Active/Dormant Geyser Phase Display Part 2: Full Implementation using a water clock

[darknotezero]

So the second part of this was much simpler than the first - i should have just waited to post the whole thing in one post. 

Abstract:

A couple of years ago I found myself at a point in the game where I was relying heavily upon Hydrogen and Natural Gas coming out of vents to deal with my power needs. This meant that I was constantly monitoring all of the geysers I was using - clicking back and forth between all of them to find out where they were in their various active/dormant cycles. I was doing this often enough that I started thinking about ways to create automated counter displays that I could either attach to each geyser or put into a single screen that I could just glance at to see the various states of my vents.

This broke down into three different problems to solve: 1) how to accurately track decades-long cycle periods down to 1/10th of a cycle with a single device, 2) creating a glanceable display, and 3) linking the timing device with the display device.

Part 1: Accurately Tracking Long Periods of Time

Thanks to veterans of this forum, I discovered that the Automation Tools for timing (Signal Clock, Cycle Clock, Filter Gate, Buffer Gate) are not reliable for long-term accuracy and was informed that the most common way to ensure reliable long-term timing was using a liquid/water clock. Prior to the Spaced Out DLC, most of the water clocks I saw and/or built were generally medium-sized builds and usually required a constantly running liquid pump. I started messing around with liquid valve solutions and shutoff solutions, but struggled to get it to work properly - at the time, I was being dumb about the "jump" of liquid from an input/output port and it was always messing up my math.

Fast forward to after the Spaced Out DLC and the introduction of the Liquid Meter Valve. Suddenly, water clocks with a small footprint and minimal power drain became super easy.

Spoiler

A basic example of a 5s timer sensor next to a 5s water clock.

Values for the liquid valve and liquid meter valve can then be scaled to create a green signal at a precise 1/10th of a cycle over a long period of time.

Part 2: Creating a 64-panel glanceable display

This is what my previous post was about, but I'll expand on it some here:

Spoiler

The primary four counters rotate through 1-4 to create a green signal on 4-individual bits on the ribbon cable. I'm then sending that entire ribbon cable into a Signal Distributor that further distributes it into four more Signal Distributors, creating 16 different "lanes" for 4-bit signals to pass into pixel packs. All of the other counters help flip the various distributor signals to their proper alignment.

The end result is a 64-panel display where colors can be configured to help show the 'split' between, say, an active and dormant period of a geyser.

(Note that there are glitches in the display because of what i'm calling "order of operations" where one distributor switch flips slightly earlier than another. This doesn't matter much for the context of this display, but implementation of this into something else that would be operational in nature such as turning on/off various "states of being" via a memory toggle could be problematic)

Part 3: Linking the display to the water clock and scaling the water clock to a geyser's active/dormant phases

In my current base (the "skewed" asteroid), there's a Natural Gas Geyser that covers 82.1 cycles for its active and dormant phases. That translates to 49,260 seconds. For ease of math, I set my liquid meter valve to send a green signal and reset at 492.6kg, and then set the liquid valve to pass through 0.64kg/s (because there are 64 tiles). Then I set the colors to translate active (blue/green) to dormant (yellow/red) with the split point being whatever is closest within that 64 grain display.

Spoiler

Question Marks:

The one thing I'm not sure about is that my geyser was at "next dormancy 0s" for a looooong time before it actually went to a dormant state - the geyser was still spitting out gas for at least 30-60 game seconds before it switched off. This leads me to believe that 82.1 is a rounded number to the reality of the actual active/dormant geyser period? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure what sort of drift that could cause for the timer over a long period of time. I'm probably going to put a notifier on it to check if there's any drift every 82.1 cycles because of this.

Thoughts and feedback are welcome.

 

[JRup]

57 minutes ago, darknotezero said:

The one thing I'm not sure about is that my geyser was at "next dormancy 0s" for a looooong time before it actually went to a dormant state - the geyser was still spitting out gas for at least 30-60 game seconds before it switched off.

One geyser that laughs in the face of dormancy is the Leaky oil fissure. Astral bodies must align and the pip union must come to an agreement before it actually has detectable dormancy. Blink and you'll miss it.