Ribbon wire auto ports for compex buildings.

[The Plum Gate]

I know things have been kept fairly simple with automation in general.

Some of the more advanced buildings could probably stand to have bidirectional automation ports, or in the case of complex machines, the ribbon cable port.

This would send and recieve when connecting to a ribbon cable, the standard auto wire would perform a default channel 0 type connection where the other three would only be active when a ribbon is connected.

This would allow push pull communications from a single port - it would be nice to have a few simple de-multiplexing buildings for two and three channels ( to save space ).

Anywhooo.

In the most basic of examples. The water storage building outputs a signal, however there is not automation method of disabling the building. Disabling the building has the effect of shutting the water output off, so this would be quite handy to be able to send and recieve on the same port ( but not necessarily on the same common automation wire ).

As usual, there could be more than one port however this doesn't fit with the existing multiplexing mechanic.

I also suppose there's the issue of a building attempting to communicate with itself ( and causing problems ).

So a building like the natural gas generator could report things like exhaust pipe blockage and fuel supply input empty/full. 

[Yunru]

On 1/7/2021 at 7:46 AM, The Plum Gate said:

however there is not automation method of disabling the building.

I mean, there is, just not native to the building. 

 

In regards to the rest of the topic, what happens when a regular wire is plugged in? 

[The Plum Gate]

@Yunru

I noticed that there are specifically ribbon ports.

So, if I plugged a regular automation wire into a 'multiport' or existing ribbon port - I would get the first bit of the four bit ribbon. Or the first channel of the buildings ribbon output.

This generally just turns the device on and off.

But I haven't investigated the higher automation multiplexing devices at great length.