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Factory control board.

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:59 am
by jim lee
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I created a module that controls set levels for items I'm producing and gives me an idea how well things are working.

Green light - Full quantity.
Yellow light - Not full, but working on it.
Red light - Empty chest.
No light - Production has been switched off.

In my factory, each item being assembled has a dedicated factory block ended by a chest that's attached to my green factory circuit.

How to set this up.

First : You really need a list of what single-letter variable maps to what item your assembling.

Mine ended up like this..


0 :
1 : Red Bottle on order.
2 : Green bottles on order.
3 : Blue bottles on order.
4 : Grey bottles on order.
5 : Purple bottles on order.
6 : Yellow bottles on order.
7 :
8 :
9 :

A : Accumulator amount on order.
B : Blue PC board amount to order.
C : Clips of ammo on order.
D : Electric motors on order.
E : Engines on order.
F : Frames for robots. How many to order.
G : Green PC board amount to order.
H : Sulfuric acid amount to keep.
I : Furnaces, giant electric incinerators.
J : Rocket control unit, ordered.
K : Grenade amount on order
L : Rocket control units on order.
M : Mining machines on order.
N : Light weight structure on order.
O : Oil amount to keep. (green oil for electric motors)
P : Plastic amount on order.
Q : Speed modules. (Speedy quick!)
R : Red PC board amount to order.
S : Solar panel amount on order.
T : Gun turrets on order.
U : Steel bar-stock on order.
V : ConVeyer belt (Yellow)
W : Speed modules. (DOUBLE Speedy quick!)
X : Armor piercing clips on order.
Y : Radar on order.
Z : Train track, on order.

RED : Conveyer belt (RED)
BLUE : Satellites on order.


As you can see, I ran out of letters and ended up starting to use colors.

Next, setting up a module:

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Set the item to control. This is just a label so that when you hover over it, you can see what item its controlling.


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Now in here set the actual item you want to control. This is the same as you set in the last screen. But this one actually hooks your item into the machine. X is used as the amount internally, its the same for all, don't change X.


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Now, choose the letter signal you want to associate for this item. (Remember the list above?) The number sets how many to limit production to. The signal on/off will turn production on or off to that section of your factory.


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Now the last step is to set all your raw material input loaders to active when the item count is less that the chosen amount limiting letter. You can also see in this picture the output item box hooked to the network.


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Example signal set with the factory up and running. Things that show up as red will flash through as the items are assembled and pass into the conveyer belt system.

Hope this helps. Let me know what you think.

-jim lee

Re: Factory control board.

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:08 am
by planetmaker
Why do you use the letter signals for the items instead of the items themselves as signal (which would be much more intuitive)?

Re: Factory control board.

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:10 pm
by jim lee
The items themselves tell you how much you have, the letters tell how much you want.

-jim lee

Re: Factory control board.

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:14 pm
by sepharim
couldn't you set the Combinators to the item and the Value to negative what you want. Then the items you have on storage would be added to that Value.
If ITEM < 0 the amount of items missing (YELLOW)
if ITEM >= 0 stop production, more or equal items you need. (GREEN)
if ITEM = Combinator, no item on storage (RED)
ITEM - Combinator would be the amount of items you have.


Could make a lot of things easier and would also help if you have more items then signals (mods or so)

so if you want 50 Belts, you set the Combinator to -50:
Belts = -50 -> nothing there (50 missing)
Belts = -20 -> 20 belts missing
Belts = 0 -> 0 missing
Belts = 20 -> 20 overproduction

20 - (-50) -> 70 full amount of items.

just an idea. Not fully tested.

Re: Factory control board.

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 8:14 am
by jim lee
If that would work, it would be nice. I'm not completely happy with my solution. Its too complicated to set up. Once its set up, its nice though. I like being able to see who's being overworked and who's just idling along.

As I'm typing this, I'm starting to see how your idea would work. You basically back-feed the main line with a negative of what you want, then look at the result of everything summed together. Now the main line no longer shows what you have, but shows how far your are from your desired amount. This assumes, of course, that nothing else is already on the main line wanting to know how much you have. And wondering why the numbers are getting all monkeyed up.

I'll have to think on this for awhile.

-jim lee