Implement a Charge Switch

[Nero Darkard]

The new natural gas geysers are an amazing help at generating a lot of energy while also solving a lot of your water needs, even when you already found a steam geyser. But still, I frequently find that my power plant needs a short break from time to time, so its own batteries powering the powerplant itself dont run dry and a poor dube doesnt have to run in a wheel in hazardous air to restart the engines again. We already have a power switch, so you can manually stop and start circuits. But an automated charge switch would be even better. It would spare you from having to check the battery charges every few minutes to see if you need to turn them off or not. Time that quickly sums up and could be used for more important tasks.

 

The system should work similar as with massage tables. There should be a minimal charge and a maximal charge, as well as buttons if the switch should turn over if the batters are above the charge or below that charge. This way, you could tell the powerplant to cut off all supply to other facilities so it can recharge itself, or vise versa tell other facilities to only drain power when the charge is high enough.

[Masterpintsman]

31 minutes ago, Nero Darkard said:

There should be a minimal charge and a maximal charge, as well as a button if the switch should turn if the batters are above that charge or below that charge.

I would like a simpler switch that could detect if a wire has power (and at the same time acts as a diode on the switched line so we can build logic with it), then we could build such setups ourselves. Shameless plug, emphasis mine:

On 8.6.2017 at 7:23 AM, Masterpintsman said:

I would be happy to have an electrical toggled switch, 1x3 sized similar to a liquid/gas filter with input, enable (middle connection) and output - with a toggle in the interface that negates (NOT) the detection on the enable connector.

This would also double as a diode (power only flowing through it in one direction) if detection is set to NOT and enable is not connected.

A second tier version of it could have additional options regarding detection, like above/below available/consumption/production and a threshold slider.

Reading it again, the 'second tier' version should be a sensor acting like the others (be buildable over the wire but sampling it).