Complex Automation

[Meeepster]

Show me your most complex automation. I am curious to see how far you guys go with automation. Especially with the 4 bit automation system.

[JRup]

In full honesty, there is someone else that's doing a lot of work in putting together a mini CPU out there. Look for that thread for some mind-boggling amounts of work.

In the meantime: I wouldn't say this is complex at all, but this is how I retrieve salt water from a chiller I built a while ago. It freezes salt water and converts it to brine. The ice is then used in the precooler by thawing it. Finally, the water is used in the heat exchange for the incoming 95ºC salt water and is later used in the rest of the base.

The salt water must be extracted from the heat exchange at temperatures adequate for farming. I needed to home in the right spot by sampling the salt water with liquid thermo sensors on the pipes in four different spots because the salt water chiller works at different speeds depending on the amount of regular water in the pool... The liquid reservoir on the top right corner triggers the process.

 

[Occam Blazer]

For JiT delivery, on a shared rail, of iron ore to a metal refinery, which is enabled only when safety stock (managed elsewhere) drops below a threshold. It keeps you stocked up with, say, 5,000 to 8,000 kg of iron without human management.

Here's the managed warehouse from that play. It can maintain back stock and safety stock for 32 manufactured materials. Looks like I was managing (LtR) refined carbon, copper(?), ceramic, iron, glass and plastic. The JiT machine for steel was a little more complicated because that process takes three raw ingredients.

I don't have the automation overlay for that one, but here's the prototype.

I also used it to JiT deliver polluted dirt to pokeshells for some reason.

I don't use this any more, but it was a thing I did.This is a much more practical and useful automation machine I built to time rocket launches (in base game) so you're not sending mining rockets to planetoids without resources. Automation explanation over here.