Pulsating/looping an electrical signal

[Allgudmate]

Hey all,

 

Just quickly for the devs: thanks so much for 1.0! 

 

Now for my weird question:

I want to generate a electrical signal that turns itself on and off periodically endlessly in a loop (for example a light that goes on and off in a loop). I have some wicked base builds in mind that needs this in 1.0.

 

The closest setup I got working, is a motion camera (set with a particular delay and duration) that opens a powered door. Behind the door is a trapped boar that will be seen by the camera. Works really well actually (door keeps looping from opened to closed, yay!),  but the problem is: animals (and zombies for that matter) disappear when reloading/reopening the game. *sad face*

 

Can anyone tell me a working setup?

(I've been trying for hours lol  )

Edited July 1 by Allgudmate (see edit history)

[stample]

How endlessly does it need to be?  Only when zombies around?  I did something similar to repeatedly trigger electrical fences by just pointing the motion camera at the place where the zombies were going to be.  I think I set the triggers to 1 sec duration and delay to 1 sec?  Hard to recall, it was years ago at this point.  It seemed like when using the delay, it didn't retrigger until after the delay expired.

 

That was a couple alphas back, though.  Not sure if it'll still work.

 

I was using it to get around the fact that zombies don't retrigger fences if they never leave the wire.  So by cycling them and running them against the wall, they'd repeatedly shock zombies trying to break through the wall/door.

[Allgudmate]

Thanks for the quick reply Stample!

 

I want this setup to trigger endlessly forever.  Hence, I cannot use zombies, as they will either 1) destroy the setup and 2) will probably also despawn upon restarting/reloading the game, just like my, otherwise, flawlessly working motion camera (delay/duration) --> door --> trapped (docile) boar setup

 

Another almost-working solution is a bike on top of a closed garage door. Opening the door will drop the bike, which passes through a trigger wire, that recloses the door. Trouble is, is doesn't bring the bike back up

[doughphunghus]

Not at home to check but....

i had a mod that basically made a "capacitor bank" out of a reskinned battery bank. It would charge "in a few seconds" and provided a few seconds of charge when used (primary use was to have lights stay on after turning them off so you could run out of your base, and to have an alarm go off if electric line broken but only sound for a few seconds. ). It was really just a battery bank where the special batteries hold only a few seconds of power, and charge just as fast. You could tune the charge amounts by putting more/less capacitors (batteries) in.
 

anyway: maybe if sunlight does not penetrate a nonmoving door/hatch but does penetrate a moving one ypu can do it?  Basically: a solar bank is connected to and charging a capacitor bank (takes 1 sec to fully charge) and capacitor bank is hooked to hatch/door. The moment power is applied by solar bank the door/hatch opens and blocks the solar bank, stopping charging of the capacitor bank. The capacitor bank decharges (keeping hatch/door open for a few seconds), then when power is used up, hatch/door closes and solar cell is uncovered, charging the capacitor bank again, and reopening the hatch.

 

To clarify: think this may only work if the motion of open/close does not block solar charging, but fully closed/open" door/hatch does. This way as the door opens (slowly?) the solar bank has power and has time to charge the capacitor. I think? Once the power runs put and the door/hatch starts closing it will fully animate the close action before reopening vs "fluttering" in a semi open/close fashion.

 

note: someone else made a capacitor mod thats on nexusmods, though it might charge/discharge significantly slower (and thus not work as well if it works At all).

 

anyway: if it worked this would be a door opening and closing. Im not aure how you use that other than a camers pointing at the door, but maybe? You could hang a trap off of the door that opens and closes and (because the door uses very little power to trigger) it would also run a dart trap or 2 electrical poles? That may be too much wattage but... if you tweaked the capacitors to hold more charge...maybe?

 

 

Edited July 1 by doughphunghus (see edit history)

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, Allgudmate said:

Thanks for the quick reply Stample!

 

I want this setup to trigger endlessly forever.  Hence, I cannot use zombies, as they will either 1) destroy the setup and 2) will probably also despawn upon restarting/reloading the game, just like my, otherwise, flawlessly working motion camera (delay/duration) --> door --> trapped (docile) boar setup

 

Another almost-working solution is a bike on top of a closed garage door. Opening the door will drop the bike, which passes through a trigger wire, that recloses the door. Trouble is, is doesn't bring the bike back up

If you want it to work while you are present, you could put a hatch in front of a camera (or cameras) pointing at the room with a delay.  When the hatch blocks the camera, it will disable power and will close the hatch allowing the camera to see you again.  It's more of a hack than anything, though.  And only works if you or something else is present for the camera.  Beyond something like that, you'd probably need a mod.

[theFlu]

As you're willing to consider a bike-on-garage-door, I guess you'll be happy with this idea:

 

a bike on a tripwire, tripwire set to: power delay 1s and power duration 1s.

 

Tested it in A21 right now, no idea how reliably it'll start or even work at all in A22.

 

A pressure plate should work too, but I didn't test.

[Allgudmate]

Oh, some very nice suggestions!

 

First of all, @doughphunghus : that's very creative. I would never thought of that solution. I think this might even work without mods right. Only downside is that it will not work at night. I will still check it out though

 

@Riamus : that is kind of the same  setup as my initial solution. It works really well, even without the player present (if you put a trapped boar behind it) 

 

But @theFlu's one: that's sooo simple, but it works flawlessly 😀 (I just tried it out)! You can even time it precisely the way you want. I simply forgot that you can set delays and duration on these trip wire things... many thanks!! Even better: it keeps working after a restart/reload of the game. Any other things that trigger tripwires (other than player, zombies, animals and vehicles)? I tried closing (garage) doors and hatches, but they don't seem to work.

[theFlu]

3 hours ago, Allgudmate said:

that's sooo simple, but it works flawlessly 😀 (I just tried it out)!

Noice! The simpler the better, and you almost had it with the drop-a-bike idea, just a little Too creative.

Happy to help, and thanks for the A22 testing!