Factorio Forums

You will get access to 5 new items to place:

Directional Sensor
The Directional Sensor displays the contents of many types of objects it's pointing at, and it can be attached to the circuit network. The most obvious use is detecting the inventory contents of a target other than logistics or smart chests. A few other uses are showing the 'energy' stat of most objects in kiloJoules, which is the most logical for an accumulators' current charge. Many other objects show energy too, but this might not reflect the "energy" that you want to find, so I'd recommend experimenting with it. A few other uses, and a few things of note are as follows:

• The inventory contents of trains are displayed as well, but only when the train is stationary.
• The resources remaining of mining drills is shown, which includes pumpjacks showing the 'remaining' amount of fluid at the source as 'fluid units'.
• Objects on belts can be detected, but only how many and on which side on the belt. I'm unsure if it's possible to find out what specific items are on the belt without interfering with them (sounds a bit like a hypothetical cat in a box).
• When used with the pressure floor, more sensor options become available. See the description below on how to use it.

Includes a config file in which you can change some values related to update times. Useful for large factories.

Electric Switch
The Electric Switch is in essence a pair of electric poles that can toggle the copper wire connection between them (In SCS, red and green wires were also toggled, but due to changes in Factorio 0.12.x this is no longer possible). The input is any input signal that a smart inserter can work with. The Switch Interface is the middle of the structure, which is where you can attach red or green wires and set the switch's condition. The main use of the Electric Switch is to connect or disconnect extra power production or power hungry parts of a factory, a very powerful feature.

Directional Actuator
The Directional Actuator is capable of toggling objects that it is pointing at. What toggling means depends on the targeted object, but in most cases it will toggle between activating and deactivating the object. The input is again any input signal that a smart inserter can work with. This works on a number of structures, such as miners, assemblers, etc. A few special cases include:

• Trains - Toggling manual mode, temporarily preventing them from continuing on their schedule.
• Belts - Flipping their direction, making it possible to block or redirect the contents on the belt.
• Gates - Makes a gate unresponsive to nearby movement, instead reacting exclusively to the actuator's input signal. This will require building the complete gate first, before attaching an actuator.

Micro Accumulator
The Micro Accumulator is essentially just a normal accumulator, only with a tiny capacity and a more rapid charge and discharge. Use this in combination with the directional sensor to detect, for example, when other accumulators in the network start or stop charging.

Pressure Floor
The Pressure Floor is a concrete-like variant of floor that has additional functionality when coupled with the Directional Sensor. When set up properly, it can detect objects moving or standing on it, along with their contents. A proper setup works as follows:

• Place a square area of Pressure Floor. There is a maximum detection area of around 25x50 tiles, depending on Directional Sensor placement.
• Place a Directional Sensor on the edge of the Pressure Floor area, pointing to one of the edge tiles. This edge tile MUST NOT have any other entity on it that the sensor might pick up on.
• The area will be connected to the sensor, and the exact region is highlighted for a short moment.

One thing of note: As we don't have script events that involve tile placement or removal, I'm not actively checking if the pressure floor remains intact. Instead, I've opted to just allow the player to replace the floor after the sensor is placed, the sensor will remain functional for the area it was initially created with.

Finding the square area is determined as follows (complicated details for those interested):

• The placement direction and target tile of the sensor are used as input.
• Find the strip of continuous Pressure Floor tiles starting from the target tile, in the direction of the sensor.
• More strips of equal will be added to both the left and right sides of the sensor, until no more strips of equal length can be found.

In effect, the above algorithm is guaranteed to find a square area, so you'd have the most control of the detecting area by always making it square.

Instead of more pictures, you could look at the example save file included in the download.

• This list shows a number of specific uses for the items in this mod, some of which are demonstrated in the example save:
• Remotely or automatically switch off parts of the factory (electric switch), depending on current accumulator charge (sensor on an accumulator)
• Start backup power by connecting steam engines back on the network (electric switch), depending on accumulator charge (sensor on an accumulator)
• Set a train schedule to wait at stations for 0 seconds, and instead only allow it to leave once it's full or empty (sensor on cargo wagons, actuator somewhere on the train, optionally some conventional combinators to determine the correct condition for the actuator)
• Don't fill up a locomotive completely by checking how much fuel it has already (sensor on the locomotive)
• Open and close gates only on a condition instead of a nearby player or train (actuator on a gate)
• Close gates when a train is coming (actuator on a gate and a sensor a bit down the train tracks)
• Flip the orientation of a belt (actuator on a belt or splitter, not sure if the splitter thing is in any way useful, but there you go) (idea from the Logic Belts mod)
• Add robots to your network up to a customizable limit (since factorio 0.12.5 / mod 0.4.6, sensor on a roboport will show available and/or busy robots in a network. Smart inserter putting robots in the roboport will fix the rest.)
• Disable or enable groups of turrets depending on if an attack is happening (something with sensors and laser turrets probably, maybe throw in a micro accumulator)

0.4.9

• Updated for the script change in the 0.12.12 patch
• Attempt to prevent a game crash related to a missing x value

0.4.8

• Oversight in function call that generated a nil error, now fixed thanks to jaguilar.
• Added config file for the sensor.

0.4.7

• Bugfix included from github user theit8514, where the sensor signal would not always clear properly
• Sensor also shows the count of specific items on both sides of a belt, not just on which side.

0.4.6

• Sensor compatibility bug with 0.12.5 resolved
• Done away with using a smart chest for the sensor, replaced it with a constant combinator. This also made it possible to refactor some items into virtual-signal type objects. NOTE: this WILL break some red/green wire connections and conditions in migrating saves.
• More information available when using a sensor on a roboport.

0.4.5

• Had to re-add a proper migration script, i thought they worked different.
• Shouldn't crash on special cases with fluidboxes, like those introduced with the rail tanker mod. Might still have some issues, but I'm unable to test that right now.

0.4.4

• mining-drill type entities are now available as valid sensor targets.
• Added fluid and heat units back in (from SCS) as a side effect of getting pumpjacks functional with the sensor.
• Slight improvement in how functions are buffered across saves. They refresh on load now which prevents a few strange errors.

0.4.3

• Another attempt on getting trains stopped properly by actuators.
• Sensor now has a special behavior for the Micro Accumulator specifically, to allow for more reliability.
• Sensor now detects biters and spitters through a pressure floor, like it should.
• Added a save file to the repository showing some examples.

0.4.2

• An attempt on getting trains stopped properly by actuators so inserters will work correctly while the train is in manualmode. They are apparently quite strict in their train speed sensing behavior.

0.4.1

• Pressure floor added (see long description)
• Changed vehicle detecting behavior for Directional Sensors, now shows the relevant type of vehicle always, and the contents as well when it's stationary.

0.4.0

• first release (counting from the last version of Smart Circuit Systems)