Space Automation Assistance Please

[enterprise12nx]

Hello, ive got a nice almost working giant solar farm setup, i need help automating it, view the pictures first!

 

So what i want is to open the mechanized airlocks when the bunker doors open so the regolith falls through, then i want them to close so the miners will mine it up, then reopen so that the scanners are not inhibited and the solar panels run at max efficiency.

 

I got all of it but the last step of Reopening them, im assuming a memory toggle would do that, but i can never figure them out!

I have the scanners on a timed loop of 50 seconds to activate for 2 seconds as it conserves power.

I would like the Mechanized airlock doors to close soon after it finishes clearing the regolith if possible so i get the best energy and scanner coverage possible, my one idea if this is not possible is to use Pneumatic doors, the only fear is they can be damaged by the heat

 

[suxkar]

I also tried to make a system like this. You will most likely need one scanner always on to keep the green signal during the storm, otherwise the doors might open when the scanners pulse during a shower. Worse, i noticed that sometimes the positive signal of the scanners flickers, mainly during reload, causing the doors to open during shower.
Then, I discover that meteor shower scanners only use power when they are active, so pulsing basically saves energy only during a meteor shower. Can some1 second this, just to be sure?
At this point I gave up the complication since it would save very little power.
SO my 2 cents are: just give up, not worth the effort.

If you still wanna try, my design used a memory toggle that got reset by the single always active scanner. You might want to try that road. I would post a pic but as I said I gave up the idea and deleted it.

On a final note, nice idea using doors for the miners.
 

[enterprise12nx]

I actually leave one scanner on when it detects a storm, using 2 power shutoffs (replace the filter with a 1 second buffer gate)

[abud]

4 hours ago, enterprise12nx said:

soon after it finishes clearing the regolith if possible

How do we know he finishes clearing regolith? Or you want to be timed?

[abud]

You mean working like this?

RoboMiner.mp4

Automation layout

Spoiler

Sorry for the watermark, I was in the middle of trying various recording software. Any suggestion? (free if possible, but if none good enough, paid is ok)

Btw, It should be simpler than this, but that is best what I can right now.

[Sturm58]

btw - your miners will overheat in time... you need some cooling system and something to transfer the heat.

Space is hard

[nakomaru]

33 minutes ago, abud said:

Any suggestion? 

Video: OBS

GIF: LICEcap

[Angpaur]

9 hours ago, suxkar said:

If you still wanna try, my design used a memory toggle that got reset by the single always active scanner. You might want to try that road. I would post a pic but as I said I gave up the idea and deleted it.

For some time none of the scanners has to be active before,during and after meteor shower. Below is my automation for solar power setup. It cuts off power for whole meteor shower time (only one scanner starts to scan after 292s in order to detect meteor shower end) and also 200s before it hits and 92s after it ended. It allows to save quite a bit of power:

[Ketmol]

for some reason it worked for me with a simple not gate + filter gate for delay.

I did not know it was supposed to be this complicated. I just assumed the signal would switch once storm was over... and well it did.

So active signal from Scanners "or" gates connecting the scanner network so any one of the scanner detects meteors signal will switch, not gate to doors so that when scanners go active doors close. Filtergate for a delay since multiple scanners give a very early warning. For me doors opened once shower was over without any complicated setup. I think the reason being that you have a small detection even with doors closed... but not sure.

I should ad that this was not in test branch so not sure if this is true for the most up to date version in the testlive.

 

A short note about cooling in space. you can cool by small amounts of liquid, for example oil. back-plate, like a temp-shift plate behind the machine you like to cool down and a tile below it. Drop some liquid on top of the tile, tempshift plate will make it stay.

Then cool the liquid by running cold liquid through pipes like any cooling done down in atmosphere. 

[Angpaur]

@Ketmol so you have never wondered about optimizing scanner power usage? It has never occured to you that scanners don't have to be powered all the time to provide perfect protection from meteors?

[JohnFrancis]

Scanners are not intuitive at all. They only draw power while actively detecting meteors. If you have say 4 scanners up you can detect mentors 4 times earlier due to combined scanner coverage bonus. However if you close all the doors the scanners lose their bonus so they stop seeing the incoming mentors and open the doors again. I found the simplest solution was a single naked scanner, no protection, I had to repair it regularly but I had no more surprises. Not saying it's a good solution just a simple one.

[Angpaur]

14 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

However if you close all the doors the scanners lose their bonus so they stop seeing the incoming mentors

This s not what happens in case of my build - one pulsing scanner with 0% scanning quality is still enough to detect that meteors are still active and doors needs to remain closed.

[Ketmol]

2 hours ago, Angpaur said:

@Ketmol so you have never wondered about optimizing scanner power usage? It has never occured to you that scanners don't have to be powered all the time to provide perfect protection from meteors?

nope. Well i do get that you can. I just never bothered. At the point of using scanners the power production is usually at a level where there is no need to save that low amount of energy scanners use. Energy efficiency is usually very important early game but not at that stage. But if the topic is about optimizing energy for scanners than I misunderstood it. I thought OP had problems to get it to work at all. Especially since he had not even gotten to the point of getting a cooling solution up and running I did not get that he was asking about the optimization part of energy use but rather just something that made the solar farm work without breakdowns.

But I might have misunderstood the topic...

[Mullematsch]

@Angpaur I uses your design to save space power before, it worked amazingly. Did you stop using water clocks for when to close doors and when to start checking for earliest meteor shower is over? 

Does the design still break if you log out during meteor showers or did the patches fix it recently? 

[enterprise12nx]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

im aware the miners will overheat, i plan to just vent some kind of gas onto them with shiftplates(prob excess co2?)  I want to avoid liquid as it inhibits the amount of light that can pass through to solar panels.

@JohnFranciswhen a scanner detects meteors and closes the doors, it does continue to detect them as long as they dont lose power, they can be completely covered once they detect them.

Im not trying to go crazy with saving power, i think anymore than what i do now will only save a tiny bit of power.

My Goal:

1. Open mechanized airlocks after bunker doors open from meteor shower

2. Reclose them once regolith falls through so the robo miners can mine

3. Reopen them after the robo miners finish mining so light can pass through to solar panels. (As efficient as possible)

[Xadhoom]

my setup is really simple but requires more miners:

the miners is spaced so they will clear the regolith that is formed on top of a miners base.

by placing them high up, i will never have a moment where they get drowned in regolith either.

[abud]

1 hour ago, enterprise12nx said:

My Goal:

1. Open mechanized airlocks after bunker doors open from meteor shower

2. Reclose them once regolith falls through so the robo miners can mine

3. Reopen them after the robo miners finish mining so light can pass through to solar panels. (As efficient as possible)

My bizarre solution earlier didn't work for you? Do tell us what needs to be improved, so others can offer a better solution

[Angpaur]

9 hours ago, Mullematsch said:

Did you stop using water clocks for when to close doors and when to start checking for earliest meteor shower is over? 

Yeah, looks like the problem is fixed and buffer/filter gates now preserve counter correctly on game load. No need for water clocks anymore

[enterprise12nx]

Oh i got it working thanks everyone! i actually used the setup i posted but made a buffer gate next to the filter/not gate on a 155 second timer which re-opens the doors!

[nakomaru]

Any detector can detect from the network minimum time to the absolute maximum time (I think 200s ahead of time).

One at 100% is not enough minimum time to always close the doors in time.

Two will increase your minimum to be always fast enough.

Each scanner will detect separately.

For a simple setup that always works: have two scanners. Only close when both scanners are detecting using an AND gate.

This will wait until the last scanner detects so you don't tend to close too early. And you won't close & open. No timers needed.