Gas/Liquid Type Sensor

[crypticorb]

I have an idea for a new automation trigger device: the Gas Type Sensor.

Simply put, this automation device would have a single automation connection, and would output an automation signal when a specific type of gas is detected. It would have a selection screen very similar to the gas filter, allowing a single gas type to be detected for the output. 

Some simple applications for this device would be a CO2 buildup detector, for starting a CO2 scrubber when your base starts to fill up with CO2. You could also use this for detecting when your base has hydrogen building up at the top, and needs to be shunted to a hydrogen generator for burn-off.

It could also be used for advanced automation systems that rely on having only one specific gas in a room, but running a continuous filter is inefficient.

 

In addition to a gas detector, I'd like to see a Liquid Type Sensor. Identical in function to the Gas Type sensor, this version could be used to detect when any of that pesky polluted water has gotten into your clean water tank, or when there's a layer of water in your crude oil reservoir.

 

Credit where it is due, I got the idea from one of @Saturnus posts, involving a 3x9 gas detection system with mini-pumps and a filter. https://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/83926-how-to-make-a-gas-type-detection-sensor/

 

If you guys can think of any modifications on these ideas, or ways you could put them to use, I'd love to hear them.

 

[Smithe37]

Gas detector has been suggest several times and is a good idea. The liquid sensor is not so great. Liquids have a problem being separated in general due to them stacking and not moving left/right like gases.

[ImpalerWrG]

I support these chemical sensors, though I think it would be possible to simply have one sensor cover both functions.  Liquid CO2, gaseous CO2, same chemical so same signal.

[crypticorb]

One incredibly useful application I just thought of: combine it with a NOT gate, and you've just made a detector for any gas type that is other than the one specified.

You could use this for any type of farm that can only grow with one type of gas, and when any gas type OTHER than the one picked out is detected, turn on a pump to remove it. Perfect for removing those pesky natural gas farts from your mushroom farm.

[Kasuha]

If implemented, the sensor should consider bigger area - 3x3 tiles around it at least, better more. And should have modes "fire if selected gas is somewhere in the area" and "fire if selected gas is the only gas in the area".

However I don't see much practical use for the sensor as it's useful only if you have a tug-of-war of multiple gases in a room. I meet that situation extremely rarely, usually it's better to have just one gas/liquid. The only place where I meet it regularly is scooping non-oxygen gases from the top or bottom of the base. And in such situations, there's a clunky but efficient solution:

Set the filter to oxygen, and set the valve to a low value, such as 10 g/s. If the pump scoops oxygen, it goes through the valve and that blocks the machine for some time, proportional to the valve setting. And all non-oxygen gases go away through the unfiltered pipe at full speed. When there's mostly oxygen around the pump, it will "taste the air" every so often and wait blocked in the meantime. And when CO2 or chlorine builds up around it, it will get rid of it at full speed.

 

[crypticorb]

54 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

The only place where I meet it regularly is scooping non-oxygen gases from the top or bottom of the base. And in such situations, there's a clunky but efficient solution:

Set the filter to oxygen, and set the valve to a low value, such as 10 g/s. If the pump scoops oxygen, it goes through the valve and that blocks the machine for some time, proportional to the valve setting. And all non-oxygen gases go away through the unfiltered pipe at full speed. When there's mostly oxygen around the pump, it will "taste the air" every so often and wait blocked in the meantime. And when CO2 or chlorine builds up around it, it will get rid of it at full speed.

 

Very nice design Kasuha. It's much more compact and efficient than my typical multi-stage gas filtering/processing plant I usually set up.

I still maintain the idea that having a gas type detector could come in handy. You are correct in mentioning that this sensor would only be useful in areas where multiple gasses tug-of-war and mix, but there are lots of times that happens, particularly when dupe movement is involved.

Another example is if you wanted to seal off a sector when pO2 is detected, or create a chlorine-based airlock that cleared itself of any non-chlorine gasses. There were a few chlorine/steam based pH2O boilers I saw on Brothgar's channel, this could come in handy for that.

[ImpalerWrG]

If the chemical sensor can actually operate on the contents of a pipe it would be very useful as well, likewise all other kind of sensors like temperature.  I think we need a special enlarged pipe section that could be called a 'port', it would have a little door on it and any sensor placed on it will read the pipe contents rather then the outside environment.

[Kasuha]

10 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

I think we need a special enlarged pipe section that could be called a 'port', it would have a little door on it and any sensor placed on it will read the pipe contents rather then the outside environment.

I like that idea. Maybe that 'port' could be sort of like a mesh tile, a building that makes the element in the pipe ambient in that one tile without it leaving the pipe (so it would act like solid tile and surrounding gases/liquids could not pass through it) but still allowing building detectors over it. It could also have better heat exchange with surrounding tiles than ordinary pipe.

[crypticorb]

20 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

If the chemical sensor can actually operate on the contents of a pipe it would be very useful as well, likewise all other kind of sensors like temperature.  I think we need a special enlarged pipe section that could be called a 'port', it would have a little door on it and any sensor placed on it will read the pipe contents rather then the outside environment.

I think this idea might actually be more useful than my original idea, though it is fundamentally different. You could use this "port" to connect a number of different sensors, such as:

1. Atmo sensor - for detecting a backfill in a pipeline, such as when a hydrogen overflow from an electrolyzer setup needs to be diverted
2. Thermo sensor - for detecting when the gas/liquid in a cooling loop around an A.E.T.N. has reached the optimal temperature
3. Germ sensor - less useful, but I'm sure there's some niche purposes for detecting germs in a pipeline
4. Gas/Liquid Type sensor - would function sort of like @Kasuha's "Gas Sampler" setup posted above, but would allow more complex actions

 

Edit: Here's a concept of what I'd like to see. Essentially a 2x1 automation building that has a "slot" for the sensor on one tile, with the part that sits over the gas/liquid pipe, and the logic output connection on the second tile.

[ImpalerWrG]

19 hours ago, Kasuha said:

I like that idea. Maybe that 'port' could be sort of like a mesh tile, a building that makes the element in the pipe ambient in that one tile without it leaving the pipe (so it would act like solid tile and surrounding gases/liquids could not pass through it) but still allowing building detectors over it. It could also have better heat exchange with surrounding tiles than ordinary pipe.

I'm not that familiar with how mesh tiles interact with ambient air/liquid but my though was that the port should be passable by dupes thus on the background layer with other pipes.  The only limit would be that you can only have at most one kind of port (either a gas or liquid port) present in a single tile so their is no ambiguity as to which the sensor is reading. 

If it's passable to dupes it should thus have ambient gas and liquid over it as well.  A higher heat exchange rate (say double?) is reasonable but not particularly meaningful if we get the radiator pipe segments that have been discussed in other threads as those would likely be 10x to 20x faster.

Crypticorb:  That is close but not quite what I had in mind, the 2x1 shape is unnecessary as the wire can just connect to the sensor directly.

[TheExceed]

[TheExceed]

[ImpalerWrG]

Not as clean of an implementation as the Port concept I had.  Would replace 6 items with 2, maybe they will revisit it.