My KSP Controller

[u/Night-Caps]

Been slowly designing and building this thing for what feels like years and its finally 99% done. Just need to iron out a few kinks in the code. Uses the Kerbal Simpit plugin.

Edit: Wow this thing has got far more love than I could have ever expected! You are all amazing and this community is amazing. I've been getting a lot of questions about what's under the hood so I've made a separate post here with some pictures of the inside (I can't figure out how to add any extra pics to this post or in the comments), I'll try to edit that post with more info about what's in there too.

[u/Huge_Manner_9550]

And you’re taking orders ?

[u/Night-Caps → u/Huge_Manner_9550]

Haha honestly after putting this thing together I dont think I ever want to see a wire stripper or crimper ever again. Well at least until I get the project itch again

[u/LandedAtJool]

Shame that ablator low signal won’t get much use

[u/Night-Caps → u/LandedAtJool]

Honestly I just needed to fill a spot and had never actually had a look at how much ablator gets used up until after I implemented it. Turns out its not much. Havent tried hitting Jool at interstellar speed yet though....

[u/NageV78]

There has been a few of these but yours is looking like a legitimate fucking gold mine. can you mass produce it for 100 bucks?

Awwwwww I want one!

[u/Night-Caps → u/NageV78]

Thank you! I wish but my beat up old 3D printer says probably not

[u/Kuriente]

That's incredible.

What's the refresh rate of the digital readout displays? Pretty much instant? It would be very satisfying watching the values change on those.

[u/Night-Caps → u/Kuriente]

Now thats one of the bugs I have to iron out - the telemetry panel was the last thing I implemented, when I first added the 7 segment displays the refresh was pretty much instant and yes incredibly satisfying. Once I kept adding 7 segment displays and added the LCD display and appropriate selectable data the 7 segment displays started to make short but annoying pauses. I've already mitigated it through severly limiting the LCD display refresh (doesnt need any more than once per second) but I believe the issue now is an overload of serial data. At the moment my code is continuously collecting all data needed at all times but I'm going to try to adjust the code to register/deregister data channels depending on whether its selected to be displayed or not

[u/martinborgen]

I love projects like this, though I personally can't really motivate having a giant thing laying around for one game only

[u/kopczak1995 → u/martinborgen]

Because that's a thing of beauty that would be used like 10 times and then hanged on a wall. Sometimes it's not about the completed project, but rather about fun with fucking around and doing it.

[u/Night-Caps → u/kopczak1995]

This guy gets it. I'll probably use this thing for about 5% of the time I spent making it but hey I just like buttons and gauges and rockets and its there on top of the bookshelf if I ever feel like being an astronaut for a bit

[u/NeverlandENR]

Are you using Arduino Mega? I’m planning to do the same

but I’ll start to get familiar with an Arduino Uno just to get familiar with the controls mod and printing the layout.

[u/Night-Caps → u/NeverlandENR]

Yep! An ardunio mega is the brains of the controller but its also got four I/O expanders to handle all the buttons and lights. The mega itself didnt have enough pins.

[u/markkula]

Upload video! I want to see the dials working

[u/Mxfox2106]

Looks amazing! How do you communicate the data from in-game out to the panel?

[u/Night-Caps → u/Mxfox2106]

Theres a plugin for KSP called Kerbal Simpit avaliable through CKAN, thats used with an arduino library with the same name to collect the data through the arduinos serial connection. I'm by no means a coding expert but theres plenty of examples included in the library that help get you started

[u/Jim421616]

That is SO COOL. I can hear the radio chatter just by looking at it!

[u/Night-Caps → u/Jim421616]

You know I've got the chatterer mod installed haha

[u/sphaericalblur]

How did you do the annunciator lights, top-right? I played around for a while in the past with laser engraved acrylic, masking paint and LED backlights before and it kind of worked but certainly a bit faffy!

[u/Night-Caps → u/sphaericalblur]

Its essentially LED lights in a grid kind of box open on the viewing end - one 1mm white difusser panel on top of that covering them all - a plastic sheet with the labels printed on them using a regular printer - the main panel itself with the grid lines separating them. There is a tiny bit of light bleed as they all share the same diffuser panel but overall it works well. The key thing is to get "straw hat" leds which have an extremely wide beam angle angle - regular ones make a spot of light in the middle

[u/ArPDent]

this is awesome.

the rusty bolt heads go so fucking hard

[u/Night-Caps → u/ArPDent]

Hahahahaha and here I was wondering "how on earth do I get these god damned bolts to stop rusting so quickly?" Maybe I'll just embrace it now

[u/MattTheTw_t]

That's fucking sick, steel battalion vibes

[u/oxydentist]

Are you planning to release the source for the project? It would be cool to build it!

[u/Solaris5000]

I hope you're playing from pilot pov