Banhi's Automation Innovation Pack in testing now! - 395113

[Mastermindx]

On 2/18/2020 at 8:47 PM, Red Shark said:

I was kinda hoping for a tweaking of the "Critter" sensor to allow folks to test for Critters, Eggs, or Critters+Eggs.

Ah, well. Maybe the next content pack!

I was kindda hoping the critter sensor to allow the selection of which critter and/or eggs we want it to count.  For... like... you know... Be able to know by automation if there is a Puft Prince in a pen or not (among others). 

[Dosephshih]

The hammer sounds very useful as a alarm bell, say running low on water or running low on fuel.

[pether]

2 minutes ago, Dosephshih said:

The hammer sounds very useful as a alarm bell, say running low on water or running low on fuel.

There is new building added for that as well - it displays notification and even can zoom in and pause the game. There is no need to use hammer for that

[Kipen]

I would like to have "color light" like "ceiling light", I just talking about 'color light bulb' not background
"color panel" looks for me like it was from MOD
(I didn't play it, I saw only in Brothgar video)

[TheDeamon]

On 2/18/2020 at 9:45 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

... Except that if you have your generators set up with smart battery operation, the only time they'll run is when power is being used, making power consumption a better metric.

...

Besides, that's kinda how electricity works in the real world.  You can run a generator continually and if there's nowhere for that power to go, then no power is actually being produced.  The instant there's a complete circuit (aka something is consuming power), then the power is produced.  However, the generator is running whether or not this happens.  In the real world, you would see this as wasted fuel.  In ONI, its tracked as over-produced power.  So sensing power production is somewhat redundant because you'll never produce more power than you're using.

Lets say that you want to have a backup generator. You really don't want to run the generator very often, because the fuel is expensive.  For example, perhaps you're on Verdant and haven't found oil, so you're using ethanol to run a petrol generator.  Your other generators do great at running your base most of the time, but sometimes you have some high power grids kick on.  There's now two ways you can run this backup generator.  The first by having a smart battery that turns the generator on when it gets close to zero.  This is the method we've been using, and it works OK, most of the time, but not always.  Now, with this new sensor, you have some more options.  You can stick a sensor on each of the high-power circuits, AND them together, then turn on the generator when they both pop.  Or you can stick it on a backbone grid and when the wattage reaches a certain point, it kicks the generator on.

This is pretty much exactly the use case I have in mind for the wattage sensor. rather than fussing around with smart battery parameters to try to get my generators to work based on an order of precedence. With this I can slap down a wattage meter to manage the on/off status for the stations I want to use as the backbone of my generation system, and now I can use the battery as an actual battery/fail-safe rather than as a core part of managing the on/off status of any given generator. It's always been a bit annoying to build a Smart Battery knowing full well that it will likely only rarely ever be above 50% capacity.

Although, to be honest, I wouldn't mind if the power sensor could be set to detect either condition, power generation OR power consumption and perhaps a third variable: Power Stored(on circuit) as that already exists in game for player use. I can imagine a use case for all three just from the power generation side, never mind the ability to disable/enable specific buildings based on power available/in use.

On second thought, I think Automation access to the (on circuit) power stored variable would likely be the largest simplification to grid management they could do, although it would require some other re-balancing of existing batteries as THAT metric being available to automation would basically nullify any (automation) advantage to using a Smart Battery over a Jumbo Battery.  I guess the "simple" fix on that is they actually create a new variable instead and use that one for power automation instead--The Automation System would only be able to access power storage statistics for Smart Batteries present on the circuit. (Much like actual "Smart Grid" applications in reality, the claim can be that the smart batteries have limited communication capabilities across power wires which other automation tech can use)

[KittenIsAGeek]

8 hours ago, TheDeamon said:

On second thought, I think Automation access to the (on circuit) power stored variable would likely be the largest simplification to grid management they could do, although it would require some other re-balancing of existing batteries as THAT metric being available to automation would basically nullify any (automation) advantage to using a Smart Battery over a Jumbo Battery.  I guess the "simple" fix on that is they actually create a new variable instead and use that one for power automation instead--The Automation System would only be able to access power storage statistics for Smart Batteries present on the circuit. (Much like actual "Smart Grid" applications in reality, the claim can be that the smart batteries have limited communication capabilities across power wires which other automation tech can use)

I have been thinking through applications for using the new wattage meter to control generators.  At 25 refined metal each, they're much less expensive than a smart battery, but they require that you know something about your grid.  Smart Batteries are much more simple as you don't need to know anything about the grid, you only need to know when to turn the generator off and on.  

But you can do some interesting stuff.  Lets say you have a NG geyser that can run one generator continuously with enough NG left over to run another generator 20% of the time.  Normally, I would build two generators and two smart batteries.  The batteries would be set to turn the generators on in sequence depending on the sustained loads of the circuit.   Now I can get a similar effect with one battery and one wattage meter.  One generator connects to a smart battery set to something like 98%-2%, and the other connects to a watt meter set to something like 800 watts.  Any time your load goes above 800 watts, one of the generators kicks on, regardless of the state of the battery.  For low sustained average loads, only the generator on the smart battery will kick on -- and it will get a lot more use out of the battery than older setups.  You're controlling two generators for 225 refined metal rather than 400.  (I didn't count the automation wire, since you'd be using that anyway).   Remember that 20% extra above?  That's about 960 watts.  Stick a reversed transformer after the generators before connecting to your main grid, and if you're able to properly store all the NG that vent produces, you should be able to just forget about those two generators.  Even if your base is using a sustained 3kw of power (presuming you have additional generators somewhere), the transformer will limit the output from the pair of NG generators to 1kw.  One generator will be running continually (wattage meter above 800 watts) and the other will kick in as necessary for the smart battery to cover the remaining 200 watts.

As for a smart grid, if fuel isn't a concern, then you can add a generator and have it kick on when the wattage meter passes whatever threshold.  You shouldn't have to worry about going back and adjusting batteries as you add more generators.  Lets say your main grid uses a sustained average of 4.25kw.  When your cooling network kicks on, usage jumps to just shy of 6kw.  So you have 3 petrol generators.  One is run by a smart battery and will cover the fractions of power between 0 watts and 2kw.  The second generator is controlled by a meter set to 2kw, and the third to 4kw.  If you add fourth generator, set it at 6kw and it'll kick on appropriately.  So at 4.25kw sustained average, you'll have two generators running continuously, and the third kicking in periodically with the smart battery.  If you're reworking a grid and power levels drop, then the generators turn off appropriately.

The problem comes in when you have intermittent supplies such as a steam turbine or solar panels.  Since these are both periodic and have variable power levels, it makes the smart grid approach difficult.  Because of their periodic nature, you want them to always deliver power when they're active.  Because watt meters only look at the overall load, you can't have all your generators on the same grid IF you've got a steam turbine or solar panels.  Instead, you'll have to group generators and use transformers to limit the total maximum power delivered to the main grid.  Lets start with the 3 petrol generators used above.  Lets also add a steam turbine used to offload heat from your cooling system.  Lets also assume that you are using thermo sensors in such a way that the turbine always produces between 800 and 850 watts when it is running.   We're going to assume that your grid is drawing 4.25kw of power.  The turbine kicks in and starts producing 820 watts.  With your current watt meter settings, you still have two petrol generators running, so your total power produced is 4820 watts -- wasting 570 watts of power.  Now lets put a large transformer and a small transformer between the petrol generators and the main grid.  Now the full 6kw of power from the 3 petrol generators can still be applied to the grid, but the turbine (which is directly connected) has the priority.  The transformers will only transfer power as necessary to make up the deficit.  When the turbine kicks on (at 820 watts), the load the petrol generator meters see drops to 3430 watts.  That's one petrol generator and the one on the smart battery.  No power (or fuel) wasted.

So smart grids are definitely something we can do now, they just require some thought.  

[Makaronn]

Would be cool if Sweepy had more variants

[pether]

2 hours ago, Makaronn said:

Would be cool if Sweepy had more variants

Yeah, it would, but ensuring stability of single variant provides quite a lot work at the moment. But I believe sweepy is just a cute prototype and a gateway for future great robotic projects. Once duplicants master one robot, we could expect more of them: Diggy for some mining errands, Scarepip to work on the farms, and many many more. 

Its just one step for dupli-humanity...

[Hatsonblueshoes]

Love this update! I just don't think that the signal selector or signal distributor are really necessary. The number of scenarios where this would be useful are minimal, and it can already be built using standard logic gates (albeit slightly larger).

(Right is a compacted version, left is expanded for readability. Top are selectors, and bottom are distributors)

 

 

[Saturnus]

7 hours ago, Hatsonblueshoes said:

Love this update! I just don't think that the signal selector or signal distributor are really necessary. The number of scenarios where this would be useful are minimal, and it can already be built using standard logic gates (albeit slightly larger).

Yeah, but...

 

[Brian.oni]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but since this is the automation update:  Would it be possible to add automation signals to the rocket fuel tanks (particularly the liquid tanks)?   

I've not gotten that far with rockets to set up liquid hydrogen/oxygen feeds in survival yet, but trying to figure it out in sandbox it seemed like there's two bits of info that would be useful to communicate to systems  1) Rocket is docked - True/False 2) Tank full - True/False.   I imagine those could be combined if you made a single signal out as Green if the rocket is docked and tank not full state.

[thomathy007]

Any chance we could get a 1-tile sized automation bridge? This would help immensely with densely packed logic designs. It could be like a node that allows signals to pass through in a straight line. Basically, a bridge in the vertical and horizontal directions. This would be great for the new ribbons, as well.

[geniusthemaster]

only 12 words could describe my feelings for this update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf49sdKFEdM

 

[bearontheroof]

On 2/27/2020 at 1:13 PM, Brian.oni said:

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but since this is the automation update:  Would it be possible to add automation signals to the rocket fuel tanks (particularly the liquid tanks)?   

I would really like this too, but at least it kinda-almost works already since the command capsule sends an automation signal when launch is ready. I just use that signal to stop sending fuel to the tanks (assuming you're launching rockets to the same destination repeatedly and have dedicated astronauts for them).