I created an automated meteor shower regolith drop pit

[darknotezero]

Hi everyone.

So I've been experimenting with ways to clear meteor shower regolith that doesn't involve robominers above the space scanner (and thus interfering with network quality). I haven't done a lot of searching on this online, opting instead to come up with my own weird solution since automation logic in the game has some similarities to an interactive music programming language I use on a regular basis. I recently came up with an answer that I'm proud of, so I thought i'd create an account on here to share what I did and get some feedback.

The key mechanic involves having a "floor" bunker door that uses a bunch of automated logic to:

1. Open the "floor door" at the same time as the "protective door" so when the regolith drops, it drops to an empty space beneath the floor door
2. Close the "floor door" once the regolith is clear (but the "protective door" stays open so it can still scan).

The biggest challenge was trying to deal with finding a way to delay both red and green signals since filter gates can only delay green signals.

My automation overlay is attached. Here's a video of it in action. (unfortunately no sound was captured for some stupid reason)

Details:

When a meteor shower is detected:

Spoiler

When a meteor shower is detected, the space scanner turns green. I send that to a NOT gate that then splits that signal into two different sides.

The "right" side turns all of its filters to red instantly which turns the XOR gate output to red instantly. This gets fed into the Set port of the Memory Toggle.

The "left" side turns the XOR gate right input to red instantaneously (since filter gates only work on green signals) and the left input to green instantaneously. The output of that XOR (green) gets split into two sides of an AND gate, one side of which turns green instantly and the other that starts as green but turns red after 5 seconds. That sends a green signal into the Reset port of a memory toggle for 5s before it turns red.

So the set turns red and the memory toggle turns green and then turns red 5s later. The result of that state is a red output out of the memory toggle which makes the "floor" door closed. The reset port starting at green and then turning to red means that the next time the Set port gets a green, it will output green.

When the meteor shower ends:

Spoiler

When the meteor shower ends, the space scanner turns red.

The first thing that goes off is the right side - the "not" gate sends a green signal and goes through a filter which turns the output green after 2s - tbh i don't remember why i did this, it might have been a buffer  to account for stuff that happens on the left side. That signal sends a green to the right input of the XOR instantaneously which sends a green signal to the Set port, which then sends a green signal to the output that opens the door. 5s later, the second filter sends another green to the left input of the XOR which turns the Set port back to red which does nothing - the output is still green.

In the meantime, the other XOR gate gets a red on the left input. The right XOR input starts off as red but turns to green after 60s. This sets the XOR output to red for 60s - when the XOR gate is red, the AND gate is red, so the Reset Port stays red. After 60s, the change in the XOR inputs turns the output green which turns the AND gate to green for 5s before the filter/NOT gate turns it back red. This results in the RESET port turning to green for 5s before turning back red, which turns the memory toggle output to red, which closes the door. Then the whole process starts again.

The 2s filter gate on the output of the memory toggle (which is in the screenshot but not the video, I changed this after the fact in my actual colony) deals with the fact that somewhere in here, the memory toggle output sometimes flashes green for like 0.5s before turning red at a point when I want the door to remain closed. I'm not sure why, and the whole thing took long enough and was convoluted enough for me to work out that I decided to do a bandaid patch to make it work instead of trying to diagnose and solve it within the main automation itself.

 

It's a pretty large footprint of automation and there might be a better way to do it, but it works for me and since I have a gold volcano I'm not particularly worried about resource management.

It's also not perfect - i need to mess around with my placement/setup of the robominer/s in this system that requires no manual cleanup of regolith that i buffer from the drop to avoid robominer entombment or overheating.

Thoughts or criticisms are very welcome.

 

-M

[Artorias36]

Robo miner will also overheat in around 50 cycles. You need to cool them down somehow.

[ghkbrew]

I've been trying out a similar space setup that might give you some ideas.

Eventually I'll add CO2 vents to cool everything.

 

Automation:

The top filter delays the meteor detection signal so that the bunker doors finish closing just before meteors start.  The not gate inverts the signal so the bunker doors close when meteors are detected. 

The filter/xor combo on bottom will open the mechanized airlocks for 60s whenever the bunker doors open and then close the airlocks after all the regolith has fallen through. They will remain closed until after the next meteor shower ends.

[darknotezero]

oh wow i love that.