Factorio Forums

im still new to using cables to read states and if this then that.

is there a way for a cable to read the sums of all my request chest(24 for a train stop) if the chest get low to send a signal out. example to a speaker to send an alert that my station is low.

PS is there a mod for more speaker sounds?

also a second question while on reading the sums of requester's chest.

is there a way to output a visual representation to how full the chest are like i seen poeple use lights to show how much charge in the accumulators?

Hello,

you can craft (manually or automatically) red or green wire (choose one),
then connect it chest by chest to each of the 24, then connect it to an electric pole (it is util 'cause on mouseover you can see all the signals it's receiving at the momento on both signals).

You can use those sgnals how you want.

In your example:
You have a station (24 chests) full of iron plates connected to red wire circuit network.
This network is reading content of the chests, so for example you have a full station, signaling something like 115,2k Iron Plate.
Connect the red wire from that circuit to a sound speaker, and set it to emit an alarm with a circuit network condition, say "IronPlate < 5000".
It will sound when the station is "low".

- You can connect it to a lamp, and say "active when IronPlate >= 115000" .
- You can connect it to the station itself, and say "activate when IronPlate <5000". ("The station need supply delivery")
- You can connect it to the station itself, configure it to "send signal to train",
and schedule the train at this stop with a condition based on the circuit network input, like "Empty wagon OR (circuitNetwok)IronPlate >=55000).
It will drop the necessary items and then proceed to the next station.

Next level then is to combine these signals in combinators to have logic conditions and abstract signals.


I've been playing factorio since its first steam release (i think v0.12).And I started to use circuitry just now in the last 2 games i'm running.

In my opinion it is the most complex thing in the game (like redstone in minecraft) it is the basic concept of a boolean logic.
With the right knowloedge it could turn in something shocking (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgfwwqwxdxY).

I like to is it in the minimal form when it is actually helpful.
Balancing stations, balancing chests, readind contents of important products...

You should experiment it by yourself looking maybe for your particular need in the wiki.

In simplest terms, the game automatically adds up the sums of everything in all of the entities a wire is connected to. So if you connect a wire to a bunch of chests, it automatically creates a signal for each item in all of those chests and the sum of each of those items. You can see these signals at any electrical pole that your colored wire is connected to.

To USE the signal you need to connect the wire to some sort of active item. Unfortunately Chests are passive. They can't be turned on or off. Speakers, inserters, train stations, etc... can all be enabled/disabled based on that signal. Using the automatic summing its pretty easy to set say in inserter to "Iron Plate < 10000" (for instance) with no extra items other than the cable.

If you want to use the Average instead of the sum you need to add an arithmetic combinator. You can then divide your specific item or all items by number of chests. Because this device has an input and output you wire the output to your inserter, station, speaker, etc...and set your inserter to "Iron Plate < 400" (as an example).

I don't know your specific setup but requester chests should be, more or less, an end point and it's a bit difficult to use them for counting. If you can use an intermediate location you can simplify this by using passive providers since their content will automatically be visible in the logistics network. Then it gets easy to tell your speaker, inserter, etc... to read the logi network for how many items exist. Look Ma no Wires!

BLuehasia wrote:also a second question while on reading the sums of requester's chest.

is there a way to output a visual representation to how full the chest are like i seen poeple use lights to show how much charge in the accumulators?

There is a few ways to do this. My preferred is to use speakers with different icons for % levels. Since you can pick the icon, doing 1,2,3,4...etc... for 10%, 20%, 30%, etc...tells me what i want but is kind of limited by how many different things you want to track.

If you want lights it's just a matter of using the same < or > logic at each light to tell it to be on or not.
Light 1 is on if > 1000
Light 2 is on if > 2000
etc....

To USE the signal you need to connect the wire to some sort of active item. Unfortunately Chests are passive.

Not all chests, anyway. U can tell by wire how many of which item a requester chest should request.

Also,

also a second question while on reading the sums of requester's chest.

is there a way to output a visual representation to how full the chest are like i seen poeple use lights to show how much charge in the accumulators?

I like Shokubai's suggested options too, for vanilla environment. If you'd try any mods, though, I would point you to this:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/justaran ... ixie-tubes

I usually use this to display exact amount of rare/important intems (like Atomic bombs produced and U-235 stored)
while using percentage gauges or RedYelloGreen with lamps for other data like ore stock measures, oil flow, smelters array activity and so on...