Impractical Effects!! Or, "Testing... 1... 2..."

Having a cyclic attention span, and being under ridiculous stress house hunting, I decided to tinker with some led projects and renew my Arduino LED skills a bit, so I hard-soldered some LED modules last week. I was happy with the effect and left my "scanner" running on the shelf for a week or so.

While digging in my parts bin to repair a bad capacitor on a tattoo machine, I found my 2 8-channel relay boards. I have never used them. Never even hooked them up. I had about a dozen high output Cree LEDs wired up and sitting, unused. Suddenly, I had an idea...

The output from the Arduino drives the LEDs in sequence, so I pulled signal lines from the breadboard and fed them into the relays. Separate power was supplied by a bench power unit from a tattoo kit someone sold me years ago. Garbage for tattooing, awesome for running almost anything on the bench.

While its certainly not much more than a seizure machine right now, as proof of concept, I now have 16 channels of controllable power switches that can run anything up to 110 volts with low-voltage signals from the Arduino.

Now the fun begins! As I continue to work on a home for me and the girl, I'm also working out the technical details for environmental controls in the sim.

Practical? Hell no. Fun? You betcha. And it's keeping a little bit of sanity intact.

Another video soon, as my Chinese parts are coming in. More build videos on the way!

Lore - The Madderly's Lady. Part 1, LHS

While to quest for sufficient living space continues, the frustration of not being able to PLAY, let alone build, is driving me stir crazy.

In an effort to keep the dream alive, I'll be posting from notes and adding and revising both the lore and the project notes I have, in the hopes that someone can use them for inspiration.
At the very least, it will be an online repository backup of my paper notes. It's easier to write a web site than physically try to organize the paper at this point.

So kick back, pull up a chair, and I'll tell you the story of the Madderly's Lady, or

 "35 years of "Trying to Build A Spaceship"

3808 - 'Kwuul Starship Guide 2046 - 3468: LHS' 

LanSeng Holdings Shipyard, or LHS, was formed following a devastating attack on the primary headquarters and manufacturing wharfs of LanSeng. The company name was ubiquitous with planetside habitation modules and terraforming cranes, and were in the process of bringing online the largest structural wharf in the Known Sphere when the region was ravaged by coordinated pirate attacks which crippled both the company and the star system itself. In the aftermath, LanSeng brought the wharf online fractionally, allowing them to produce support vehicles in-house to assist with recovery. 

LHS survived, and for a time, thrived as trade routes and mining outfits reclaimed the system with LHS ships carrying the brunt of the workloads. Mining, salvaging, hauling cargo - LHS was there. Easy, cheap, reliable. 

Out of systems sales began four years after LHS returned to service. The ship lines were targeted towards smaller resource extraction and salvage outfits. Since most small haulers were resigned to purchasing outdated military vehicles and stripped-down cast-offs. the core ideas and concepts LHS presented seemed viable and desireable to smaller outfits. And, they were cheap. 

"The present state of LHS shows a company in severe decline. For an industry awash in military and corporate designs, LHS simply does not provide enough variety, performance, or functional cost savings to find success. Sales were lukewarm even at the peak of production." - Drobi Hallas, Starship Review 

In short, LHS provided nearly nothing new to the design or production of medium duty haulers. Engines, base systems and thrusters were considered substandard (at best) and left the TCU series sluggish and lackluster on nearly all fronts. Poor marketing, poor production numbers, and poor performance would have relegated LHS's flagship to obscurity had it not been for a few ingenious mechanics and engineers in the fleet.

Rumors abound as to who discovered the secret strength of the TCU hull design, and where this technology possibly originated from. What is known is entire sections of the starship can be reconfigured and restructured without total disassembly. The bays, compartments and critical spaces can adjust and accomodate equipment up 25% larger or smaller than standard bays. Shipwide intelligent umbilical network systems adapt and adjust into and around changes. In short, an engineering test-bed and handy pilot's dream.  

A skilled team could ater the structure members themselves with resonant tooling. Control, life support and power conduits could be re-routed or replaced without dismantling the suerstructure or exterior hull. Some systems could be reconfigured in vaccuum - no drydock needed!  Rumors of "black box" and alien tech installs in the light freighter soon spread, and the TCU became a sought-after commodity for creative captains and engineers alike.

The primary hull structure features an unusual spine design and moveable “integrity field” couplings that allowed for the framing of the ship itself to be reconfigured without tearing the entire ship apart. While it could be possible to mount an obnoxiously overpowered engine assembly, there’s still only so much space in the hull to mount other equipment, and power management can be an extreme challenge. Modularity creates its own headaches – do you install overpowered shields at the expense of powering thrusters,  jump drives or weapons? TCU captains stretched their ships’ capabilities to the max, and personal choices soon overcame the harsh limitations of the stock line.

The 87xx series offers an affordable chassis and fairly robust subsystem support, and can be seen in many outer-rim systems, but it would be unwise to assume that any of the flight-worthy models you encounter are loaded as “stock”. Mercenary units, occasional pirate factions, and many independent haulers have  retrofitted their ships with augmented weapons, shields, and other technologies that could make them more than combat capable.

Lanseng Holdings Shipyard has currently suspended all production and awaits relocation of their facilities to a more secure system, and rumors of collusion and cooperation from pirate factions has made them the target of official inquiry into business practices. Unconfirmed reports believe several key figures of LHS management have left the company or the system entirely with what little profit the company had. There are no new distributors of TCUs, and the used starship market demand far exceeds the numbers available. TCUs have become a generational design, handed down from pilot to child, each quirky component and operational nuance passed down to the next enterprising member of the line.  

2018 - Back to the Drawing Board!

Back to the drawing board! Or, in this case, the backpack full of notes and sketches I’ve been working on. It’s too damn confusing and difficult to find the information I need, and hell – we all need a hobby. Apparently mine is going to be organizing this mess, until I can start building the pieces!

While we've been in the process of locating and procuring a new building for living and working, I'm drawn back to the project. While I'm not sure I'll have enough space for my grand design, I'm sure there will be SOME kind of sim setup. Eventually...

So, might as well go back to where it all started:
 

The original sketches. 2014

Design aesthetics are all based on ANALOG controls - the best sci-fi sets and cockpits rely on lights and switches to provide a sense of control and complexity. Touch screen displays are awesome and doable with cheap tech available now, but it just doesn't "feel" right to me - give me some green and blue lights and tons of switches! I’ll take blinking mystery panels and clunky boxes over smooth, digital flat panels any day.

Here's one of my favorite concepts - the side control "pad", connected to a pivoting arm off of the main pilot's seat. Multiple planes, chunky keys and a usable MFD within easy reach.

Of course, conceptual stuff is so easy to throw down on a piece of paper - but HOW do I actually CREATE something workable?

I have a 3D printer that frankly needs a little tweaking and love, so I can't really rely on that as a design tool - yet.

I have a desktop CNC machine I bought for waaaaay too much money that works only with proprietary software.

And did I mention that as of right now I have only the limited space for a small work bench and all of my really useful tools are deep in storage.

Ah, well... I can try to design something in software (CAD/CAM and 2D Design) until I can move to real tools.

Various ideas for wall panels and "fill" for the space.

 

Since the original design ideas were for a room-like space to create a full "cockpit", I considered all the elements that would flesh out the environment. Various panels and decorations (hopefully with interactive elements) were developed and as time goes on, I will attempt to incorporate them into whatever design and space works for the space available. It's not like I can dedicate an entire room in almost any of the places I have looked at so far - so how can I incorporate the immersive elements if I'm not even sure how much space I will have available?

It’s all just on paper – plan on having a LOT of room, and scale back as necessary. I'd rather have more ideas than I can use, than stopping design and production to create more.

I’ll be focusing on trying to group all the different notes and drawings into sub-sets, from lore and back-story elements to electronics and display ideas to programming and integrating real-time light and sound feedback.