Question for you electrical pros

[Stahl]

Hey hows it going, i play on a PvP server and i want to use auto turrets to protect my base. The trouble is i need them to be powered for long periods of time.

 

We worked out that two smg auto turrets hooked up to one generator bank will stay powered for 18 hours. In terms of duration, thats pretty good, but is there a way to increase this amount of time.

 

One option is to hook up one gen bank to one turret but that seems a little crazy as we plan on having between 20-30 turrets both internal and external.

 

Does anyone know a good way to provide long lasting power to a large amount of electrial devices

[RipClaw]

You can connect a battery bank to the generator and then connect the turrets to the battery bank. The battery bank acts as emergency power supply when the generator runs out of fuel and extends the time the turrets are powered. The generator will later recharge the batteries, which requires about 20 watts of additional power during recharge.

[BFC_OGDA]

I'm using a motion sensor with identical settings to the turret connected for each turret which only powers the turret when the motion sensor triggers.

I'm running 18 turrets on a single generator with that build and the generator lasts usually longer than an ingame day.

[kuratowakiru]

you can also hook a motion sensor to the turret, motion cam cost like 5 watts and turret cost like 15w, so now you can setup 3 times the turrets at the same cost of power unless the motion cam caught something. You can also attach a series of batteries bank to the system instead of each turret.

 

power source (genny/solar) --- batteries x(how much you need) ----- relays (if needed)------ [motion cam --- turret] x20

 

if you have narrow corridor, you can replace motion cam with tripwire for even lower cost (1 watt each), just put it somewhere where other player can't reach.

e.g

[turret] [power hatch]

[tripwire] [wall] [-----------------------------1x2 corridor] [wall] [tripwire2]--~--[power]

[Ghostlight]

You can connect a battery bank to the generator and then connect the turrets to the battery bank. The battery bank acts as emergency power supply when the generator runs out of fuel and extends the time the turrets are powered. The generator will later recharge the batteries, which requires about 20 watts of additional power during recharge.

 

Hook all that up to Solar Panels, and you don't even need the generator or fuel. Solar charges batteries during the day, and batteries run your Turrets at night. Just make sure you have tier 5 batteries.

 

And this is me assuming Solar Panels are still in the game, haven't actually seen any in A18.

[blugold1]

Generator Bank -> Electrical Timer Relay -> Battery Bank -> turrets / motion sensors / trip wires

 

When the electrical timer relay is on, power will be drawn from the generator and also recharge the batteries. It’ll only draw 5W to charge the batteries. So set up the timer relay to only turn on long enough to recharge your batteries. Once the batteries are fully charged, have the relay timer turn off, then it’ll draw down the batteries. You’ll drastically increase the length by doing this.

 

Stacking that with motion sensors and trip wires, and electricity becomes cheap

[RipClaw]

Hook all that up to Solar Panels, and you don't even need the generator or fuel. Solar charges batteries during the day, and batteries run your Turrets at night. Just make sure you have tier 5 batteries.

 

And this is me assuming Solar Panels are still in the game, haven't actually seen any in A18.

 

They are still in the game but an endgame item. You must have 5 out of 5 points in Better Barter for the trader to offer them.

 

I don't know if it's still the same but in A16 the turrets drew power from the batteries even though the chunk wasn't loaded. But the solar cells didn't charge the batteries. It happened to me several times in A16 that the batteries were empty because I was on the road the whole day.

[blugold1]

I started playing in A17, and solar has always properly recharged batteries when I’ve been away from my base.