[Solved] Water pressure gauge for liquid pipes (automation)

[TheJollyKraut]

I was wondering if it would be possible to get some kind of pressure gauge for liquid pipes to allow for the automation of UV Cleaners, Water Sieves, Desalinators etc. based on the amount of liquid inside the pipe feeding it. The idea is to only have those active if there is actually liquid being supplied to them.

My water setup is quite sophisticated, so this kind of automation would take alot of micromanaging off my hands and save me alot of time and eventually also alot of power.

[TheJollyKraut]

bump

[yoakenashi]

There are few ways to accomplish this depending on the specific circumstances.

1) Use two bridges with an element sensor between them. Liquid would normally flow to through the first bridge unless something stopped the flow downstream, causing the flow to bypass the first bridge and pass the liquid sensor. This is an easy way to sense backups (whether intentional or not).

2) Use a liquid valve downstream of a liquid reservoir to determine an average flow rate. For example, if the downstream valve is set to 50% and the tank goes high then you on average more than 5kg/s flow.

3) If your flow rates are constant, such as outputs of water sieves and desalinators, you can use the first idea but replace the first bridge with a valve. If the valve is set to 80%, then the element sensor would sense flows over 80% (ie, packets over 8kg).

Generally if you are looking to run the water sieves and desalninators at constant without cycling due to low and variable flow, the simplest would be to place a liquid reservoir upstream, NOT the automation output, and connect to the water sieve. This would run the eater sieve when the upstream liquid reservoir is full (say 90%) until it is empty (say 10%). The water sieve would then be disabled until the liquid reservoir is full again.

Let me know if any of these would help your situation. If not, we can talk about other solutions that might work for you. Cheers!

[TheJollyKraut]

I've played around with bridges and the Liquid Sensor but I'm not getting any useful results, so I guess I don't quite understand what you're suggesting.

What I would like to have is a sensor that can be set to only activate when there is a certain amount of liquid in the pipe. So let's say I'm feeding a Water Sieve, which uses 5kg/s of PW, then the sensor should able to tell whether there is enough water in the pipe segment feeding the Sieve for it to actually activate the Sieve (in this case more than 5kg of PW). This way the Sieve would always work at peak efficiency.

Unfortunately I don't see how I could make this work with just the Liquid Sensor and very limited space.

[yoakenashi]

7 hours ago, TheJollyKraut said:

enough water in the pipe segment feeding the Sieve for it to actually activate the Sieve

I though this was what you wanted to do. The it is just as I described: place a liquid reservoir upstream, NOT the automation output, and connect to the water sieve. This would run the water sieve when the upstream liquid reservoir is full (say 90%) until it is empty (say 10%). The water sieve would then be disabled until the liquid reservoir is full again. Causing it to run at 100% efficiency while there is sufficient PW.

If you are just looking at flow then you’ll have the problem of never running the sieve even at 4.5kg/s flow.

[TheJollyKraut]

Jeez, I'm stupid. I didn't even know you could use automation on Reservoirs.

Looks like that pretty much solves my problem. Thank you so much.