Trouble with Decider combinators

[dinodod]

I'm not understanding how decider combinators work. I thought I had it setup right but it seems it's not working as I expect it to.

I have a chest attached to the input of the combinator with a condition where if iron plates < 100, then output signal 'Iron Plates=1'

The output is attached to my base and was working fine at first. Now something odd is happening and it's not reading the contents of the chest at all. No matter what condition I use (greater than, less than, equal to), I can not get the combinator to correctly read the contents of the chest.

As a test, I attached a light to the output to turn on when the iron plates signal = 1. It won't turn on. My output is attached to my main line which has other combinators outputting on the same line. Do the wires allow for multiple signals at the same time?

I rebuilt my combinator and the light was working as expected when it was the only connection on the output but as soon as I added a wire to my main line, it stopped working. Is the combinator reading something from the output side and why?

P.S. Is there any option in the debug to troubleshoot wires / combinators / etc?

combinator1.jpg (238.68 KiB) Viewed 3138 times

[Hammerchief]

If it's working correctly until you connect your main base circuit network, then you have some other "Iron plate" signal in your network there. Those signals gets added together and the lamp see their sum.
You can see input and output signals on the right side of screen when you hover cursor over combinator. If its showing Iron plate 1 on output, it works correctly. All signals in this network will be shown when you hover cursor over electrical pole with circuit cable. If it doesn't show any iron here, you subtracted it or multiply it by zero somewhere else in the network.

[dinodod]

Thank you. But why would the lamp see the network when it's attached to the output of the combinator? Does it share the same line as the other lines on the output? This doesn't make sense as it should be reading only the output of the combinator as that is what it is attached to. If I wanted it to read the network, I would attach it to my network. This just makes it so I need to use a second combinator to filter the output then...

Ah, I see how the signals are working now... They are summing them on the wire! Thanks for pointing out how to read the values of the signals!

[Hammerchief]

The lamp would see the output of combinator and nothing else only if it was connected to combinator by green wire. (It's not about color, you need to create separate "network" with just those two entities. In your case that would be by using green wire.)
Be aware that combinators also sums up their imput from both green and red wires: if you have Iron 4 on green and Iron 6 on red and both connected to the input of combinator, it will read Iron 10 even though it's comming from two separate networks.

[dinodod]

The input side of a COMBINATOR makes sense that it would combine / sum them even if on different networks. But I find it funny that the output is passing on the network of the main line to anything else that is on the same network. I would think the OUTPUT would only be only 1 way.

But hey, live and learn. And after seeing several factorio vids on youtube, I have to give mad props to the optimization in the game. So many items being made / moved / calculated / etc and the game runs nicely!!

Awesome game!!!!

[Kalanndok]

Well..the green and red output ARE separated actually.

But by connecting the red wire you ADD the red output to everything else that is on the red wire.

[siggboy]

The input side of a COMBINATOR makes sense that it would combine / sum them even if on different networks. But I find it funny that the output is passing on the network of the main line to anything else that is on the same network. I would think the OUTPUT would only be only 1 way.

If two wires of the same color "touch" then all the signals are added together.

The wire has no direction of signal flow, i.e. there are no "output wires" and "input wires".

You can also connect the output of a combinator to its input and it will then be treated as the same "wire". Actually that's an important technique for advanced circuits.