Factorio Forums

I just thought about it now. I'm assuming some form of simple logic is intended at some point (AND/OR/NOT gates at least) and it'd be nice if there were a simple way of hooking a colored wire up to something that'll show its status at a glance.
For example, having a warning lamp when supplies are running low, or when the flow of resources is slowing down etc.

well, you can use smart inserters as a form of logic control.
It's rather ungainly, but you can make AND, OR, and NOT gates, so all of them are possible.
an AND gate would be two inserters in series with a belt in between the two taking away whatever's playing the bus signal.
an OR would just be one inserter with two conditions set (They're OR conditions, not AND, last I checked.)
and a NOT would be a pair of inserters one set to less than 1 and the other greater than 0.

In most of these cases, you'd want a separate belt network that would move control items into and out of smart chests.
Other than the NOT, it would be easy enough to make the items to be controlled act as the controlling items as well, by putting the chest in-line.
The Not would be rather difficult to make as an in-line option, unless all you wanted was an oscillation of the output.

Last time these were discussed:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 76&p=44068

It even has a proof-of-concept mod adding a very-ugly "advanced CCnet", including those lamps.
Also note the links to former discussions about this topic there.