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[Kaos]

It depends on what you're sending the signals to. This can be done with gears, but doors/bridges/latches and things are subject to a delay regardless what you do. Also, if 2 memory cell plates are linked to a bridge, activating the first pressure plate will close it, but activating or deactivating the second wont open it again, and vice versa.

Well that's the idea, for example if you're trying to open/close a bridge, you get the open signal immediately, then the bridge takes it's own delay to actually open. But for closing it has two delays, the delay of the plate to unlatch and then it's own delay to actually close, I was wondering if there is a way to remove the delay fom the plate unlatching... but I should be wondering instead: is there a way to send a close signal without the device sending it adding an extra delay? the only devices that open or close without a delay are doors and hatches, so it would be a matter of making a memory cell that instead of plates uses doors or hatches to transform the mechanical signal from the gears into an actual signal that can open/close bridges and such...

edit: on second thought, there's no way... since doors/hatches don't send signals, they just receive them, levers and plates are the only things that send signals...

[BloodBeard]

Hughububub!

My post wasn't really edited/condensed for a wiki page so I re-wrote a lot of it. Also I decided to give my designs more condensed and apt names if it's going to be wiki-official. Thanks for getting the page set up but warn me if you're going to be using direct quotes 

I never really edit wiki's and even had to make an account for the DF one, so if there's someone who is better at it, this page could use a section for minecart logic.

[TinyPirate]

Hehe, whoops? Well, you made a great update - so good work on that. And anyway, wikis are hugely iterative - it's ok to have a mess of a page the first time round!

I kinda think all of the computing pages need a reworking of some kind because minecart-based logic systems are (?) the cleanest and best way to get into computing in DF. I'm not the person to do that though - I don't know the topic well enough.

[BloodBeard]

The Newtons cradle thing opened up some interesting possibilities, such as the newest edition: The Minecart OR gate:

Spoiler: Minecart OR gate (click to show/hide)

A very simple OR gate based on the Newton's cradle memory cell. Rollers directed to the center, activation of the northern roller pushes the first cart into the second cart, engaging the northern pressure plate and deactivating the southern plate. While both will be active momentarily because of the deactivation delay, neither can be deactivated at the same time.

[BloodBeard]

I don't know what the fuck to call this, but it's the kind of thing that the OR gate can be expanded into:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, i'll try and explain.

That is basically 3 OR gates in one with a kind of IF/OR nesting going on. Pressure plates CD, CB and AB form individual OR gates. Combined, it's one big OR gate where only one pressure plate can be activated (permanently) at a time. Pressure plate B is the active one right now.

If activated:

C can only OR with D and B
D can only OR with C
B can only OR with C and A
A can only OR with B

The gearing can be manipulated to enforce these rules. Right now it would mess things up if gear 4 were to be engaged, so pressure plate B need only be linked to an external gear that won't let power get to 4. If plate A were engaged, gears 3 and 4 need their power source cut.

If someone finds a useful purpose for it, i'll give you a cookie.

EDIT:

Seems I skipped a level. There's also a more simple double-OR'd gate:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Like the other one, it's a combination of OR gates that only allows one of three pressure plates to be activated at a time (after the gears are linked to enforce it).

[TinyPirate]

I don't know what the feck is going on in that last example, but I love it. I'd need to see explained how, practically, you could use such a device. It's still awesome though.

[BloodBeard]

Whatever would need it would have to be dwarfy as fuck. But the simple OR gate can have a ton of uses, particularly in the creating of airlocks. You can't link a single lever to 2 bridges that opens one and closes the other because of the way on/off signals work, but you can link one pressure plate to one bridge and the second to the other bridge with the OR gate and link the gears in such a way that a single lever pull will close one and open the other, pulling a second time to change them again.

Did some experimenting and was able to make those efficient power-to-signal converters even more efficient.

Spoiler: Angled power-to-signal converter (click to show/hide)

I was thinking how I could make those monstrous OR orgy things even bigger and thought about angling the tracks. It worked pretty well at making the single-carted 3-tracked power-to-signal converter smaller and more power efficient.

Spoiler: Looping power-to-signal-converter (click to show/hide)

It isn't much of an improvement on the 2x2 original, I only moved the gear over, but i'm thinking this new placement might allow for an even more compact modular layout. The same perhaps with angled one, I haven't tried yet.

Will update the first post with these later.

[Kaos]

You can't link a single lever to 2 bridges that opens one and closes the other because of the way on/off signals work

you can acomplish this by using a retracting bridge and a raise bridge, the same with a hatch and a door, only need to have one end with some ramps/stairs which get closed by the retract bridge/hatch.

a closed sinal means that the door/raise bride allows horizontal passage while the hatch/retract bride forbid vertical passage and vice-versa.

[TinyPirate]

I think I have invented a more efficient Power to Signal Converter.



This design uses only one roller and relies on gravity. The roller, set to lowest (thought I'm not sure this matters), pushes the cart around the loop, over the pressure plate and on to the ramp, whereupon the minecart rolls back down and on to the rollers again. Rinse and repeat. When the rollers are deactivated the minecart rolls back on to them, allowing the pressure plate to reset. This design does not rely on the floor above being accessible to the minecart (no need to channel anything, the track ramp can be built with floor directly above it).

Obviously, this design could be set to be straight, or curved (as this one is). I'm not sure which is best for packing many close together (probably straight, right?).

[Kaos]

This design does not rely on the floor above being accessible to the minecart (no need to channel anything, the track ramp can be built with floor directly above it).

Are you sure about this part? flooring above a ramp would make the ramp unusable, even having the channel above the ramp and if the z-level above has no adjacent floor tile (with a wall bellow) where the ramp can actually lead to makes the ramp unusable.

[TinyPirate]

Tested with and without and it works!

[BloodBeard]

you can acomplish this by using a retracting bridge and a raise bridge, the same with a hatch and a door, only need to have one end with some ramps/stairs which get closed by the retract bridge/hatch.

a closed sinal means that the door/raise bride allows horizontal passage while the hatch/retract bride forbid vertical passage and vice-versa.

All the same it's not a one-all solution. People might want/need two bridges/doors/hatches of the same type in a way that two different ones aren't feasible/wanted. It's also a more dwarfy solution, nuff said  .

I think I have invented a more efficient Power to Signal Converter.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This design uses only one roller and relies on gravity. The roller, set to lowest (thought I'm not sure this matters), pushes the cart around the loop, over the pressure plate and on to the ramp, whereupon the minecart rolls back down and on to the rollers again. Rinse and repeat. When the rollers are deactivated the minecart rolls back on to them, allowing the pressure plate to reset. This design does not rely on the floor above being accessible to the minecart (no need to channel anything, the track ramp can be built with floor directly above it).

Obviously, this design could be set to be straight, or curved (as this one is). I'm not sure which is best for packing many close together (probably straight, right?).

Right right, I forgot about ramps. It does actually work Kaos, I tried it out (aswell. I just saw Tiny's post when previewing this) in a fort. People have called it a bug, idk, but so long as it works it's a good design to work with.

I tried experimenting with modular layouts of the angled versions, the other one and this one, but neither are better than the straight version. Even so i've added both straight and angled versions with ramps to the first page. In fact i've updated most of the images on the first page and added some extra ones for modular layouts. I've changed the modular layout pictures so they don't have all those extra gears since they probably confuse people more than anything. Some of them are significantly smaller because of it. All of the single-design images with the 3 layers are now horizontal so they fit on the page better.

[AndreaReina]

The Newtons cradle thing opened up some interesting possibilities, such as the newest edition: The Minecart OR gate:

Spoiler: Minecart OR gate (click to show/hide)

A very simple OR gate based on the Newton's cradle memory cell. Rollers directed to the center, activation of the northern roller pushes the first cart into the second cart, engaging the northern pressure plate and deactivating the southern plate. While both will be active momentarily because of the deactivation delay, neither can be deactivated at the same time.

Isn't an OR gate one that outputs a 1 if either (or both) of the inputs is 1?

Input A	Input B	Output X
0	0	0
1	0	1
0	1	1
1	1	1

This could be achieved by simply linking two PSCs or memory cells to the same action (door, bridge, etc)

I think what you're describing is a SPDT (single-pole, double throw) or changeover switch: whichever position it's in, one output is 1 while the other is 0:

Input A	Input B	Output X	Output Y
0	0	0	0
1	0	1	0
0	1	0	1
1	1	1	1

Note that the last case may break the switch, which means you need to be very careful giving orders. A safer setup would use only one triggering lever, linked to both mechanism X and (through a NOT gate) mechanism Y, leading to the much simpler state table:

Input A	Output X	Output Y
0	0	1
1	1	0

[BloodBeard]

It had occured to me yeah. I didn't really know what the proper name for that sort of thing would be then, so ty.

The linkages would depend on the function of the switch I think, but more than likely yeah it would be a simple matter of linking it so a single pressure plate or lever could perform the switch in either direction.

[TinyPirate]

Thanks for making a better version of my diagram! I should update the wiki at some point. Ramps offer quite a lot of possibilities. Pity that they don't "hold" a cart at their top when another cart blocks the adjacent, bottom square. That could be quite handy.