#Devlog 001 — The Beginning of Nyx (I call the light sails Nyx, because why not)

Started building the computational simulator for my project on passive beam-riding stability of interstellar lightsails.

What I implemented:
-A Gaussian laser beam model to simulate how beam intensity changes from the center outward.
-A rectangular lightsail simulator divided into tiny surface patches.
-Calculations for net force and net torque acting on the sail.
-Support for changing the sail’s position relative to the beam.
-Support for x-axis and y-axis tilts, allowing the sail to change orientation.
-Validation tests showing that centered sails produce near-zero torque and that results converge with increasing resolution.
-The beginnings of a 3D geometry engine, including a hemispherical lightsail generator using spherical coordinates.
-3D visualization of the hemispherical sail to verify that the geometry was generated correctly.

(Am currently working on the the force and torque calculation for the spherical sails)

(The test cases are for tilted says, the first one is not tilted at all and the last one is tilted 90 degrees)

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

ASTROPAD UPDATE:

i wrote the firmware for it :)

(i lost a lot of time due to the Lapse problems yesterday)

DEVLOG 3

final devlog for this project. so i added a help command and a way to screen shot whilst running a simulation.

DEVLOG 3

final devlog for this project. so i added a help command and a way to screen shot whilst running a simulation.

DEVLOG 2

so last time, i configured the 3d plots wrong so they didnt plot anything

have fixed it now

DEVLOG 2

so last time, i configured the 3d plots wrong so they didnt plot anything

have fixed it now

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

yeah, so i made the plate and a case for it

it looks BAD but my first time using fusion so ig its fine

AstroPad

I am making a macropad that shall help in many aspects of my life. Such as space, space and space (I am planning there to be study and programming modes as well, but thats for later)

The PCB holds the Microcontroller, four Keys and a pin connector for an OLED screen (for space visuals) and traces (my jokes are bad)
It was my first time at making a PCB an I think I did not do a good job, but I’m happy with it.