Are there any lights or indicators that can be switched on/off with action groups?

[Kerba Fett]

I realize that lights can be toggled with action groups, what I'm interested in is lights that can be set directly to an off or on state.

Since I've been playing KSP I've had a number of times where I had engines controlled by action groups. This ranges from orbital tugs with prograde and retrograde engines, to VTOL's and Munbus type ships with hover engines as well as prograde and regrograde engines. Setting up engines to activate or deactivate with action groups is very simple and you can even use lights to mark which engines are active. The problem is you need to manually set up your lights to indicate active engines, you cant make them go directly to the correct state. Also pushing the U key will throw them out of sync.

While I was originally thinking of lights since that's what I've used in the past, they wouldn't actually need to cast light to be useful. A simple little surface mount box with a glowing indicator might serve just as well. Green when activated and red when deactivated.

These could indicate the status of engines, karbonite or kethane converters, status of OKS/MKS modules or anything else you can switch on or off with action groups.

Is anyone here aware of a mod like this or even just direct switchable lights? If not, does this sound like an interesting project any of you want to take on?

[akron]

You can change the color of lights in the VAB. One way to do this is to launch a vessel with two lights near the engine. A red and a green. You can then set their states to toggle on/off with the same action group key that toggles the engine. However, I am not aware of a light mod that automatically changes color with another part's activation.(Other than the MechJeb box, which changes color when MechJeb is turned on/off)

[CaptainKipard]

I think Aviation Lights let yet you switch on, off or toggle.

[Diazo]

Is anyone here aware of a mod like this or even just direct switchable lights? If not, does this sound like an interesting project any of you want to take on?

I just did a quick check and the stock lights at least have "Turn Light ON" and "Turn Light OFF" actions which would qualify as direct switchable lights wouldn't it?

As for detecting the state of the attached part and automatically changing, that would require a mod and I'm not aware of one that currently does it.

D.

[Boomerang]

Also, while you're setting up your action groups, click on the 'Lights' category. All the lights that would normally be toggle on/off by the U key will be there. You just have to click their name in the left hand column to remove them from that list.

So, for example, you can bind engine A and its corresponding indicator lights to the 5 key, remove those indicator lights from the 'Light' category, and you should be good to go. This also works for wheels whose brakes you don't want activated by the B key (to prevent flipping), etc.

[Kerba Fett]

Thanks guys. I just had a look at the stock lights and they have an option to turn them off or on. They must have added that recently since the last time I used lights with action groups I'm sure the only option was toggle. While I could tweakscale the stock lights down for indicators I'll check out the aviation lights. If they have on/off switching like stock that's exactly what I was asking for. :^)

Boomerang, that's a great tip about removing lights from the switchable list. I was hoping that would carry over to the staging action group to remove items from the staging stack, but no such luck.

Thanks for all the replies. They were quite helpful.

[Gaalidas]

They've actually been there for a long time (at least, by my perspective, since I bought KSP when it was just moving out of version .18) but sometimes the most obvious things can go completely unnoticed. For instance, when I was having trouble with action groups in my early days, I'd discovered the on/off settings but not the toggles. For many parts, especially modded ones, the toggle was labeled as simply "toggle" but not what it was toggling. So, in the action group setup you could have as many as six different items simply labeled as "toggle" with no other identifier. It wasn't until I started searching teh forums for the answer when finally my brain caught up with me and I discovered that the toggle was related to the actions they were displayed under and it all became clear. Before that, I thought there was something wrong with the hot keys themselves and had attempted to fix the issue by editing the KSP configuration files manually to make them into "toggle" keys. Needless to say, I failed because that wasn't even applicable to my problem.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Gaalidas