Integrated circuits

[vg234]

The problem:
 I needed to manage access to a single aquatuner in early-mid game. The spaced out maps don't have as much water as the Terra one, so i had to rely on the steam vents sooner than usual. Had hot water but little steel and little power, so i couldn't just use a few aquatuners in series.
I had to loop water from a water tank to the aquatuner until it as at the correct temp. But filling and emptying the reservoir takes a lot of time, and the aquatuner just sits there doing nothing :)..
 
The solution:
So i built a system of 2 concurrent reservoirs, while one is filling/emptying, the other is sending hot water to the aquatuner.
 
The system uses 2 inputs: water temp and reservoir fill state. It converts this into 3 states: fill, cool, empty. The extra circuit on the bottom is a 2 bit comparator, to make sure that both sides don't end up in the same state. (both sides filling up their reservoir at the same time would make the whole system pointless)
 
But this takes a lot of space! And poor Max had to dig this all up in obsidian!

 The idea:
Microchips!
 
I'm sure someone must have wished for/thought of this before but i can't find any reference..
We could build our own integrated circuits, maybe in an empty space (eg 15x15 mini map? multiple sizes?) kindof like if we were using a CAD. We would need to be able to define the inputs/outputs (ribbon only, to keep the footprint low? or both 1 and 4 bits wires?). Then once the circuit is designed, we could build the microchips in a specialized machine, and build many copies with a much smaller footprint (2x2?) than the full circuit
 
 
Note:
i realized later i could have built a simpler control circuit, with just a single signal distributor per liquid reservoir but still, integrated circuits would be great!

 

[Magheat2009]

5 hours ago, vg234 said:

Note:
i realized later i could have built a simpler control circuit, with just a single signal distributor per liquid reservoir

 

First time saw someone use signal distributor. I tried to understand what it and its sister component does but failed. Can you explain it to me? 

[Sasza22]

What we need is basically something like a rocket command module from the dlc with automation inputs and outputs connecting the outside to the inside. On the outside it would be a 2x4 structure with 4 input and 4 output ports. On the inside it would be a 16x16 block with automation ports in the walls. To keep it true to it`s purpode it should only allow building automation stuff inside (and ladders).

[vg234]

On 5/31/2021 at 5:12 PM, Magheat2009 said:

First time saw someone use signal distributor. I tried to understand what it and its sister component does but failed. Can you explain it to me? 

Sure, i'll show the version with a single signal distributor, it's easier to explain:

Here we have 1 water reservoir hooked up to an aquatuner (hidden, on top). Hot water comes in from the bottom right, cold water exits to the bottom left. The aquatuner is on top, and the 2 shutoff valves on top control the water flow to/from the aquatuner:

So there's 4 shutoff valves in total:

- 1 to let water in
- 1 to let water out
- 2 to send water to/from the aquatuner. I'm grouping these 2 together because there's no reason not to turn them on/off both at once.

The idea is to cool water in 3 steps: let water in, cool it, let water out.
We have 2 inputs that tell us what step we are at: the water temp sensor at the reservoir output, and the reservoir water level.

So:

(The switch on top is always supposed to be on. I tried using a not gate to always output a 1, but if the gate input is not connected, it's still going to output a 0, so i'd rather use a switch that i know i shouldn't touch; it's easier to spot bugs this way.)

 

With this we have a system that takes hot water in, cools it down, then lets it out. But filling and emptying the reservoir takes a lot of time, during which the aquatuner sits there doing nothing. So the idea is to build a 2nd system the same way next to it, so that while, eg, the first one is emptying its tank, the other one can use the aquatuner:

Automation for the 2nd system is exactly the same. The 2 sides are sharing the aquatuner.

So that's it..? not really. If we leave it like that, what's going to happen is that both sides will try to fill their tanks at the same time. half the flow, to each, double the time. Same for the other steps. So we need to make sure the 2 systems are never in the same state. For that we'll use a 2 bit comparator.

If we represent the state as 2 bits, say, tank water level and water temp we'd have:

00: cool down water
01: empty tank
10: fill tank
11: fill tank

the comparator will output 1 if the state is the same on both sides:

This comparator is built with 2 XOR gates, 2 not gates, and 1 AND gate. In this screenshot it compares 01 (left) with 11 (right). Output is 0 because the two numbers are different. I use the output of the comparator to control a power switch that enables/disables power to the system on the left. That way if they end up in the same state, the system on the left will get its power cut and will need to wait until the other one has moved on to the next state.

It's a not a perfect solution. The ideal solution would be that the 1st system to reach a state gets to keep it until it's ready to move on to the next one. But i took a shortcut, and just favored one side over the other.

Full screenshots attached at the end of the post.

 

In my original post, I built the system on the fly, and never tried this kind of solution before, so i designed it in a way that allows some 'wiggle room'. it keeps the same ideas, but instead of using a single signal distributor, it uses 3 signal selectors. They all use the same 2 inputs: water level and water temp. each signal distributor controls a shutoff valve (water in, water out, or water to/from the aquatuner). It does the same as the simpler version above, except that it would allow to turn on multiple valves at once (eg fill and empty at the same time?) - which is useless in this scenario but like i said i wasn't entirely sure where i was going with this at first

 

Full screenshots:

12 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

What we need is basically something like a rocket command module from the dlc with automation inputs and outputs connecting the outside to the inside. On the outside it would be a 2x4 structure with 4 input and 4 output ports. On the inside it would be a 16x16 block with automation ports in the walls. To keep it true to it`s purpode it should only allow building automation stuff inside (and ladders).

Yes exactly, That would be very nice