Mustard: Merci pour les vids et infos. Je t'écrirai bientôt
The ISSU project plans to make an ISS that actually generates/stores/uses/depletes power. Solar tracking was one of our wishes, but I don't know what else would be needed in order for the arrays to actually generate & send power to the batteries.
Hi Pete,
an ambitious project, to be sure! Well, I'm no C++ whizz - all I can do is make .dll's for Orbiter, working within the OrbiterAPI.
As far as power generation from the Solar Panels goes, I guess it will be (roughly)proportional to the sine of the angle of incidence of the Sun on the panels (and zero during eclipse). You could calculate that in an MFD(or seperate vessel) if you know the rotation angles(animation states) of the Panels. However, I don't see any GetAnimationState() type functions in the OrbiterAPI (unless someone out there knows better!).
What I could do, as a workaround, is create a "zero-thrust thruster" for the P3/P4 module and set the thruster level proportional to the
Sun->Panel angle (or sine thereof). You could then use the GetThrusterLevel() function to read it from an MFD,etc.
Maybe someone who knows more about C++ can suggest a better way.
RussH said:
Hi, Brian
From my research I found that docking ports do not rotate with the ship, but attachment points can be rotated. I am happy to see you take this project over to be honest I got in over my head on this project and could not finish it. Mustard is a good guy to work with.
Hey Russ,
Well, you weren't doing so bad , as far as you went. I've done the rotating attachment points, sun tracking,etc. before so I know where I'm going. You need to make friends with the sine/cosine functions and google for "vector rotation"! ;-) And, yes, I've worked with Mustard before, always a pleasure to code for his beautiful meshes.
Cheers,
Brian