Reading Energy Cell power levels w/ Computers

[Zerro]

Greetings,

I have one of those frame quarries being run by turtles and a master computer. I have 16 mining wells being powered by 2 energy cells which are receiving their power from 4 tesseracts (Yeah I probably have diminishing returns...)

The problem is, my energy cells are running at a loss so if I left this frame machine running, eventually it'll run out of power and not work the way it's intended. I was wondering if there's a way and a code for my computer to read the power level of the Energy Cell.

I was thinking of this:
If energy cell power =< 25%, then computer goes idle
When energy cell == 100%, then the program recommences

Unfortunately I don't know much about coding and I don't know how to get the computer to read to energy cell so I was hoping someone could help me out with linking the two machines and with a code to read the cells.

Thanks for the assistance

 

[Jess887cp]

The only way I can think of is to convert to EU, slap on one of those nifty energy sensor cards, set the storage device to output a redstone signal when full, and then convert back to MJ. Powerconverters would be your friend here.

 

[Omegatron]

I think misc peripherals has a gate reader that can read the power level of the energy cell, or at least the same things a buildcraft gate can. Failing that, buildcraft gates on structure pipes next to the cell could be set to emit redstone signal if it is empty, full, or partly full and you could have a computer reading the redstone.

 

[Fuzzlewhumper]

Autarchic gate that emits redstone signal when cell full, computer responds to the signal? That's my first thought and ... could be wrong.

 

[Juanitierno]

Ive wseen direwolf craft a turtle that can read stuff as if it was a BC gate. With that you should be able to automate it

 

[Zerro]

Ive wseen direwolf craft a turtle that can read stuff as if it was a BC gate. With that you should be able to automate it

Yeah I was thinking about that too. It seems like it takes forever for these energy cells to recharge from around 25%. I'm thinking maybe instead using a turtle to dig the energy cell once the cell reaches 25% and send it back to my power plant to be charged. At the same time, I could have the turtle place down a fully charged cell so there will be as little downtime as possible on the machine.

Once again, don't know much about computercraft coding so I'm wondering if anyone knows of any codes I could use to make this work.

Thanks

 

[Juanitierno]

Q: Why dont you use a couple tesseracts directly sending power from your base?

I mena, i know your using tesseracts, why not just use MORE tesseracts so that power transfer matches consumption? (also rememeber tess will only transfer 100MJ/t, you might need several)

 

[Zerro]

Q: Why dont you use a couple tesseracts directly sending power from your base?

I mena, i know your using tesseracts, why not just use MORE tesseracts so that power transfer matches consumption? (also rememeber tess will only transfer 100MJ/t, you might need several)

I tried that but I didn't notice any increase in the rate the energy cell recharges. The way I look at it, having 2 Tesseracts on the line will produce 150MJ/t so having more than just 4 Tesseracts/3 Energy Cells is overkill, unless if there's more going on with Tesseracts and Energy Cells in the background that I don't know about.

 

[Juanitierno]

Do you have enough tesseracts on the sending side?

I understood tesseracts will consume 125mj to output 100 on another cube, but if you dont have enough power to transfer more than that the machine will run dry no matter what.

Tesseracts are the pipe, your powerplant provides the energy, if you have enough of both you should be able to run the machine with no cells.

 

[zemerick]

Tesseracts have a max. output of 100mj/t, and redstone cells have a maximum input and output of 100mj/t. So, you should have exactly 1 tesseract per cell. However, depending on your version of TE, the redstone energy cell might have a 5% loss going from conduit to cell. This means it would require an input of just over 105mj/t, which a tesseract can not do.

Try setting the maximum output of the cell to 95.

With a tesseract sending 100mj/t, a 5% loss brings the power going into the cell down to 95mj/t. Set that for the output, and the cell should stay at exactly the same power.

All of this assumes you have sufficient power to run at max. If you don't, you can do the math to see exactly where you are power wise, and just set the cells to output only that amount. Effectively, this is the same as turning it off and on over time, and much simpler. Just remember, redstone conduit loses 5% every time it enters something new ( again, on older versions of TE. If you are using the 152 packs, then redstone cells have no loss, unsure about tesseracts. ) So, if you sent 100mj to a tesseract, you would lose 5% to enter the tesseract, 25% in the tesseract, 5% to enter the redstone cell for an output of just under 68mj/t. ( then also 5% entering the wells, but that's after the cell, so you don't need to calculate it. )