Colored gauge with small combinator footprint

[Tertius]

Here is my version of a red/yellow/green colored gauge to visualize something like steam level or accumulator charge.

I only found gauges with huge amounts of combinators, so I tried to make one with less. Part of the logic works by exploiting the hardcoded Factorio color priority.

In the arithmetic combinator, set the input signal. For the picture below, that would be A for accumulator charge. In the blueprint it is steam .
And in the constant combinator set the scale with signal S. Set it to the maximum expected value divided by 10, that would be 100/10 = 10 for accumulator charge or 25000/10 = 2500 for a steam storage tank.

An additional feature is the overflow color: If the maximum amount is exceeded, the color of the whole gauge changes to the overflow color defined in the constant combinator. In the blueprint, it is cyan. If you don't define any, the gauge becomes white, and another interesting overflow color is magenta. You cannot use blue, because this will overwrite the yellow part.

2022-09-12 18-36-01 start=1 length=37 fps=15.gif (2.34 MiB) Viewed 1595 times

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[FuryoftheStars]

Hey, thanks for sharing this! I've attempted something like this a couple of times and then just gave up, so this will be helpful.

[Amarula]

Nice!

[Tertius]

Sorry to bother you, but i managed to shave off one more combinator from the setup:

2022-09-13 15-50-14 start=1 length=38 fps=15.gif (2.18 MiB) Viewed 1544 times

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You set the input signal in the bottom combinator and the scale in the constant combinator.
The overflow color needs value 12+ in the constant combinator, otherwise overflow is white.

It's a different approach. First, it scales to 0..10 as before, and the lamps are each enabled on 0..10 as before.

Now, the 3 colors (red, yellow, green) get values from the constant combinator. Each get their max value + 1. The top combinator subtracts the scaled value from these, so we get 0 or negative value for each color that should not be active. Negative values are ignored by the lamp color logic, so it is as if they have no signal.

The green color gets special treatment: since it has hardcoded priority over yellow, its value must be filtered as long as there is yellow to display. This is done by the middle combinator. Green is always >= 6 as long as yellow should be displayed, so < 6 is our filter criteria. This way green is subtracted along with the others and reach 0 if the gauge overflows, so the overflow color is the only color left if set to 12+. If it overflows by more than 10%, you need to set a higher number than 12, otherwise the gauge gets white, which is the ultimate and final overflow color.

[FuryoftheStars]

One thing that's always bothered me a little about gauges is that as the level runs down, especially once it turns red and is only a light or two left, it's harder to see. I know attaching a siren could help, but what would it take to:

1. Make it so when the lamps turn red they also start flashing, and/or
2. Instead of having all the lamps go dark when the level is low enough, have them all light red, and potentially flash?

[aka13]

One thing that's always bothered me a little about gauges is that as the level runs down, especially once it turns red and is only a light or two left, it's harder to see. I know attaching a siren could help, but what would it take to:

1. Make it so when the lamps turn red they also start flashing, and/or
2. Instead of having all the lamps go dark when the level is low enough, have them all light red, and potentially flash?

I used flashing red, works good.