

Those resistors are kinda close to touching each other though x.x

[richfiles]

I've been pretty stuck at a stand still for the last few months. Strained my shoulder at work, then got burned at work. I'm fine now, but the past couple months has been just... Nonproductive. After mostly recovering, I got the number pad plate for my keyboard, The "Hi Def NES" and "UltraHDMI" HDMI mods for the Nintendo NES and N64, and was pretty busy at work. Between all that, I didn't do much on the Kerbal Controller build. I did find the proper connector for my Navball though, and I got the annunciator LEDs machined and modded.

These annunciator LEDs are only available in red, yellow, and green, and as I mentioned a couple pages ago... I salvaged a bunch, and they were ALL yellow!  Anyway, since then, I ordered a bunch of green ones, and a hand full of red ones from Digikey. Also snagged a BUNCH of square 4x4 LED green versions off ebay for a steal. Three colors though, is far too limiting...


 As you can see, I have a few more colors. The blue-green one is the same LEDs I'm using for my meters and for panel illumination. The purple/UV is pretty dim, but the rating for those LEDs is also up to 3.4 volts forward bias, so the coin cell I was using might simply not have enough juice to fully illuminate it.. but I didn't have any other colors. While I'm sure the colors aren't a perfect match for the navball markers, they should be close enough to work. Jeb and Val can also have a disco party with all the colors! 


I had to do this two different ways. I had none of the blue-green LEDs in 3mm versions, only 5mm, so for those, I trimmed the dome off the LED to shorten it, and used an endmill to completely mill out the back of the led annunciator. I wanted the light to be able to spread out sideways to hit all the little "windows" behind the diffuser. For the other colors, I simply drilled eight 3mm holes in the back, after trimming the leads. I drilled just deep enough to go through the internal copper contacts and LED die that was originally inside the part.


I mixed some epoxy to hold all the LEDs in place. I used a prototyping PC board to keep the leads of the 8 LEDs in the small 3mm versions straight, and I used a pair of SIP sockets to keep the LEDs of the 5mm versions straight. I will probably still paint the backs black, to keep one annunciator's light from spilling to another adjacent one from behind. One unfortunate side effect, is due to the imprecision of the LED alignments, and the fact that they are set 3 holes apart (or centered on a 3 row configuration, for the 5mm versions), they don't allign correctly with stock red, yellow, and green annunciators, which have a 4 hole separation between the two rows of pins. The LEDs also add a little bit of height. To mount these, I will have to have one "L" shaped board holding all the stock red, yellow, and green LEDs, and then have a rectangular board set inside the "L", to hold the modified LEDs. The rectangular board will be alligned to line up the stock and modified LED annunciators, and soldered or screwed in place, relative to the "L" shaped board. That will line everything up nicely.


And since I mentioned it, the connector for the Navball.


And my keyboard. I love the magnetic attachment for the numberpad. I still have wiring left in the number pad, as well as programing. It's definitely getting there, though! 

Edited January 3, 2017 by richfiles

[c4ooo]

Looks nice, wish i had a working navball

I dont understand however, what exactly are you going to be using the LEDs for?  

[richfiles]

the navball has crosshairs, basically two meters, with needles that cross over the surface of the ball. Where they cross (hence the name crosshairs), is where the active marker is. The crosshairs function like the markers on the navball on the KSP screen. The different color LEDs will indicate what marker the crosshairs show, prograde, retrograde, normal, anti-normal, etc. They will be the left column of annunciator LEDs on my DSKY (Picture on page 18). I can only show one marker at a time, due to there being only one crosshair pair, so I will select which marker to show with a rotary switch (on Page 13) to select grade, normal, radial, maneuver, or target, and a toggle switch to toggle between pro or retro/anti.

I'll still need the on screen navball for docking maneuvers, but all general maneuvering ought to still be possible on the physical navball. The reason docking is troublesome, is because it's typical to need to move your target marker relative to your prograde and retrograde markers. I suppose you could still do it, but that'd be a LOT of flipping back and forth to compare between two markers, when your hands need to be on the controls. Maybe I can have a 6th position that auto toggles back and forth between grade and target modes? Hmm??? I wonder if that would be good enough to actually work?

Edited January 3, 2017 by richfiles

[c4ooo]

Alright, i see. 

I still haven't gotten the hang of docking, (my current computer is a bit to slow for KSP to be enjoyable, so i haven't been playing it much ), so cant really comment on docking. One thing that would be cool though is if your DSKY could run programs, like circularize, suicide burns, and maybe even docking  (Not currently possible with KSPSIO though)

Edited January 6, 2017 by c4ooo

[richfiles]

Not sure how long it'll be for my next update... It would appear my computer has decided to go on strike. I was restarting for an update, and just poof. shuts down without warning and never comes on again. When I press the power button, it trips the power supply's protection circuit, and lights the red status LED on the back of the case. Not cool! 

I find that I have to unplug the 8-pin CPU power cable for it to not trip the power supply's protection circuit. The motherboard still lights up all it's standby LEDs, and without the CPU power cable plugged in, it'll try to start, the PSU status LED goes green, till the mobo shuts itself down (due to the CPU power cable not being plugged in), and the PSU returns to it's orange standby mode...

Either it's the PSU, or the motherboard. The Power supply might have either 12v2 or 12v3 failed (the PSU has six 12 volt power rails, 12v1-12v6). The 8-pin CPU power cable is supplied by 12v2 and 12v3. The WORSE scenario, is the power regulation on my motherboard has failed. I worry about this, as I have had similar startup issues on another power supply with this motherboard. Both my CPU and mobo were end of life products. the Intel i7 3770K was LITERALLY the highest end, and very last of the LGA1155 socket CPUs, before they switched to the LGA1150 socket. It basically means if the mobo is bad, I have to literally find a 3-4+ year old motherboard to use with my existing CPU, or I'm forced to replace CPU, Mobo, and RAM all at the same time. 

Right now, I'm stuck using a single core Pentium 4 right now... 
Life is pain. We are all slowly dying, but this PC is apparently even slower than that... 


Meanwhile, I decided to work on my DSKY for a bit. I have the annunciator LEDs soldered and mounted to the main digital readout board. Still no control circuitry. I also marked a sheet of alodine treated aluminum for the windows for the LEDs and the keypad. Alodined aluminum has a gold color to it. It's a chemical passivation process that isn't as nice as proper anodizing, but for materials I have on hand, it'll do just fine. The goal is to create a panel to make the DSKY stand out from the rest of the panel. The alodine process was something I commonly performed on parts for military and aerospace products that we used to make at my old job.


Trust me, the other side looks nice. This side is the side I'll do my cutting on. I think I have an idea of HOW I'll do the cutting. Rather than try to free hand it with a dremel, or destroy my arm hand sawing it, I'm going to screw the plate to a piece of wood. That piece of wood will itself be attached to a narower piece of wood that I'll be able to clamp onto my mill. I'll use my smallest endmill and just cut the borders. Any corner that I want sharply 90 degrees, I can use a file on to finish off. i might leave a small rounded corner on the display windows though. I'm also trying to find a filter to go over the LEDs that will give a uniform nondescript appearance, but that can also shine through from underneath. I'll have to research filter materials when i have my regular computer up and running...

Even when my main Kerbal rig is dead as a no revert/no resurrection rapid disassembly victim... I'm still thinking Kerbal! 

I feel so helpless without my main rig... Since it's a Hackintosh, it has Mac formatted drives, so I can't even pop my data onto this old PC... I'm stranded... 

**EDIT**
Finally popped all the keycaps off the DSKY keypad and replaced the yellow LEDs with red/green bicolor LEDs. I had enough green LEDs to cover all 19 keys, but then I realized how freakin' cool it'd be if the whole keypad would flash red in any alarm state (High Temp, Master Alarm, etc)! 

Edited January 9, 2017 by richfiles

[richfiles]

She lights up like a Christmas tree!
A beautiful Christmas tree that's telling you you have a high temp warning and are about to pop! 

So this will be a part of my Master Alarm system. The DSKY keypad will normally stay lit green, but in conditions that would trip an alarm or an error, the DSKY will flash between red and green. Simple, but attention grabbing! 

I also have a longer YouTube Link showing the DSKY fading and doing other effects. I could transition to orange/yellow as well, if I adjust the duty cycle.

**UPDATE**
Confirmed... Motherboard is dead... 
I was given an old Core 2 Duo machine, which is a definite upgrade from the single core Pentium 4, but I haven't set it up... The i5 tablet I'm borrowing is better. Waiting on response from Gigabyte, and hoping repair are A: Possible, and B: affordable. If that option fails, I've also asked on a forum what a good replacement board would be that ditches features I don't use, but still maintains my Hackintosh compatibility. I'd like to just plug my SSD back into a new board and it boot.

Edited January 15, 2017 by richfiles

[c4ooo]

A month ago i had bought a bunch of parts from china; unfortunately my ebay shipping address was outdated and they where not sent to me. Therefore, last week i reordered the parts. I was surprised however, when i revived one of my original packages yesterday. All in all, this means i may have twice as many parts as I need. I guess i will sell the extras or something, since i likely wont need the extra joysticks, voltmeters, 7 seg displays and adruinos for future projects. 

Meanwhile, i have still been designing the actual panel layout in cad, now that some of the parts are shipped, i have a better idea of what should go where.

Just my monthly progress report, bye for now

[richfiles]

Well, Aside from the small oops at the lower right corner, I milled out the window for my tape meter. I want to remove that big crown gear and replace it with something that's a lower profile (Gotta push/drill out a very stubborn pin to do that). If I replace the crown gear with a standard gear, I can interface it with a motor set behind the tape meter, rather than beside it. As for the tape itself, I will flip the tape inside out, and stamp the altitude values from 0-9990 (repeating digits are limited due to the number of stamp sets I have) on the blank side of the tape.


My mill is pretty small, and I'll admit I was a bit impatient and took some thick cuts during my passes. Living in an apartment also meant i ran the mill at a far lower speed than i'd have liked, to avoid bugging the neighbors. As a result, I got a bit of chatter, but from the front, it looks pretty decent. I honestly didn't even see that wide cut in the corner till I saw it in the photos. Not sure if the flash highlighted it? I dunno. You'll notice I left a pair of milled points in the metal at the center of the window to serve as my pointer. I figured that would be the best way to provide my indication mark, since I had to cut the metal anyway. I really like how it turned out!


The part slipped out of my vice while I was trying to cut the massive switch frame off the side of the tape meter. I honestly almost broke it when that happened.  Things got a bit hairy for a moment. Made me glad my mill had a conveniently placed emergency stop button. Never underestimate the importance of big red buttons!  In the end, I was able to bend the thing straight again, and finish cutting the switch frame off. With the switch frame in place, there was barely room for the vice to grip it, hence the little "incident". While cutting it, you can see I bit into the post of one of the spindles, though it does not affect anything. I had to bore it down from both top and bottom to reach all the way through, and I didn't bother to line up the bores. I just wanted it cut off, and ultimately, that's what I did. It's as messy a cut as they come, but that's all gonna be hidden away, and I couldn't care less about it. The window and the tape are the only things that really matter.

Someday, a real machinist is gonna see this... and cry! 

When installed, It'll have a sheet of polycarbonate to serve as a window, and it'll have some LED lighting to illuminate the tape. I will try edge lighting the polycarbonate, to see if that sufficiently illuminates the tape, but otherwise, I'll have LED lighting inside the tape reel box. I still need to find out what type of ink I need to be using for such a flexible surface, so sometime I'll have to stop by a local screen printing shop and see if I can buy something there.

As far as the drive gear goes, I've considered both direct meshing gears, but also pulley drives as options. A toothed belt has the benefit of not slipping, and since the tape inside is spun on a toothed drum, I know that if I put an index on the drum (or gear/pulley), that I can always re-home my tape position with every single index pass. That's not to mention the option of simply using a motor with an encoder. Since I will have fixed travel, I can actually rely on the encoder to provide reliable position feedback... Now if only i could get the existing gear off... The set screw was easy to loosen, but it has a set screw AND a friction pin, and that pin has some red crud that isn't letting it budge! 

Edited February 1, 2017 by richfiles

[richfiles]

Great news! Another productive weekend! 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cwm_xQZsFo

The bottom row is lit, trust me... The bottom display is dim because it is running my old test program. The old test program expected a red LED display there, which was of a high brightness variety, thus the brightness was turned down in the code. it will be the same brightness as the other LEDs when the programming is updated... Something I can't do at the moment without re-downloading the Arduino software and installing it to the tablet I'm borrowing. Still haven't gotten my motherboard replaced... 



While I did not have time to start work on the diode ROM circuitry for character generation on the units alphanumeric displays, I did complete all the wiring for the actual numeric readout displays on my DSKY. 5 pins provides power, ground, and SPI data to drive all 5 lines of the DSKY. I'm running a burn in test as I type this, and will let it run for a while to make sure I won't have any troubles. The LED modules came from Mouser, a proper electronic components distributor, and not ebay. I expect better results from these than the Chinese garbage I got before. I actually wired the entire thing without any schematics or references. I also may have wired the displays in SPI device order from bottom to top... Oh... uhh, yeah... I totally meant to do that! 

And yeah... Cutting and stripping insulation from all those bits of wire, and then soldering one end to the PCB and using tweezers to hold the other end to solder it to the LEDs... It took a while. 



While not wired yet, I did start the basic wiring for the annunciators that label the numeric displays. This was mainly because the annunciators for apoapsis and periapsis are harder to get to than the other annunciators, due to their positioning. I wanted to get their wiring started while it was still accessible. I still need to add a resistor to each pair of LEDs, and then wire that into a transistor to drive each bank of LEDs. The annunciator LEDs vary from 2 to 8 LEDs each, and LEDs will typically be wired in banks of two in series. I'll control each transistor from either an Arduino line, or from a shift register or port expander... I have a few of the latter on hand, even if they are overkill.

The diode ROM mentioned before uses diodes to selectively light segments of the alphanumeric displays to generate each unique character. Each character is selected by one signal line, and before the diodes will be a 1-of-x selection logic to convert from a source signal (probably binary coding) to the individual character select signals. It's a technique also referred to as "diode steering". I can't drive the 14 segment alphamnumeric displays with the MAX7219 boards, because they are common anode. My spool of over 9000 diodes tells me that diode ROM is how I will handle it... 

The other thing I need to consider is whether I need to enable the display of all SI unit prefixes or not. I'll have to do some experiments maybe, to see what units are actually displayed by KSP. I had another thread asking the question... and quite frankly, the responses left me as uncertain as I was when I posted the thread. Currently, It looks like there are 11 units to display, but not all displays must display every unit. Some displays might only ever display a single unit, and could thus be hardwired, or maybe wired for two units, switched by a single I/O line. It's hard to imagine many space vessels needing more than 99999999 m.S (the displays can do "m.S", but can't put a slash between, so no "m/S"). I suppose I could toggle "m.S" and "K.S"... that covers up to 333x the speed of light. That ought to be enough!  I can also display  "ΔV" on the alphanumeric displays. Again, some displays might have static hard wired characters dispalyed, or have a very limited set of possible characters displayed, but anything related to distance has to cover a wide range of scales including up to m, km, Mm, Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm, and Ym. I don't know if KSP goes higher than that. The sad truth, is it's been far too long since I've played, and with my motherboard dead, it's not as simple to boot into the game. I suppose I could run it on this tablet.

What that all comes down to is that there are 9 SI units... I could use 3 bit encoding if I eliminated one unit and got it down to 8. I can probably eliminate km from the apoapsis and periapsis, as the game does favor sticking to meters up to the first 999999 m. I'm not 100% certain on dropping km though... I don't think I actually need it for those readouts. If I get it to 1-of-8 encoding, then I can also use the 74HC138 3-to-8 line decoder chips I already stock (thanks to my use of them on my robots). Those chips decode 3 bit binary to 8 outputs, exactly what I'd need to drive an 8 character diode ROM.

Edited January 3, 2021 by richfiles
12 Hours in, and no dead segments! :D

[richfiles]

Hmm... Maybe I should make a single diode ROM with a 4 bit character select and a 4 bit display select, and then multiplex the alphanumeric LED displays... Hmm... It'd only take a single 74HC595 and a pair of 4-to-16 decoder circuits (4x 74HC138 plus one inverter chip with at least a pair of free inverters) to address up to 16 of the alpha displays, as long as the Arduino can update it fast enough for persistence of vision.  While I COULD software control it, I could also try doing a 4 bit counter and a hardware solution. It'd likely be slightly complex, but still probably a lower part count than individual diode character ROMs for each alphanumeric display.

Why diode ROMs though? Cause I can. I love old school tech, and just wanna make some part of this build super old school! 

For now, I'm just gonna build a ROM card that can drive every character I need, and go from there.

*EDIT*
I did a diagram for a full ROM, and then figured out a viable layout for it. I decided to add a "segment test" character row that allows me to perform an all segments self test, and is structural!  You'll get it when I have pics. My struts perform logic! 

Edited February 7, 2017 by richfiles

[richfiles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjf7sO0aXUA
It's ALIVE!!! My units are lit up! I really like how the units ROM turned out. The module is tiny! It's small enough to fit within the footprint of each pair of alphanumeric displays. I still have some work to do, but not much. I can either build two more of these, or try multiplexing. I built this one tonight. A complete module takes me about one full afternoon+evening, so it's not unreasonable to just build two more. It also occurs to me that the wiring to parallel up all the alphanumeric displays, while simpler, will still take some time to do, and that would still require software multiplexing control. Quite frankly... I enjoy the hardware element too much, and find software tedious. I'd say my decision is made. I'm going the multiple ROM modules route. I can control them all with a simple shift register chain.

It is capable of displaying m, km, Mm, Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm, Ym, m.S, ΔV, --, as well as an all segments test character.


Well, here's one complete Diode ROM module. It is a 270 bit capacity module that produces 30 LED segment outputs based on selecting one of 13 character select inputs. Thankfully, 0 bits are represented by the absence of a diode. Every zero bit makes the soldering just a bit easier!  Ultimtately, there are 100 ones and 170 zeroes, so that means there are exactly 100 diodes in the complete ROM (technically, i need 8 more diodes in the interconnection between the to boards, so the final total will be 108 diodes). The module is in two segments. The larger segment drives the first alphanumeric LED display, and the smaller unit drives the second display. The sockets on the side are to interconnect the two modules into one unified module (4 required wires are not shown in the photo)

It's exactly 2 inches (4.9 cm) tall and 1 inch (2.45 cm) wide. Overall both the tall and short board stacked together, it's 1.25 inches (3 cm) thick. Each board is 0.7 inches (1.7 cm) thick, but they overlap a little bit. This is essentially what's inside a mask ROM chip, only made with individual diodes. A mask ROM is simply a matrix of rows and columns with a "fuse" or diode at the intersection of every logical "one". A ROM chip contains addressing logic as well. My addressing logic will be on another board, and will consist of a pair of 74HC138 3-to-8 decoder chips and one inverter chip, per display pair. I'll use shift registers to send the 4 bit binary value for each character to display.

Due to me being dumb, I forgot to install resistors before installing the socket for the ROM.  This means I need to desolder the socket, install the resistors, and then reinstall the socket. It's also why I have not tested the second LED display ROM module with the first... I have tested the second character module, and it works, but I've only tested it individually. For testing I used a current limited power supply, but that only works for single diode fan-out. The second module relies on two diode fan-out when paired to the first module, and that means a voltage drop of 1.4 volts, instead of just .7 volts. That's a significant portion of the forward bias voltage for the LEDs. It means the second module wouldn't even light with my current supply setup. I need to install the current limiting resistors onto each LED pin, so I can then run the power supply at 5 volts, with no current limit. That means 3.6 volts will still reach the second module, and be enough to light the LEDs.

So yeah, that's why I don't yet have pictures of the second character lit up. I'll update with those pics when I figure out the resistor values.


I told you guys I was planning on utilizing "structural electronics". My struts really do perform actual logic! And boy did I add moar struts! 


You can see the first character module socketed onto the DSKY main board, and more specifically, how small the unit is. It's about one pin spacing taller and wider than the pair of alphanumeric displays, and vertical clearance between the displays allow the modules to be mounted adjacent to each other.

One thing I'll do differently... I'll make a diode schematic for each of the four sides individually. I had to go back and fix a few rows I initially started wrong, thanks to reading the pin numbers wrong. Also why I checked each row as I soldered them in. If I didn't get a fully formed, correct character with each added row, then I fixed it before moving on.

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by richfiles

[Kerbal007]

Hi all, busy father of two here, I wanted to build a simpit or controller but rl got out of control. 

If there are any entrepreneurial peeps here that want to make a buck helping me get started with plans or even a build i would be happy to pay. I would love more immersion or something i can build on. Maybe even if you can provide me with a plan ill gladly negotiate a generous payment please if you can pm me it would be appreciated. Love all your work !

[c4ooo]

11 hours ago, Kerbal007 said:

Hi all, busy father of two here, I wanted to build a simpit or controller but rl got out of control. 

If there are any entrepreneurial peeps here that want to make a buck helping me get started with plans or even a build i would be happy to pay. I would love more immersion or something i can build on. Maybe even if you can provide me with a plan ill gladly negotiate a generous payment please if you can pm me it would be appreciated. Love all your work !

Well if your going to build this thing, you are going to need a few things: 

1) Some knowledge about electricity/circuits

2) An arduino to link the game with the buttons and other things on your panel. (You will need the KSPSerialIO plugin to make the game talk to the arduino)

3) some basic programming knowledge. You will need to program the arduino to receive data from the game, update the control panal, and send data from the control panel back to the game. This may sound difficult, but it really doesn't require to much programming knowledge. You can seek programming help at the KSPSerialIO thread.

4) A GPIO expander. Even the arduino mega only has so many pins, meaning there is a limited amount of LEDs/switches you can hook up to it. A GPIO expander will allow you to access more buttons/LEDs. I will be able to help you build one when you cross this bridge - running out of pins. (My GPIO expander is pictured in one of the posts above)

5) Parts to actually make your panel out of. These include switches, buttons, LEDs, voltmeters and 7 segment displays and joysticks. By these from China as otherwise they may be expensive!, but be prepared to wait a month for shipping. :3

 

But, before starting to build or really design anything, make sure to figure out what you want on the control panel - what do you want to be able to do from the control panel?

Hope this helps

Link to KSPSerialIO thread: 

 

First post in that thread lists what data the plugin allows you to send and receive.

Edited February 9, 2017 by c4ooo
Fixed spelling - android spellcheck is worthless

[Kerbal007]

22 hours ago, c4ooo said:

Well if your going to build this thing, you are going to need a few things: 

1) Some knowledge about electricity/circuits

2) An arduino to link the game with the buttons and other things on your panel. (You will need the KSPSerialIO plugin to make the game talk to the arduino)

3) some basic programming knowledge. You will need to program the arduino to receive data from the game, update the control panal, and send data from the control panel back to the game. This may sound difficult, but it really doesn't require to much programming knowledge. You can seek programming help at the KSPSerialIO thread.

4) A GPIO expander. Even the arduino mega only has so many pins, meaning there is a limited amount of LEDs/switches you can hook up to it. A GPIO expander will allow you to access more buttons/LEDs. I will be able to help you build one when you cross this bridge - running out of pins. (My GPIO expander is pictured in one of the posts above)

5) Parts to actually make your panel out of. These include switches, buttons, LEDs, voltmeters and 7 segment displays and joysticks. By these from China as otherwise they may be expensive!, but be prepared to wait a month for shipping. :3

 

But, before starting to build or really design anything, make sure to figure out what you want on the control panel - what do you want to be able to do from the control panel?

Hope this helps

Link to KSPSerialIO thread: 

 

First post in that thread lists what data the plugin allows you to send and receive.

Thank you mate, I own an arduino and a pi but i think ill go for a mega, what Ill do is mock up something in cardboard or ply and do as you suggest planning, I suppose what I really want is to employ the skills of a talented artist haja to make the final product look worth. I saw alot of cool effort with labling switches etc that just was the bees knees. Mine would look like a 5yo did it.. not that thats un kerbal haha

[richfiles]

I realized none of my pics really offered a sense of scale for my Diode ROM, so i took one next to a AA and a AAA battery for scale. Sorry, I had no bananas. 

[c4ooo]

On 2/9/2017 at 8:02 PM, Kerbal007 said:

Thank you mate, I own an arduino and a pi but i think ill go for a mega, what Ill do is mock up something in cardboard or ply and do as you suggest planning, I suppose what I really want is to employ the skills of a talented artist haja to make the final product look worth. I saw alot of cool effort with labling switches etc that just was the bees knees. Mine would look like a 5yo did it.. not that thats un kerbal haha

Hmm, I too am wondering how to make labels for switches. One option is to go to a decal printer. I have free access to 3D printer at school though, so I was thinking it might be possible to 3D print text and symbols a few layers thick. Not sure if feasible though. (Alternatively I could print the text / symbols on paper, cut out the parts with ink, and use the remaining paper as a paint mask - although this will be hard for thin symbols) For the actual casing I will just go with wood spray painted black - don't have the tools to work with metal.

Edited February 12, 2017 by c4ooo

[Freshmeat]

The best panel I have seen was done by buying printed dibond. It gets expensive real quick, but that was the way @Mulbin made his. Someone else, I think it was @stibbons used printed decals. OTOH, the real Soyuz used to have labels printed on paper with transparent film above it. Making a stencil that thickness is next to impossible, I tried it. I also looked into making a x-y bed for my drill so I could use it to cut letters into plastic, and gave it up. 3d print is on the scale 0.2 mm, which is far to coarse for letters in my opinion. I use paper on painted wood myself. It is not as nice as the expensive solutions, but very cheap and easy to make and remake.