Using critter sensor to count eggs

[ardoria]

Hi. I am encountering issues when using critter sensors to count Pacu eggs.

The goal here is to keep only 1 Pacu in the breeding chamber at all times. I try to do this by counting the number of eggs the Pacu in the breeding chamber lays so that the egg laid on its 20th cycle will end up on the chute in the top left. The egg hatches 5 cycles later replace the breeding Pacu once it expires at age 25.

Whenever I load up this save, for some reason, the counters find 277 items in the room during one tick or so just after unpausing and the game tries to refresh everything.

Is this a known issue with Critter Sensors? I could try to come up with a different solution, but I am disappointed that this breaks every time I want to load up the save.

 

Another possibly related issue is with regard to Shove Voles:

Critter sensor erroneously senses 4 critters for one game tick despite normally reporting 25 whenever a regolith block appears. This isn't really an issue in this setup, but this was my first hint to the buggy behavior of critter sensors.

[Yunru]

My suggestion would be to add a filter/buffer gate just to cover the issue.

Although as to where the issue is coming from...

[Nxf7]

4 hours ago, ardoria said:

Whenever I load up this save, for some reason, the counters find 277 items in the room during one tick or so just after unpausing and the game tries to refresh everything.

Is this a known issue with Critter Sensors?

Yep, known bug. Doesn't even matter which state it's currently in, it finds a way to toggle to the opposite state for a varied amount of time. Have a filter or buffer or both (if needed) set to at least ~0.7s.

Gets me all confused when I look at a past build and think "what is this 1s filter doing here".

Don't hold your breath for a bugfix.

[ghkbrew]

You could also avoid the problem by counting the eggs with an element sensor on the conveyor rail

[ardoria]

3 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

You could also avoid the problem by counting the eggs with an element sensor on the conveyor rail

I decided to do that and came up with this design. It works reliably now. Thanks!

The build is slightly larger, but the automation is a lot neater. Conveyor element sensors detect any of the three pacu eggs. Counter counts to 10 to close the right chute and let the tenth egg (laid around age 20; Pacu is fed the full 140kg/cycle) to fall onto the weigh plate (green for above 3kg). Weigh plate resets and disables the counter until egg hatches five cycles later. Pacu expires about half a cycle before egg hatches, and cycle repeats as long as there is sufficient algae.

The upper section with the critter sensor is a backup system in which the uppermost auto sweeper retrieves an egg and drops it onto the weigh plate if the breeding chamber is somehow empty for longer than 1 cycle (600 seconds).