The Future of Sub Buddy
 

Its been quiet for a while, but we have some major news about the current state of Sub Buddy and its future on both Apple and Google platforms.

Rather than fill up a couple of screen’s worth of space here, if you’d like to know please read our Press Release over on my site.

Any support related questions for Apple Platform users, please contact myself at: support@ideasoftware.uk

Any support related questions for Google Platform users, please contact daxnova at: support@subbuddyandroid.com

We hope you have found this information interesting and are as excited about Sub Buddy’s future as we are.

Thanks for reading.

Sub Buddy is amazing, but...
 

Sub buddy is great, and I use the TADS computer side every time I hop into my good old friend the type Vii, usually either in Wolfpack or U-Boat. Using it on my iphone just wasn't doing it for me though, so obviously there was only one option available. Reverse engineer it, and build a real one!

It took me a few weeks in total, but it was a fun process. I learned more than I ever thought I'd want to know about slide rules. Then figured out how to use MS Excel to turn those slide rule formulas into useful coordinates for plotting the various rings and tick marks. And finally I learned how to use GIMP and PyFu to automatically and more importantly, very precisely, draw everything out in a file for laser cutting.

Luckily I have an uncle with a pretty sweet workshop, which includes a CO2 laser which we used to cut and etch the final pieces. CO2 is important because the top layer of acrylic has to be transparent, and less expensive laser cutters won't work on clear acrylic. Anyway, after cutting and etching, I just used a little paint to fill in those etched lines, and I had the final product in hand.

It's so satisfying to generate firing solutions by turning the rings on that big hunk of acrylic, and having the torpedos hit their mark! Anyway, I guess you could say I love Sub Buddy a bit too much. But yeah you did an amazing job with that app, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone that's even a little interested in a more realistic vibe.

I'd be interested to see the CAD files for that, and any advice you can give for materials to print the physical shape/colour the appearance.

Not on here too often
 

Sorry for the very late response, I haven’t been on the subsim forums much the last few months due to competing priorities. I’ve jumped back in with fingers crossed that we’ll all get an update soon which includes the engine room role. From what I’ve read, it seems to be open to some testers, but I’m not involved in any of the beta testing so I have to wait.

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. As far as the cad drawings go, I’d be very hesitant to release those because as I mentioned, they were 100% reverse engineered from the sub buddy app (which I purchased of course) and I would in no way want to take away from their work. What I built, I did for personal use only.

I’m happy to share a pic though, if I can successfully upload it. This was the first prototype, but we since had to rebuild the outer ring because the laser got out of sync on a couple passes, and caused a bit of blur for the numbers in part of it.

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pic...ictureid=13377