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[CharonX]

I'm currently working on a "pull-the-lever and it'll stop when full" reservoir system, but the pressure plates are giving me a bit of trouble.

While you can set them to trigger only on specific water heights (and nothing else) they only offer two options: single-use or reset.
Using single-use as a one-shot way to turn off the water flow (and needing to re-set the trigger and all after that) seems a bit meh to me in that context, so I went for self-resetting.
This gave me a headache as the self-resets come fairly often leading to continous opening and closing of the floodgates (and thus, steady flooding of the entire reservoir room instead of stopping the flow)
I've experimented with hatches around the plates which open when the plates triggers (closing the main floodgate) as well as cutting off the plate from the main reservoir (to stop re-triggering) but so far it did not work. It keeps on triggering  
Maybe you know a trick I could try.

[Sukasa]

Hm, so...  Basically, you want the pressure plate to be multi-use, but *only* close the floodgate?  Well, I do have *one* idea.

There was an older (~1 week) thread that was dedicated to machinery, try checking the logic gate designs.  You'll need to use some sort of specialized construct for what you want.

Otherwise, just wait.  Dibs on designing this gate if you don't want to!

[slimtim]

well you could place a presure plate in the back to trigger only at 7 and it can shut down the pumps. and then it will continue when the water drops below 7 and you can stop or start it by connecting a lever to another gear assembly.

[Symmetry]

If you have your high water mark, and then go right one and down one and put the pressure plate there the water won't have anywhere to go once it falls in.  Make the pressure plate sensitive to 1 unit of water and by the time the water has stopped flowing it'll be around 7 or so and everything should be ok.

You'll have to have a a way to empty this area separately from your main reservior.

I'll try ascii:

code:

  
XXXXXXXXXX
X   1 1  X
777777X43X
XXXXX#Xo#X
# = floodgate
o = pressure plate
numbers are water

Water comes in from the left, when the reservior is full it'll roll over into the side chamber and trigger the plate.  The random movement of water should mean the reservior will be exactly 7 everywhere but all the 1's above it will eventually be collected in the right hand side.

I'm wondering if theres an instant way to stop water (apart from what is between the pressure plate and the point where it's stopped) as the lag on floogates can be a problem.  Do gear assemblys stop instantly?

[CharonX]

quote:Originally posted by slimtim:
<STRONG>well you could place a presure plate in the back to trigger only at 7 and it can shut down the pumps. and then it will continue when the water drops below 7 and you can stop or start it by connecting a lever to another gear assembly.</STRONG>

Actually, no, as the plate won't trigger only once when it hits 7 (and then again when it falls below that) but rather continously at a rather quick rate.

Thinks for the hints, I think I now have a nifty idea I could try. But I gotta work first, so I'll only be able to try it this evening.

[Hellzon]

Something like this?

code:

Side view:
#    1^   #
F77777#   #
#77777#   #
#######VVV#

# is a wall
F is a floodgate that lets water into the reservoir
^ is a pressure plate set to trigger at level 1 to close the floodgate.
V is a drain to a chasm, magma pit, drained water tower or whatever.
Numbers are water

This is entirely untested, but it seems to me the principle of having the plate where it is in my example would be sound. Doesn't work if the water has to lie on the plate for a while, of course.

The "1" water flows over the plate, closes the floodgate, drains into the chasmwhatever and you have a reservoir. The plate is in a 1 wide corridoor, of course.

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: Hellzon ]

[CharonX]

I just found an assembly that looks nice and works extremely well too:

code:

Below the top level of the reservoir (i.e. the last level filled with water)
 +++++ +      + Wall
 +BpB+ +      B Retractable Bridge
 +BBB+l+      p Pressure Plate (water trigger 6-7) linked to Bridges and Gates
+++X++++      l Level linked to Gates
+     +++++
+     X   <-Water inflow
+++++++++++

Let the space below the bridges be connected to whatever drain you desire (landscape, chasm, vaporation pool). Open the gates via the lever, the water will rush in, and once the fill level on the plate is high enough the Bridges will open (dumping the water on them and draining the plate) and the floodgates will close.
Here I encountered an odd quirk: A lever I install to toggle the entire thing (Gates closed & bridges open/Gates open & Bridges closed) insisted on "synchronizing" the gates & bridges (gates closed & bridges open -> gates closed & bridges closed -> gates open & bridges open -> gates closed & bridges closed etc.)
And, as you can see in the ingame movie I hopefull will be able to upload somehow, when the plate triggers it closes the gates (as intended) but opens the bridges and then closes them again (triggering them twice; not as intended; though there is sufficient time for the water to drain and I don't have to reset the bridges that way. Still, very odd)

Edit: The movie can be found here

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: CharonX ]

[slimtim]

quote:Originally posted by CharonX:
<STRONG>

Actually, no, as the plate won't trigger only once when it hits 7 (and then again when it falls below that) but rather continously at a rather quick rate.

Thinks for the hints, I think I now have a nifty idea I could try. But I gotta work first, so I'll only be able to try it this evening.</STRONG>

no  they do not i tested it, if you set both the min and the max to seven and attach the plate to the gear of a pump it will stop the pump at seven and continue at less

[CharonX]

Hmmm... you are right. I wonder why my previous attempt lead to such a failure.
I'm starting to think that the "triggers" by plates and levers etc. no longer simply toggle a object (closed->open->closed->open) but rather put it in the state according to the trigger.
(I.e. default state of a floodgate: closed. default state of a gear assembly: working. default state of a bridge: normal.)
When a plate is now triggered it switches all the things attached from the default state to the triggered state (gate: open, assembly: not working, bridge: raised)
Meaning that the water "trigger" for the plate would have to be 0 water to 6 water (near full) instead of 7 water (full)... I'll have to try this, sadly my last "research colony" just encountered winter, which meant that everything froze (I couldn't finish my last experiment - the "immigrants & dwarf drowning room, self cleaning variant")

[CharonX]

After a couple of tests I think (at least with pressure plates) my idea above is correct.
I dug a 2-level hole next to a lake, put a pressure plate on the bottom level, set to trigger from 0 to 6, linked it up to a (then closed) floodgate.
I dug a channel between the lake and the floodgate, opened it via a lever and water flowed in from the upper level, quickly filling the lower.
After the water had reached 7/7 at the pressure plate the gate was closed (there was some excess water in the 1st level as it took some time for the last bottom tile in which the plate was to get filled up, in addition to a certain "reaction time" between the water hitting 7/7 and the gate closing.
I waited half a minute or so (and a groundhog got enraged at a dwarf, scaring him away) drained the water in the bottom level via a 2nd gate, and once the water fell below 7/7 on the plate, the upper gate opened again.
I closed the draining gate, the bottom plate went 7/7 again and the upper gate closed. *yay*

[slimtim]

well one thing i found out is that presure plates still toggle gear assembly and levers do it too.
i had a lever attached to a mechanism an while that one was disengaged i attached an active one(the other power source). and now i can only tiggle between power sources.

[CharonX]

Extremely odd. Maybe it's different from object to object?

Because the "default/triggered" state method would have explained the oddness surrounding my first (working) attempt, where a plate triggered at 7/7 and was connected to floodgates and bridges (to act as drains) around it.
I opened the gates manually, triggering caused the bridges to open, and shortly thereafter both the bridges and the gates closed again - in sync.
It's actually a quite nifty looking method to stop water flow, inefficient (in space use and reaction time) but nifty looking (lots of mist and the bridges look cool)

[CharonX]

Here my current design which works quite fine:

code:

Top level:
  #######      l Lever
  #     #      d Door
###    l#      X Floodgate
X      +d      # Wall
###    l#      p Pressure Plate
  #     #
  #######
Level just below top level:

  #######
  #     #
  #     #
  #    p#
  #     #
  #     #
  #######

The plate is set to trigger the floodgate from waterlevels 0-5. One of the levers is attached to the floodgate, the other to a drain-floodgate further below. Opening the floodgate initially via the lever causes the reservoir to fill up, finally crossing 5/7 on the plate, which closes the gate and shuts off the flow. Opening the drain drains empties the reservoir, once the plate drops below 6/7 it re-opens the upper floodgate. Closing the drain will cause the reservoir to fill until the plate crosses 5/7 again, which - again - shuts off the flow by closing the floodgate. Hurray!