Big reactor control in Agrarian Skies

[fleutius]

I am having a hard time controlling my big reactor in As.

In my normal survival world, i have 3 redstone ports,

1 that outputs below 10%
1 that outputs above 90%
and one to turn on and off the reactor from signal.

this is controlled by a Project Red RS latch, so the reactor turns on when it becomes below 10% but doesnt turn off before it hits 90%.


Do any of you have a nice setup that can do this in As?
And if it involves a programmable rednet controller, i am going to need a step by step guide for dummies, because that thing confuses the heck out of me.

 

[immibis]

You could always make a vanilla RS latch. They're not complicated and not even that big (only 3x3).

 

[Bagman817]

I've been pondering the same issue. Right now I have a 3 Resonant Cell buffer and I just turn it on and off when I notice one is empty, and I have enough fuel reserves I could easily pretend it's MJ and just leave the thing on all the time . That said, it still bugs me to waste power. Two things I may try tomorrow: power a <something> from one of my buffer cells, and arrange a redstone signal when it becomes un-powered. Alternately, I may try messing with the control rods to drop the output/fuel to approximate my usage.
I'll report back if I come up with something reasonable.

 

[fleutius]

You could always make a vanilla RS latch. They're not complicated and not even that big (only 3x3).

I tried but failed horribly
I simply could not make it work with big reactors.
When it comes to redstone logic I sadly do not find the logic

 

[fleutius]

Well after a good nights sleep I ended up being succesful in getting a vanilla RS latch to function as i wanted it to

 

[Platinawolf]

Gosh,,, How complicated ^^* I just route the energy% to all control rods (One rednetport, white is capacitor%, magenta is set all control rods, use a MFR thingy to turn white to magenta). If the internal capacitor is at 90%, the control rods are down to 90%. Works for passivly cooled reactors. For activly cooled it wouldn't work as the steam wobbles up and down very quickly.

 

[Methusalem]

For an actively cooled reactor you probably want a constant steam output, which means a constant rod percentage. I simply use a Rednet Control Port and a Programmable Rednet Controller (from MFR) to set the value directly. The first item in the PRC list (I think Adder/Analog) allows you to set this percentage as a number.

 

[Summit]

Like the OP I am totally baffled by the Rednet Controller. Could any of you guys that actually know how to use the thing give us a simple guide to automating the Big Reactor in both Active Cooling/Passive Cooling modes?

 

[Zaflis]

I only use 2 redstone ports, and connect them with rednet cable.
http://i.imgur.com/BfASRqj.png

But i have a slight problem with AS at random times. It can leave control rods at full break mode while its internal power is 0... I have no idea what causes it, as the whole reactor and base is well chunkloaded. Usually runs well for many hours and then see that bug.

(Oh, i don't mind that the power generation fluxuates that much up and down. For what i could observe, the fuel/power efficiency is very closely the same no matter how high or low heat or power output is.)

If i were to guess what causes the bug, is maybe if 2 sequential signal changes comes very quickly, within fraction of second. It might be situation where the signal change goes unnoticed by 1 of the ports.

 

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

I only use 2 redstone ports, and connect them with rednet cable.
http://i.imgur.com/BfASRqj.png

But i have a slight problem with AS at random times. It can leave control rods at full break mode while its internal power is 0... I have no idea what causes it, as the whole reactor and base is well chunkloaded. Usually runs well for many hours and then see that bug.

(Oh, i don't mind that the power generation fluxuates that much up and down. For what i could observe, the fuel/power efficiency is very closely the same no matter how high or low heat or power output is.)

If i were to guess what causes the bug, is maybe if 2 sequential signal changes comes very quickly, within fraction of second. It might be situation where the signal change goes unnoticed by 1 of the ports.

To help with the "blinking signal" problem, you could insert a vanilla repeater between your control ports and set it to 2 or 3 ticks, or use a PRC set to "signal lengthener" to make sure all signals are at least 2 or 3 ticks long. So you won't get instant response, but you also don't miss a signal that lasts long enough to require action.

 

[Platinawolf]

I only use 2 redstone ports, and connect them with rednet cable.
http://i.imgur.com/BfASRqj.png

But i have a slight problem with AS at random times. It can leave control rods at full break mode while its internal power is 0... I have no idea what causes it, as the whole reactor and base is well chunkloaded. Usually runs well for many hours and then see that bug.

(Oh, i don't mind that the power generation fluxuates that much up and down. For what i could observe, the fuel/power efficiency is very closely the same no matter how high or low heat or power output is.)

If i were to guess what causes the bug, is maybe if 2 sequential signal changes comes very quickly, within fraction of second. It might be situation where the signal change goes unnoticed by 1 of the ports.

I'd use a rednet port instead of redstone ports. That allows you to output the percentage of power and set the control rods. Only problem is that you need a rednet controller to convert one color to another.

Output energy% to orange
Input Control Rod% to white
Attach a rednet cable to the rednet port
Attach a rednet controller with passthrough orange to white.

 

[McJty]

I'm using an OpenComputers LUA program to control my reactor. It also automatically lowers and raises the control rods depending on current energy demand. The way I do this is by measuring the amount of RF in the internal storage. It that goes below some amount then I raise the rods to increase RF production. When the internal memory starts getting full again I lower the rods back. This works really well and makes sure I constantly have power and my reactor isn't consuming fuel needlessly.

 

[MrZwij]

I am having a hard time controlling my big reactor in As.

In my normal survival world, i have 3 redstone ports,

1 that outputs below 10%
1 that outputs above 90%
and one to turn on and off the reactor from signal.

this is controlled by a Project Red RS latch, so the reactor turns on when it becomes below 10% but doesnt turn off before it hits 90%.


Do any of you have a nice setup that can do this in As?
And if it involves a programmable rednet controller, i am going to need a step by step guide for dummies, because that thing confuses the heck out of me.

I've been struggling with this for longer than I'd care to admit and finally just figured it out. Only 3 weeks after you needed it!

Here's my setup that works:

Reactor RedNet Port
Energy Amount on white
Toggle Reactor On/Off on yellow

Programmable RedNet Controller
In a nutshell, this watches energy stored. When it dips below 10%, Var0 becomes True (technically it becomes 15), and when it passes 70%, Var1 becomes True. Those two variables are sent to an SR Latch which inverts the output of yellow whenever either of the variables changes.

Screen 1:

Screen 2:

Screen 3:

 

[Lordlundar]

I am having a hard time controlling my big reactor in As.

In my normal survival world, i have 3 redstone ports,

1 that outputs below 10%
1 that outputs above 90%
and one to turn on and off the reactor from signal.

this is controlled by a Project Red RS latch, so the reactor turns on when it becomes below 10% but doesnt turn off before it hits 90%.


Do any of you have a nice setup that can do this in As?
And if it involves a programmable rednet controller, i am going to need a step by step guide for dummies, because that thing confuses the heck out of me.

Simple solution: direct link the 3 redstone ports and make sure the power control is set to "toggle on pulse." Then you don't have to deal with the RS latch at all.

 

[GreenZombie]

I've been struggling with this for longer than I'd care to admit and finally just figured it out. Only 3 weeks after you needed it!

Why not, as mentioned by @Platinawolf, just use the "Passthrough" setting on the PRC to link the energy level with the fuel rod moderation?

Reactors generally become more fuel efficient the colder the rods are, and linking the energy level to moderation makes the reactor converge its power output to the networks power requirement - hence running as cold as possible.

 

[MrZwij]

Why not, as mentioned by @Platinawolf, just use the "Passthrough" setting on the PRC to link the energy level with the fuel rod moderation?

Reactors generally become more fuel efficient the colder the rods are, and linking the energy level to moderation makes the reactor converge its power output to the networks power requirement - hence running as cold as possible.

I honestly have no idea which setup is more efficient. One of the benefits you get from running the reactor up to nearly max output is that you get a not-insignificant amount of carry-over energy (it produces a lot of power with zero fuel), plus the reactor only runs about 25% of the time. I should figure out a way to test this ...

 

[GreenZombie]

If the big reactor thermodynamic modeling is done with half a thought, then it should / would probably be a case of swings and roundabounts. i.e. the average fuel efficiency of a reactor run "digitally" will approximate - in the best case - the equivalent analog managed reactor - for the same averaged RF/h.

It would be very interesting to build a test world with two identical reactors - say 20kRF/t, running two identical power sinks - MFR lasers taking 10kRF/t - one setup with an analog control the other with digital, and simply come back an hour later and see which has more ingots left in the input slot.

 

[MrZwij]

If the big reactor thermodynamic modeling is done with half a thought, then it should / would probably be a case of swings and roundabounts. i.e. the average fuel efficiency of a reactor run "digitally" will approximate - in the best case - the equivalent analog managed reactor - for the same averaged RF/h.

It would be very interesting to build a test world with two identical reactors - say 20kRF/t, running two identical power sinks - MFR lasers taking 10kRF/t - one setup with an analog control the other with digital, and simply come back an hour later and see which has more ingots left in the input slot.

That's almost exactly what I'm doing right now. I have two identical 9x9 reactors each connected to 10 resonant energy cells. The input is capped at 10kRF/t (1k each). Hopefully that's enough cells - I probably should have done 20 at 500RF/t.

So far they seem almost identical. Reactor A (steady output) has produced 1 ingot + 215mb of waste. It was turned on a few seconds before Reactor B (off@high, on@low), which has produced 1 ingot + 205mb of waste.

 

[MrZwij]

OK, I think I'm done. I see no practical difference between the two rednet setups. Both produced essentially identical amounts of waste and identical amounts of power (most of the variances can probably be explained by the time it took me to walk between reactors and also a derp I'll describe later).

I broke the rednet cable from the PRCs to the reactors and manually switched them off about the time the 10 resonant cells reached 45M RF each. In that time Reactor A (steady) produced 4 ingots + 623mb of waste, while Reactor B (low-on, high-off) produced 4 ingots + 397mb of waste. Reactor A's energy cells held ~45.9M RF each, while Reactor B's held ~45.7M RF.

How I derped: I was trying to devise a system on the fly that would let me flick a lever and turn off both reactors at the same time. That resulted in maybe 30 seconds where Reactor A was running at full speed while Reactor B was turned off completely, which probably explains the slight difference in waste and output.

 

[Zeeth_Kyrah]

OK, I think I'm done. I see no practical difference between the two rednet setups. Both produced essentially identical amounts of waste and identical amounts of power (most of the variances can probably be explained by the time it took me to walk between reactors and also a derp I'll describe later).

I broke the rednet cable from the PRCs to the reactors and manually switched them off about the time the 10 resonant cells reached 45M RF each. In that time Reactor A (steady) produced 4 ingots + 623mb of waste, while Reactor B (low-on, high-off) produced 4 ingots + 397mb of waste. Reactor A's energy cells held ~45.9M RF each, while Reactor B's held ~45.7M RF.

How I derped: I was trying to devise a system on the fly that would let me flick a lever and turn off both reactors at the same time. That resulted in maybe 30 seconds where Reactor A was running at full speed while Reactor B was turned off completely, which probably explains the slight difference in waste and output.

If you have rednet cable, simultaneous control is easy: Run the cable to each connection, then place a lever on the cable somewhere. Make sure they all have the same color. Done!