Building physical consoles for SNIS

Figured I'd start a thread here about my current project to build physical SNIS consoles.

My current plan is to build and use a vacuum form machine to build the cases for the consoles, and then use a Raspberry Pi 4 plus an Arduino for running the client and controlling LEDs and monitoring switches and potentiometers for inputs. I'm currently only planning to build consoles for Navigation, Engineering/Damage control, Comms, and Science, as these can run satisfactorily at 720p on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4Gb (verified myself). Weapons, Main View, and Demon screens do not run quite well enough on the raspberry pi though.

I plan to use some cheap small mini keyboards and mice from Aliexpress for input (Need keyboards for e.g. entering ship name and password at the beginning of the game at the very least, and Comms and Science actually need to type in stuff and use the mouse.)

Nav will use a joystick, throttle and rudder pedals (Thrustmaster something or other) that I already have on hand.

I've got a prototype of using an Arduino to feed inputs to the game from potentiometers working. I have ordered parts to get warning lamps working but still need to write a bit of code for that.


I am also working to build some cheap faux Tellite switches (widely used in old avionics and spacecraft but quite expensive for the real deal). Currently I am designing some 3D printable parts which in conjunction with a couple LEDs and a cheap tactile push button switch should provide a reasonable looking approximation of a Tellite switch. The metallic look on the face plate is accomplished via aluminum HVAC tape. There is a laser cut acrylic lens in front of the paper label which will be backlit by a couple of LEDs. The design as it is today doesn't quite work due to some of the parts not being quite right, but I am hoping to have the design fixed and working within a few days, and I'm happy with my progress so far.


The design for all this is here: https://github.com/smcameron/snis-consoles

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