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Or be able to set inserters to stop mid-swing from circuit network control, rather than finishing a swing despite being disabled. It feels like this behavior is more a purposeful design choice though, and something that can be "made" if power switches were small enough to fit into designs.

The smallest they could possibly be and still work is 1x2. See decider/arithmetic combinators.

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:49 am

The smallest they could possibly be and still work is 1x2. See decider/arithmetic combinators.

I've made the 1x1 arithmetic combinator and it works.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LED_arithmetic_combinator

darkfrei wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:27 am

I've made the 1x1 arithmetic combinator and it works.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LED_arithmetic_combinator

Does it come with a magnifying glass?

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:51 am

Does it come with a magnifying glass?

Do you need a magnifying glass to see pixels in the display?

coppercoil wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 5:52 pm

Do you need a magnifying glass to see pixels in the display?

Yes. Yes, I do. Severe astigmatism and near-sightedness.

Zoom can go pretty far, I'm sure it could go further.

Also, power switches do not need to have separate input/output, but could simply be whether to connect all inputs or not. Vs ariths etc that actually have distinct input/output.

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 08, 2019 5:55 pm

Yes. Yes, I do. Severe astigmatism and near-sightedness.

You're going to hate my new quarter-sized combinators, then.

Speaking of which, it would be nice if there was some visual feedback when hovering a wire over a combinator or power switch that would show whether it's going to connect to input or output - would allow for even faster, error-free connections !

Adamo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 3:54 am

You're going to hate my new quarter-sized combinators, then.

Yes, that sounds horrible. I'd like to see a 3x3 or 2x2 combinator "box" which pops open to reveal a Factorissimo-style space where you lay out regular-sized combinators.

Deadlock989 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:56 am

Adamo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 3:54 am

You're going to hate my new quarter-sized combinators, then.

Yes, that sounds horrible. I'd like to see a 3x3 or 2x2 combinator "box" which pops open to reveal a Factorissimo-style space where you lay out regular-sized combinators.

Hmm. I WAS just kidding, Deadlock, but I could actually see doing something like what you've mentioned. I'll think about it! Good idea! I'm not sure how I could do what you mentioned, BlueTemplar; I guess I'm not completely sure how it would work. What is "input" vs. "output"? On a power switch, in my view, there isn't input or output, but one side and the other side. But if you tell me more about what you're getting at, who knows?

Adamo wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 6:56 pm

Hmm. I WAS just kidding, Deadlock

My stony-faced lack of humour on the subject is due to being asked, in all seriousness and without a hint of cognitive dissonance, to add tiny quarter-sized lamps, four per tile, to my mod called Larger Lamps.

(Non-constant) Combinators obviously have input and output - while the power switch has 2 sides without any preferences. In both cases, it seems like the minimum size for using them while keeping the "targeting" easy is 1x2.

BlueTemplar wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:02 pm

(Non-constant) Combinators obviously have input and output - while the power switch has 2 sides without any preferences. In both cases, it seems like the minimum size for using them while keeping the "targeting" easy is 1x2.

OK, now I think I've got what you mean. Come to think of it, I know very little about how that targeting mechanism works. I know that you define connection points for the circuit wires individually on the entity, but I don't know what resolution the placement tool has. If the alt-mode arrows still display properly on a 1x1 combinator, and the targeting has enough precision that aiming at those arrows puts it in the right place, do you think that could be sufficient? I saw I think darkfrei say he has a small combinator mod, I think I'll experiment with it.

I guess that if you make it smaller than 1x2, it might depend a lot on the person whether they are bothered by the targeting or not...

Cribbit wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 07, 2019 6:39 pm

finishing a swing despite being disabled

Cutting power works mid-swing.

I explicitly used a janky set-up on my nuclear reactor for inserting fuel: A 2 tall x 3 wide grid of inserters. Left side puts objects upwards, right side puts objects downwards. They can use fast inserters or slow ones, doesn't matter. Horizontally, the top path goes left to right, and the middle and bottom go left. These explicitly use long arm inserters. The upper left is the starting condition, and an object is placed inside a chest (a fuel cell makes a good choice). The top-left long inserter reads hands contents, holds the signal, and only triggers if steam starts getting low. The top-right arm reads hand contents, but it should always be on, so I used a signal like lube = 0. When steam started getting low, the fuel cell would be grabbed, generating exactly two half-swings of long-range inserter time. The exact time needed to insert a fuel cell. The fuel cell gets grabbed by the right-up inserter, and moved to the middle right. An inserter facing left triggers if the steam rises because 1 fuel cell is enough (probably needed to be calculated, I never did). An inserter facing down triggers if steam fell even lower. If it went left, it travelled across the middle horizontally and get put back in the upper left, waiting for steam to fall. If it went down, it was basically a "panic mode" because the fuel cell would go around the bottom and left to the upper left, and because the steam was low, the top path would trigger and insert another fuel cell and go around and around causing cells to be inserted until steam rose. I had a chest on the middle right too, besides the initial one on the upper left, so I easily could see where the fuel cell was.

Over at the reactors I had a power switch watch for the fuel cell signal, and only then would it enable power to the inserters around the reactor (all the inserters had a max stack size of 1 for inserting, no limit on pulling used cells). I liked doing it this way because it worked mostly the way I wanted, and if I changed the tanks and wanted to change the steam values, I only needed to change three inserters at the "control mechanism", not every inserter at the reactor.

I have since learned of SR latches/schmitt triggers/hysteresis circuits, so I could probably do it a different way, but I still find it fun to use my "circuit".

Honktown wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 10, 2019 2:55 am

Cribbit wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 07, 2019 6:39 pm

finishing a swing despite being disabled

Cutting power works mid-swing.

I realize that, and it was the reason for posting this. Specifically also for nuclear circuitry

I really wanted to make a 2-gap (2 tiles from reactor to first heat exchanger) fuel loading that relied on inserters that shut themselves off as soon as they grabbed fuel, and then finished their swing on another signal. With a 3 gap or with chests instead of power off you can pretty easily get it working.

There are other circuits that work for 2 gap, yes. But none as sphagetted.

I just use a timer and override the inserters to 1. If you're pulling from a belt instead of a chest you need to build a hold to keep the trigger signal for a few ticks, but it's not complex.

Cribbit wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 10, 2019 5:21 am

I really wanted to make a 2-gap (2 tiles from reactor to first heat exchanger) fuel loading that relied on inserters that shut themselves off as soon as they grabbed fuel, and then finished their swing on another signal. With a 3 gap or with chests instead of power off you can pretty easily get it working.

A latching mechanism connected to a power switch that goes turns off if there's a fuel cell signal (read contents, pulse read) and turns on when there's something else. A basic SR latch would do it (fuel cell = reset), where instead of using the same trigger signal like high/low value of an accumulator you use two different ones. I'm assuming an inserter only generates a pulsed signal when it grabs something, and not if it turns on with something in its grabber.

I only used long arms in my reactors because I figured it was more efficient/reliable for heat pipes to run directly around the reactor.

Thinking now, why are you trying to disable the arm mid swing? You never said why, and that really makes it pointless why you want this. Also, however you try and design a super-optimized perfectly done thing, you've gotta get that fuel in/out somehow, so there will be a lump of a roboport and annoyance somewhere else.

An interesting and horrible idea: use stack inserters to put down fuel, and use basic inserters + fast belt so they don't have time to grab more than one fuel cell. Worse, if for some reason you have like 50 nuke reactors, pulse-width-modulate power to the inserters so they don't have time to grab more than one cell.

Honestly it'd be nice if there was a hysteresis/SR combinator, since that's probably what 90% of the practical use cases for the circuit elements are.

I'm still not seeing why you can't have a timer that counts to 12000, and then, if all other conditions are met, generates a pulse and resets its ticking. :v