@FrogDude

FrogPad Devlog 004: FINALLY, MODELING

• Redid the PCB. Again. I got it down to 99.925 mm on the larger side, so now I’m in compliance! Still waiting on a sanity check but hopefully I am finally done with this after (checks notes) THREE HOURS???

• Began modeling my case for this on OnShape. It’s frog shaped. I am nothing if not on brand. I only have the bottom case so far, and I’m aiming to finish the whole thing by the end of the week.

Next steps:

• Finish case
• Code/modify code for firmware
• Write README

SPACE IN YOUR PLACE!

After several months of development, I’ve finally published my first major physics project: A Planetary Body Simulation.

This is a real-time N-body gravitational simulator written in Python using Pygame. The goal of the project was to explore orbital mechanics, chaotic systems, and numerical simulation while building an interactive application that visualizes how celestial bodies move under gravity.

Features

Current systems included in the simulator:

-Solar System simulation
-Binary star system
-Three-body chaotic system
-Gravitational slingshot demonstration
-Lagrange point (L4 & L5) system
-Horseshoe orbit system
-(I want to add more)

Other features:

-Verlet integration (had to spen an AMOUNT of time to ad Verlet)
-Energy analysis (KE, PE, Total Energy)
-Velocity plotting
-Camera controls and zoom
-Trail rendering
-Configurable timestep

Physics Concepts

The simulator uses:

Newtonian gravity
N-body interactions
Orbital mechanics
Energy conservation
Chaotic dynamics

One of the most interesting things I discovered while building this project was how sensitive some systems are to numerical accuracy. Small changes in timestep can dramatically affect long-term stability, especially in chaotic systems.

New Feature Added Today!

Today I added 3D trajectory visualization.

Instead of only plotting motion in X-Y space, the simulator can now generate a 3D graph where:

X-axis = X Position
Y-axis = Y Position
Z-axis = Time

This allows orbital motion to be visualized as a path through time rather than just a flat orbit.

Stable systems produce smooth helical structures, while chaotic systems create much more complex patterns.

This was my first time working with Matplotlib’s 3D plotting tools, and integrating the graphing system with the existing simulation data took some experimentation.

🔧 Challenges During Development

Some problems I had to solve while building the simulator:

-Numerical instability
-Energy conservation issues
-Chaotic three-body behavior
-Restart system bugs
-Data collection for plotting

A lot of development time was spent debugging rather than adding features, but that ended up teaching me much more about simulation and computational physics.

What’s Next?

Potential future improvements:

-True 3D simulation (maybe)
-Adaptive timestep system
-Better visualization tools
-Collision handling
-More orbital systems

Frog Pad Devlog 003: AHHHHHHH

So I had to redo the PCB. Three Times. It was easier than rearranging all the parts to reorder them, but it sure did take a lot of trial and error. I had multiple YouTube Tutorials open; I am sorry to whoever watches my Lapse clips because I made a lot of cuts trying to not count research time.

Most of today was reorganizing my parts for wiring/copper-ing and trying to align all my parts. I was going to do edge cuts today but it’s 10 PM right now and I have to be up in 8 hours. But everything’s connected!

Tomorrow is hopefully edge cuts and updating the silkscreen, then running a sanity check before I do this all over again with OnShape.

🐸🗒️!

FrogPad Devlog 002: PCB? what’s a PCB?

• assigned footprints to the components and added to the PCB builder in KiCad. Twice. I accidentally made my switches LEDs, got very confused by the three tutorials I was referencing, and then asked the nice people in #hackpad for help.

Next Steps (this weekend hopefully):

• Copper wire (?) PCB
• Edge cuts
• Screen Details (lilypads, frogs, cleanup text)
• Make the case!!!

🐸🗒️

FrogPad Devlog 001: what have I gotten myself into

• Tried to make a matrix while keeping pins clear for my OLED plans. I am not sure if I succeeded, will continue with tutorials and stuff tomorrow.