Circuit readable pipes

[Cagbee]

My idea/suggestion is to allow pipes to be attached to a circuit/logistic network to read contents, amount of said content, and direction of flow(?). I think this would make fluid handling a bit easier by allowing for the separation of fluids, and by attaching to a arithmetic combinator auto-balance two pipes.

[ssilk]

Why is reading from a fluid tank not enough?

[Mehve]

Because fluid tanks require a lot of space, and their four always-there connection points can require even more room to avoid accidentally connecting to the wrong pipes, so you often have to place them too far away from the point of interest to get an accurate reading/control. Furthermore, their large capacity skews fluid level readings to the point where otherwise full pipes will show near-empty. They also represent massive buffers that a particular system may not need, and the designer may not want.

[steinio]

A tank is a big pipe in disguise so it shouldn't be difficult to enable circuit pipes in vanilla.
I would like it to to make better looking pipe systems.

Greetings steinio

[IV]

Tanks are the boxes of fluids and pipes are the belts, so let me pose a very suggestive question. If it is enough to read the contents of boxes, why make it possible read the contents of belts?

It could be useful to avoid fluids going in to pipes where they should not be, without the need of placing a lot of tanks.

I have a setup where it is conceptually not so nice to put a tank at a place where I want to read the fluid.

I have a cracking facility that is supplied by one single pipe, where i sometimes have water and sometimes have heavy oil. This is controlled in 4 stages by circuitry. The pipes contain: heavy oil, nothing, water, nothing, heavy oil, ... it makes no sense to me to add a buffer (tank) there because fluid should be in this piece of pipe for a short time. It is useful to read the contents of the pipe, to avoid accidentally pumping water in to my heavy oil tanks or heavy oil in to my water pipes. I don't want to suggest that this is a good setup for any particular purpose, but this is a setup I tried at some point and i think it could benefit from such a feature. (One complication would be that a zero signal is not the same as the pipe contains no fluid.)

A pump in the south pumps in heavy oil:

Factorio 0.14.20 24_11_2016 19_13_19 (2).png (314.43 KiB) Viewed 6897 times

Two pumps (only one is selected) in the south pump the heavy oil out:

Factorio 0.14.20 24_11_2016 19_14_17 (2).png (306.28 KiB) Viewed 6897 times

A pump in the north pumps water in:

Factorio 0.14.20 24_11_2016 19_14_21 (2).png (314.33 KiB) Viewed 6897 times

Two pumps in the north pump water out:

Factorio 0.14.20 24_11_2016 19_14_26 (2).png (325.58 KiB) Viewed 6897 times

[IV]

Maybe, as a compromise between having this feature and not having it, it should be made possible to read the content of pumps. Pumps are are already connectable to wires and thus it might be easier to do for the developers.

[ssilk]

This makes sense, if you can decide, if the sensor is before or after the pump, as the pump has not the same throughput as a pipe (only 1/5) and you can turn the pump(s) on/off with a power-switch then.

[Rseding91]

Adding circuit connections to pipes would add a lot of unnecessary complication to what is already a complicated system for fluid flow and is not likely to ever happen.

Use a storage tank. Space is unlimited for all intents and purposes.

[steinio]

This mod shows how easy it would be to implement it: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/theBeave/PipeMeter

[Rseding91]

This mod shows how easy it would be to implement it: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/theBeave/PipeMeter

Notes:
This is actually a small, 100 capacity tank, and thus has a slight internal reserve. It responds well to level changes, but reacts slightly slower than the surrounding pipe sections to fluid level. It should flow the same as vanilla pipe. It can be used in place of a pipe section, or off to the side as shown in the thumbnail.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I would have thought a Pulse mode on a pump would be relatively easy, whenever it has output a whole unit of fluid it puts a unit of that fluid on the network. Would need a small internal counter to remember non-whole values.

I think with this you could create a sort of gate with three pumps that only allows one type of fluid through, and you could keep tabs on how much of anything is flowing. Would be useful.