How to use the BT Engine as a Pluse Engine

[Saice]

So I hear your BT Engine sucks..... Power that is. Would you like a way to scale it to just the power you want? Do you need it for low power tasks and want it to run more then a minute? Would you like to have a steady amount of MJ only using some BT Solars?

Well Guess What!?! You can and heres how.

In the Real World(tm) a lot of electric motors are use in a pulsed power mode. Instead of controlling speed by say setting your voltage up and down you instead give it max power but only for a set time then turn it off and repeat. IE Pulsing the motor.

You can do this with the Redpower BT Engine too and it works much the same.

Here let me show you.

Two BT Engines with the same setup power and and everything. But one is set to a toggle and the other has a timer set to 2 seconds.


2013-01-16_02.35.41 by Saice, on Flickr

Fire them UP! Psst don't they just look cool.


2013-01-16_02.36.01 by Saice, on Flickr

One minute later and you can see full power guy has sucked his battery dry but mister Pulse Engine still has a long way to go.


2013-01-16_02.37.03 by Saice, on Flickr

As you can see we got about 5K out of full power guy.


2013-01-16_02.37.07 by Saice, on Flickr

And we almost got 500 out of the Pulse Engine


2013-01-16_02.37.12 by Saice, on Flickr

But we also have a hell of a lot more power left to go.


2013-01-16_02.37.21 by Saice, on Flickr


Now of course you can play with the timer to alter just how much MJ your putting out. The faster the timer the more often it is on the more MJ you get. The longer the timer the less it is on the less MJ you get. And of course you can toss a toggle in line from the timer to the engine to fine tune the power output even more.

Quick Edit: Yes a really fast timer can cause lag. if you are wishing to get higher power then what you can get out of say a 1 second timer and you get lag with it set faster instead add the toggle in line it will flip on and off instead of pulsing this will mean instead of a burst of MJ you would have 1 second On 1 second Off if you were using a 1 second timer. Once again you can play with the timer to fine tune this how you like. You can also get even more complex if your good with redstone wiring to fine tune your On and Off cycles even more. But that would be for a more advance setup. This is really just to show you it is possible.

Well all I hope this helps someone out there.

 

[Saice]

OK something I little more complex. Nothing huge but something to give you an idea on how you can better manage the BT Engine.

The basic here is you want to control how long it is in the off state and the on state. For higher MJ power you want a ratio were it is ON more then it is OFF.

The easiest way to do this I found is just using a timer some repeaters and a toggle. There are of course much better ways to do this and if your into Forth it should be easy to just program some sort of Pulse ratio controller with that. Sadly that is not my cup of tea.

The lay out here is you set (and add more if needed) the Repeaters to the number of ticks you want your engine on between pluses. You need to make sure this is less then the time on the timer or else it will get all wonky. This set up here is leaving the engine on for 8 ticks in every 2 seconds.


2013-01-16_04.05.02 by Saice, on Flickr

I am sure you get the idea.

Also as a side I did some testing. With a toggle and a timer to get the engine to run full power for 60 secs and then check the redstone storage. The number was always 5850ish give or take 10 MJ. I'm sure there is some loss in the conduent I'm told something like 5% so that would put the engine in the range of about 6100 to 6200 ish. At 20 ticks a second that makes it roughly in the 5MJ a tick range.

Edit:

I've also done some really really rough math and testing.

MJ you want --- Ticks per 1sec timer --- Ticks per 2sec timer.
1 --- 4 --- 8
2 --- 8 ---- 16
3---- 12 --- 24
4 ---- 16 --- 32
5 --- Just skip it and hook it up direct.

Now the BT Engine does have a spin up time and does seem to have a spin down time even though it seems to cut off completely, it is not huge but it does add some wiggle to the numbers. Also I'm not sure if it is just my PC or lag or what but there is also some flux. So you might need to add or remove a tick to get the MJ you want in your system. This is more noticeable on the lower setups.

---UPDATE---

Ok So I've been testing the BT engine a lot lately. And from what I can tell you my above stuff is fairly good for you in most cases. But not all.

Why you ask? Well you see it turns out the BT ENGINE IS A BEAST!!!! it can take all the power you can give it and turn it into MJ it seems. At a rate of about 1K Watts to 1MJ. I have only found a limit due to my limit to send it power. I have maxed it out for a vary short time at 20K Watts and getting vary high MJ per tick but since that was unstable I was unable to confirm if it was actually giving 20MJs or not. The limit seems to be with just how much BT you can get on a wire and if you have multiple wires going to different sides of the engine it seems to cause its power use to go wonky and be random. My 20K test was such a setup and I had spikes all over the place from 4k watts to 20k watts.

I've also confirm BT Engine just does not care what you hook it to. It will burn max power talking to the air and it will force feed a Redstone Storage Cell no mater what it is set to input max the BT Engine will ignore that.

 

[Golrith]

Nice info. I'm planning on building some RP power generation (windmills) to suppliment my MJ power network. Inefficient as hell, but looks great! More effort, resources and design compared to a IC2 solar panel, but a bigger sense of achivement, just what I like.

 

[Saice]

Nice info. I'm planning on building some RP power generation (windmills) to suppliment my MJ power network. Inefficient as hell, but looks great! More effort, resources and design compared to a IC2 solar panel, but a bigger sense of achivement, just what I like.

LOL then you should see my base. All my BT power comes from a thermopile.... a 48 quad stack pile mind you but still all my BT coming from the worst possible source.

 

[Exedra]

LOL then you should see my base. All my BT power comes from a thermopile.... a 48 quad stack pile mind you but still all my BT coming from the worst possible source.

Saice you're a bloody champion. How you've managed to stay underwater for so long... For my ultimate pack world, I shall try and live underwater.

 

[Hydra]

Nice! I have electronics as a hobby and pulse width modulation is how you control the speed of normal motors as well. Instead of using timers you could also use a single CC computer to turn multiple outputs on/off with varying widths.

I really hope there will be some kind of way to measure the amount of power in a RECell soon so you can have a single computer control multiple engines bases on how much power you need.

 

[Saice]

Nice! I have electronics as a hobby and pulse width modulation is how you control the speed of normal motors as well. Instead of using timers you could also use a single CC computer to turn multiple outputs on/off with varying widths.

I really hope there will be some kind of way to measure the amount of power in a RECell soon so you can have a single computer control multiple engines bases on how much power you need.

Yeah I got some electronics know how which is where I came up with the idea.[DOUBLEPOST=1358335584][/DOUBLEPOST]

Saice you're a bloody champion. How you've managed to stay underwater for so long... For my ultimate pack world, I shall try and live underwater.

all I got to say to that is learn to love a bucket. That thing is like a god send for working underwater. You can pull a water block out from your head and refill you air then just empty the bucket on the nearest object.

 

[Exedra]

In terms of pumping water out of my glass bio dome, would a redpower grate and some buildcraft tanks work?

 

[Omicron]

Nice one Saice, you invented PWM control

Also, thermopile Brofist! Though actually, my base is powered by a single thermopile...

Connected to it:
one Charging Bench,
one Blulectric Furnace,
one Blulectric Alloy Furnace,
two Battery Boxes,
two Retrievers,
ten Sorting Machines,
and almost a hundred blocks worth of blue alloy wire.

The poor thermopile survives by virtue of its buffer storage... I can smelt two stacks of items in the furnace before the battery boxes dip low. After that, it takes a good long while to recharge, but hey, this is a singleplayer environment and I have plenty of stuff to do that involves me not using the furnace, so there hasn't been much of an issue so far. Only once, when setting up my GregTech machines - centrifuge, electrolyzer, blast furnace and 36 machine casings and various filters, relays and sorters to hook it all up - I actually ran out and had to wait until later. But that was a LOT of refined iron and silicon wafers.

Mass processing is handled by my nearby factory, by the way, which is supplied by a mix of IC2 (geothermal + gas turbine) and Buildcraft (steam engines) power. No way in hell a single thermopile could keep that running

 

[Golrith]

One thermopile is doing all that? Hmm, my one solar panel should be enough for what I want then!

 

[Omicron]

Yes, it's enough for the sorters and retrievers, and the excess charges the batteries enough for the brief bouts of furnancing I need.

Building this was part of my test series to figure out how much power sorting machines consume. Truth to be told, I am actually surprised how far this thing has lasted me. I suppose that if I ever start getting automated quarry input into this sorting/processing system, it will start to struggle for real. Unsure whether I'll upgrade to a windmill for the looks, or simply add a second thermopile then...

Though if I used a windmill and Saice's PWM control here, I could probably supplement the BC power in the factory.

 

[Golrith]

Always felt that the Sorting Machines didn't use any real power, I think it's balancing cost is the need to wire it up more then the power itself.

I'll also be building some windmills to suppliment my BC power, even if it's just a trickle. Just because they look good and more expensive then a IC solar panel and Forestry Electrical Engine.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

This is awesome. My hat off to you, sir! Do you mind if I blog about this, with full credit of course, to spread the word?

 

[bigtwisty]

When redpower computers finally get decent interrupt handling, running a PWM output should be fairly easy. It would almost function like an analog control level for the engine. Hmm... negative feedback control loops... I just got a woody!

Cudos, man!
---------------------------------------------------------
A reasonable facsimile of intelligence...

 

[Saice]

In terms of pumping water out of my glass bio dome, would a redpower grate and some buildcraft tanks work?

I did this with my farm area which was 64x64x10 and it works. It is just vary slow 2 real time days with two pumps (which by the way you have to make sure there pipes and grates do not connect). You can do it much faster using a filler to fill the area with sand or dirt and turn around and clear it. I did the pump thing just because I like to be difficult.[DOUBLEPOST=1358365195][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is awesome. My hat off to you, sir! Do you mind if I blog about this, with full credit of course, to spread the word?

Sure thats the whole reason to post. Hence my sig.

 

[Saice]

Removed last post and combined with main posts.

 

[Exedra]

If I put a one second timer behind it, how much MJ would this make?

S
B W W E

S for solar panel, b for battery box, w for wire, and e for engine.

 

[Saice]

If I put a one second timer behind it, how much MJ would this make?

S
B W W E

S for solar panel, b for battery box, w for wire, and e for engine.

With a 1 second timer you basicly going to get roughly 1/20th the power since its only on 1 tick every second. Or about 0.25 MJ per tick. But to be honest this number tends to be worng becuase of the engines spin up spin down effect. Testing has shown it more in he 0.375 MJ per tick range.

 

[Exedra]

So what's the best time?

 

[Saice]

So what's the best time?

Depends on what your power needs are. If you look at the second post I have Ticks to Power for both 1 second and 2 second timer set ups. YMMV do to how the engine spins up and down when powering on and off but usely only of by a tick or so.

But for connect to a solar the lower would be beter as it does not create much power.