Hello all,
I made good progress with sanding and filling the hull. The stern section is now getting close to being able to making the mold.
Still I'm not fully there yet.
Here is still some work to be done, especially the bulbous bow and the point where the bulb transfers into the bow still give me troubles and have been extensively modified after several measurements in the last weeks.
The joysticks turned out to be broken (giving poor and wildly varying resistance values) so I'm in the proces of replacing these with PS4 replacement sticks which have hall effect sensors rather then potmeters with the added bonus of more comfortable thumbsticks as well.
The transmitter is not small in any terms but it's just about doable.
The new joysticks do not fit in the PCB's of the old ones (these combine the + and - for both potmeters and maken connecting a bit easier) so I will 3D print new mounting plates.
De nieuwe joysticks blijken net niet op de printplaten van de oude te passen (die maken vooral aansluiten en en verbinden makkelijker door bijvoorbeeld de + en - van beide sensoren met elkaar te verbinden) dus daar ga ik op korte termijn houders voor 3D printen.
Since thursday I picked up working on the UI (user interface), starting from scratch based on a design I made in the past. Here I'm checking whether or not the texts are large enough to be readable and if everything works out alright. Now I need to check in sunlight and in the dark how it will look. For sailing in the dark I will add to LED's on either side of the screen pointed down to the joysticks to illuminate only the joysticks like I have backlighting in the add-on for the main propulsion joysticks.
When the program has started, you'll be greeted with this screen. At this moment there is now functionality behind it, that I will program in the coming time. I'm quite happy with the lay-out since the multitude of information is displayed in an orderly fassion, with the eye being drawn straight to the most important information while the deviders work perfectly to make it easy to find what you're looking for. The fog horn (scheepshoorn) is currently added twice so I can go figure out which way is the best for controlling the foghorn and the best will end up in the row of checkboxes.
Here I will include the live videofeeds from the model, choosing which be selecting the sub tab.
The labels in the lower part of the screen will indicate the current function of the joysticks and will be changed along with the Joystick Function Selector.
Here are the required settings for accurately controlling the propulsion. At this point I've forgotten to add the trim section for in the boat. This is absolutely essential because the direction in which both the PCB and the magnet are placed determins which angle will be displayed. The direction of the PCB can be checked visibly, that cannot be said about the magnet. With these settings I can come as close as possible to having the angle of the joysticks, the command and the thrusters match. I might also add the settings for the cranes to this tab due to available space. For each crane I will have a startvalue (for it's resting position), a minimum and maximum value and if I really feel up to it I might even add a speed limiter so the cranes can move with realistic speeds.
With things progressing as they do now I maintain having hope that I can actually finally sail this model the way I wanted for 17,5 years now.
Greetings Josse