It's funny how in Oxygen Not Included moving solids over the conveyor rail behaves differently than gases and liquids. Obviously, it makes sense, but it's a bit annoying.

But let's start from the beginning. I have a volcano powered regolith melter. Every now and then it stopped working, because the cool magma has been dumped out, but fresh magma has not been delivered. Being busy with something else I've created a circuit on an regolith input to detect when the regolith stop moving. Because it means the heat source doesn't work, and the input is blocked. Worked like a charm. Every know and then I was receiving an alert, that there is a problem, manually forced the circuit to dump fresh magma. And after a few cycles I've understood what the problem was, and I've improved the magma controlling circuit since then so it seems to be working like a charm.

But then I've noticed, that the igneous rock production has slowed down, even if regolith was delivered properly. Or so it apparently looked like.

Then just a moment ago I've realised something is not OK.

The regolith line after the alert circuit moved smoothly. But before the circuit it moved every other second. Wait a moment...

What is on the rail behind the alert circuit? 14kg (with some decimal points), 5kg (with some decimal points), 14, 5, 14, 5...

So, how the measurement circuit works? It's a conveyor meter set for 20 kg, the amount which typically lands in one container on the rail. Whenever 20kg passes, the conveyor blocks, set a green signal, which I used to both: reset the conveyor itself, but also sent to a buffer gate, with a timeout of 10s. When there is no green signal coming for this long, the buffer gate output goes to red, which through the not gate goes to automated notifier, to alert me.

I have two input lines of regolith, combined together. One using the stash acquired from the time since I've went into the space biome, the other one is fresh supply from the meteorites. Apparently, I've got a 5kg (or 14kg) leftover on that source, which has caused the problem. Because first the 5kg has passed. Then from the next 20kg container the 14kg has been allowed to pass, to top up to the 20kg, to reset the meter. Then remaining 5kg has passed - rinse, repeat.

I've changed the circuit a little bit, so it tracks the flow in batches of 100kg, and the reset goes through another buffer gate active for 2 seconds. So if the situation will even happen again, it will be fixed automatically in 5 seconds at most.

There is an obvious question. Hey, but if the regolith doesn't move, then there is no more igneous rock on the output, and you could just fix an element sensor on an outgoing rail.

Yes. But no. The used lava is dumped into the same space where the melted regolith comes. So, on average, there is slightly more than 20kg of igneous rock per second produced, and there is (or rather: there was) a nice heap of backup, acting as a buffer. When the regolith stops it takes some time to load the surplus of igneous rock. Which means, when I got the alert, there is no output of hot igneous rock at all.

Anyway, since I've fixed the magma control it works like a charm. So I could dismantle the checking circuit. But it was easy to fix, and it works as well. So I am keeping it, at least for now.

#OxygenNotIncluded

After one binge on #OxygenNotIncluded , i’m back to clearing my hobby and housekeeping backlogs.

Don’t worry, my little space people, I’ll be back!

I was wondering why I have a shortage of ceramic for quite a few cycles. To the point I have even sent a rocket to bring some polluted oxygen. Then, accidentally, I've checked my polluted oxygen filtering facility. For some reason, a dozen cycles ago, I've turned off the intake flow. So, my input lines are backed up with 4t of polluted oxygen (not counting one overpressurised at the moment vent), and there are 3t on the way from the space.

#OxygenNotIncluded