MFD Docking MFD for station building

[icedown]

I'm doing some station building in LEO with SSBB and URMS and have had an idea for a useful MFD. A docking MFD that you can specify the vessel and docking port you are docking from. Something similar to the abilities of the Dragonfly but for any vessel, not just docked ones. This would make attaching things via URMS much easier and also eliminate the "flip everything over to line it up" when you have the rotation wrong.

 

[Mojave]

well, if you set NAV1 to the docking frequency, and use attitude RCS MFD, that will orient you.

Doesn't the docking MFD already do what you are asking?

 

[jedidia]

I'm doing some station building in LEO with SSBB and URMS and have had an idea for a useful MFD. A docking MFD that you can specify the vessel and docking port you are docking from.

Maybe I don't quite understand... but you can do what you describe with the normal docking MFD already, use the tgt button.

EDIT: ah wait... that you are docking from. Hmmm. That is actually a different matter, I don't know if you can adjust that...

EDIT2: Yes, you can. The DCK button switches between your available docking ports.

EDIT3: Ok, I think I got it now. You want to select a docking port to dock from while controling another vessel. Hmmm. Visual has always been good enough for me for these things, as you don't have drift with an RMS.

 

[Spacethingy]

You can use externalMFD for this - get it set up for your station part then hit the little pin button - this stops the MFD changing the focus to the current vessel.

But yes - a dedicated MFD for this would be nice.

 

[icedown]

well, if you set NAV1 to the docking frequency, and use attitude RCS MFD, that will orient you.

Doesn't the docking MFD already do what you are asking?

The SSBB modules don't have frequencies, since you can have multiple identical parts it would be confusing also.

You can use externalMFD for this - get it set up for your station part then hit the little pin button - this stops the MFD changing the focus to the current vessel.

But yes - a dedicated MFD for this would be nice.

I wondered what that pin did. Thank you

The issue I'm having isn't drift really, its orientation. Here's an example

I had my XR5 docked to the station and was using URMS to lift the next part out of the XR5's bay and attach it to the station. It was a truss section so there was no real clue to orientation. Apparently I had it 180deg off because when I released it from the URMS, the entire station, XR5 and all flipped over 180 degrees to line up with the part. Not usually a problem but I had a couple of parts that were floating close to the XR5 that were about to go on the truss that I had just attached. Since the XR5 was on the bottom of the station and the truss that I attached was near the top at a 90deg angle to the station, it ended up nearly twice the height of the station from them. Luckily I'm somewhat used to this and have a DGXR1 docked to play fetch when I need to.

The pin should solve my issue. My next ride up will carry a dragonfly with it so it hopefully won't be an issue any more. Thanks for the help.