XyFreak

Ok i've got to do some research...there is NO REASON why it should fail entirely at 87%

How far are the rods pushed in when it fails?

Yw ;).

I just looked at the code and it should work with any number of successfully taken samples for active reactors. It looks like it's failing at 1% output already, which seems odd....

EDIT: Can you manually shut it down and wait untill it has cooled off and clear its steam tank before trying again?

You had it running? Uh....maybe i changed it to require more samples... i forgot^^;

You can definitely hook up the controller to the draconic energy core. Just put an adapter next to an energy pylon and you're good.

That could be the case, however that will only happen if your water production can't keep up. If you're running into these issues maybe you need to scale back the reactor - or build more turbines.

Just now, Derv said:

i think im producing too much steam lol 

 

Yep. If your water production can keep up, a fluid trashcan might help

1 minute ago, Derv said:

Hi im having an issue with this i turn it on and my reactor immediatly errors out 

Looks like not enough steam can escape the reactor in order for calibration to succeed. You need to be able to consume roughly 20% of the possible output.

Just now, Trucido said:

Sure or I can stream it on twitch..or even invite you to the server if that makes it easier.

If you PM me your modpack + server I'll come flying over

Ok we can rule out the reactor getting too hot then.

Can you send me one or two screenshots of your setup (especially your reactor) so I can recreate it?

1 minute ago, Trucido said:

Ok.  Still using the creative coolant port on reactor...I did the above insstructions as you said.  Below is the current screen while all 4 turbines are calibrating.  Reactor is still red color indicator as shown  Not sure what normal is but looking for your advise.

 

 

How hot does your reactor get?

1 minute ago, Trucido said:

Just as a test. I put a creative coolant port in the reactor (for unlmited steam).  As you can see from the screen below I am still getting the kickoff message on 3 of the 4 turbines.

 

Perhaps I need to complete reset my computer?  What are the aboslute best steps to do this in order to erase any config data and start a fresh computer run?

Hmm.. KICKOFF with engaged coils seems...wrong.

Try this:

• brgcctrl service all stop
• rm /etc/br_control.cfg
• shut down your computer
• break / reform your turbines
• break / reform your reactor
• start your computer

KICKOFF = no coils engaged, full steam to turbine. This state will get your turbine up to its calibrated RPM. Since it shows 0 RPM you can be fairly sure that these turbines do not get any steam at all.

HERE WE GO! A RELEASE!

Lets start with a quick changelog:

4.1 -> 4.2
 - Refactored a LOT of code
 - Implemented the Grid controller. This controller can manage passive reactors and turbines if you connect external energy storage to your computer.
 - Removed old turbine suspension logic. Use the grid controller instead!
 - Fixed a bug that caused the GUI not to update when new reactors/turbines were connected (finally)
 - Fixed a bug that would cause brgcctrl to crash when attempting to use the steamtarget function
 - The generated configuration file is now human readable again
 - More bugfixes

Upgrade Instructions

Just download and run the installer (again). If you still have it lying around, you can use the old version. The installer didn't change.
After you ran the installer, you may want to delete your configuration file ("/etc/br_control.cfg") to avoid config trouble (although I should've handled everything properly).

When upgrading from pre-4.2 you will notice that a new service is now available to you: The Grid Controller. Make sure to add this service to your autostart as you previously did with the reactor and turbine controller:
Make sure your "/etc/rc.cfg" contains something like this: 

enabled = { "brgc_reactor", "brgc_turbine", "brgc_grid" }

You can manually start the controller with either

rc brgc_grid start

or

brgcctrl service grid start

Of course

brgcctrl service all start

will also start it.

In order for your turbines to be controlled properly, you will now need to connect an energy storage block to your energy grid (well duh!) and your computer. Currently supported energy storage blocks are: EnderIO Capacitors and Draconic Evolution Energy Storage. I tried to also add support for Thermal Expansions energy storage, but they don't seem to be supported by OpenComputers yet ( or my version is utterly outdated ) .

If you are using passive reactors as backup in your power grid, make sure they are set to "GRID"-Mode. If the Grid Controller is not running, reactors in "GRID"-Mode will behave as if set to "AUTO".

How the Grid Controller works

The grid controller will try to always keep your energy storage between 20% and 95% full. In order to do so it will always activate as many turbines/reactor as neccessary to generate a small surpluss (when coming from 20%) or loss (when coming from 95%) of energy. This means that if you have two turbines capable of outputting 28K RF/t and your current energy demand is 30K RF/t, the controller will only run one turbine until your energy storage falls below 20%. Afterwards the other turbine will be activated until your energy storage exceeds 95% of its max capacity and the cycle will repeat. If all turbines are running and your energy demand can still not be satisfied, passive reactors will be activated one after another and set to their sweet-spot.

If you want the controller to fully charge your energy storage, you can activate "Charge"-Mode in the "Grid"-Tab. The controller will then activate all turbines and all passive reactors, setting them to their sweet-spot. After your energy storage has been charged, "Charge"-Mode will be deactivated and normal operation will resume.

If the controller can not satisfy your energy demand by activating all turbines and running all passive reactors at their sweet-spot, the controller will attempt to hold the current energy storage charge by pushing your passive reactors past their sweet-spot. This will (of course) not happen when you're expiriencing short spikes (depending on the peak though). The controller will be more tolerant the more energy you have stored.

Want me to add support for more energy storage blocks? Tell me which blocks you want me to whitelist!

As always. If you find bugs, please report them. If you report them like... NOW I'll have them fixed by tomorrow evening

-XyFreak

EDIT: Added "How the Grid Controller works" section.

Just now, Trucido said:

NIce!  Thanks for the quick responses.  How can we show some appreciation?  Do you have any donation pages setup?

Thanks 

I don't have a donation page for multiple reasons:

• I'm just a small programmer amongst many. Thus I would not receive many donations anyways.
• I'd have to pay taxes on those donations and invest a lot of time into breaking my income down.
• I'd have to ask my current employer for permission first.

If you want to support me, spread the word. I've made this program public so ppl can use it. It started off as a "small" thing I wrote for myself after all

9 minutes ago, Derv said:

i am struggling witht e reactor i think it needs recalibrating

 

Try "brgcctrl calibrate" and/or delete /etc/br_control.cfg and restart your (in-game) computer

1 minute ago, Trucido said:

I love your program.  I just had two questions:

 

1.  When will the new interface and release be available for testing?

2.  Have you considered having a capacitor bank as part of the integration? 

-> 1) Tomorrow or later today.

-> 2) You are looking at the code that does just that

Okay guys! I promised I'd work on getting the release done and I'm going to deliver. While I'm going to hunt down the last bugs, I'd like to gather some feedback on how the new GUI part for the grid controller looks.

Please let me know if you feel like something is missing (e.g. showing the current charge in percent >_>). I'm also fine with "this looks awful" feedback ;).

FYI: The "Charge" button, makes the controller charge your energy storage until it's almost full. This mode is automatically disabled after that.

3 minutes ago, Nerdanel said:

Yeah it kept giving an error. But I feel kinda stupid now for asking the question because I found the solution literally an hour after posting this ( and i was already looking for the solution for 3 days  )  I messed up my second turbine. I was missing a ludicrite ring which caused it to spin to fast after activating the coil. Feel really stupid but consider the issue solved. ( the reactor now calibrates fine ) 

And thanks for the awesome program

Good to hear

16 hours ago, ZureaL said:

Hello,

I am running Draconic Evolution 1.10.2-2.0.10.199 on a Feed The Beast Beyond (1.6.1) multiplayer server (the server has 8gb RAM dedicated to the .   I have a draconic reactor set up, pretty much stock, with basic I/O crystals on either end (draconic energy relay crystals in the middle) back to a T8 energy core with close to 300B RF stored in it. I'm using OpenComputers 1.6.2.7 and have a T3 computer, 2x2 T3 screens, max T3 RAM, T3 proc, etc and the 3 adapters set up on the drainback, output and reactor (the stabilizer with the output flux gate)...and I'm running the latest version of Draconic Control (1.42).  dc_gui works fine and shows status of everything properly, so I know all the addresses are correct. 

I warm up the reactor and power is dumped into it very quickly and the containment field jumps up to 50% right off the bat and the core temp gets up to 2000 fast.  I've been running several tests and right now my saturation is up to around 60% or so...it slowly loses power while it's off.  Here's where my problem begins.

If I activate the reactor, the shield makes a really big jump up to around 55% and the output starts dumping power out at like 300k rf/t.  I understand it's trying to reach the target saturation of 50% so it makes sense, however, if I look at the Reactor GUI, it tells me that the target shield rate is, let's say 30k rf/t and I look down at the drainback flux gate, it's only inputting around 27k and jumping back to the reactor GUI, my containment field keeps dropping and the energy saturation keeps dumping out at around 300k/t.  Meanwhile, the core temp climbs VERY slowly.  I've not let the energy saturation levels reach 50% because by the time I've dumped that much power, the containment field has dropped into the low 30%.  I keep checking the drainback flux gate and it's consistently lower than what the draconic reactor GUI is saying it needs to maintain, so my containment field keeps going down.  

So I stomp on the shutdown button, which causes the energy saturation to climb and the computer keeps lowering the input to the core, but always lower than what the reactor GUI says it needs. 

I am using the stock configuration (copied it from the website and put it in /etc/draconic_control.cfg) have all parts of my setup chunkloaded (reactor and T8 energy core, all cables, computer, etc..) however, I've never left the chunk it's running in cause this thing scares the crap out of me

Shouldn't the computer keep the containment field at least 50% constantly, except in shutdown?  I've not just 'let it go' to see what happens, not looking for anymore holes in my game. 

What would REALLY be awesome would be if someone would put up a Youtube video of the startup sequence so reactor newbies could see what happens/expected behaviors.  

Thank you for reading this far down and I look forward to any comments/suggestions that anyone might have. 

Thanks!

The controller is working as intended for you. On default settings the containment field stabilizes around 20%. I WILL make a youtube video because many ppl have trouble setting it up correctly it seems. Anyways - your setup seems to work fine.

Do NOT worry about the temperature as long as it is not above 9000. The default settings are going to throttle the reactors output between 8000 -> 9000 C (= it's adjusting the target saturation from 50% to 90%) between 9000 and 9900 the output rate will be reduced from 100% to 0%. Anything above 9900 will trigger an immediate shutdown (although it should do so before that point is reached).

Do NOT worry about the containment field unless it either starts dropping rapidly when it's well below 20% on default settings or it gets lower than 8% (which should NEVER EVER happen on default). Anything above 0 is perfectly fine.

Why is the controller keeping the containment field low?

To keep the containment field at higher levels, you're required to pump in more RF per tick. But since anything above 0% is fine, we can save a lot of energy by having the containment field low. How much energy you ask? Keeping the containment field at 50% cost 50% more energy than keeping it at 25%. 25% costs 16% more energy than 12.5%. You might've guessed it: The formular is: <somevalue> / (1 - field_percent).

If you go to the preset page and use my special settings, the containment will go to roughly 9.09%, dropping somewhere to 8.xx% if you cut the load and suddenly put load on it again. I'm running these settings on a server on...like...11 (?) reactors now.

Do not worry!

If your reactor is setup correctly, it is extremely hard to make it explode by accident. I blew up 4 reactors on my server:

• 3 blew up simultaineously because of dimension loading issues (do not put your reactor in a different dimension than your energy storage. Do NOT do it!)
• 1 blew up because I accidentally put a flux point directly on a stabilizer - with unlimited throughput. INSTA FIREWORKS!

I've really tried everything (= could occur during normal operation) to blow them up - including cutting the load and reapplying it when the reactors were nearing their shutdown sequence (which is the most dangerous stage). Everything is still running.

Last but not least some explaination:

The jump in the containment field you see is because the controller did not yet run again and reset the feedback gate yet. It's still running at 1M rf/t for a few ticks, thus the surge in containment field strength you saw.

Actually "running" the reactor at 2000 is propably impossible. I acidentally cut the load to one of the reactors entirely so it went to 100%ish saturation with 0rf/t output - and temps did not go below 2150 C (at ~11% fuel conversion).

EDIT: Fixed my math (facepalm)

56 minutes ago, Nerdanel said:

Oke so i'm completely new to open computers but I started using this program and it worked fine. however I now have a second setup on my world and for some reason the program doesn't set a target rpm speed any more in the program. I have no clue what i'm missing and I wiped the harddrive several times and so on in the hopes of getting it back in working shape. 

Sounds like it never gets out of calibration. Does it say anything in the reactor+turbine overview?

Also: NEWS!

As you propably noticed, I got really lazy "lately". I'm going to kinda force myself to finally (FINALLY!!!) get the new version done this weekend. It's about time!

18 hours ago, LightningBlaze said:

My active reactor and 2 turbine setup keeps failing to generate the power I need with this program
It seems the 2 turbines get stuck at SLOW SPINUP
The speed(Target) for both of them is 499(750), each generating 4.82KRF/t, when my demand is about 15KRF/t
I have several tanks holding an excess steam of about 1,000 buckets each, so I am not running out of steam, and I am using ender fluid conduits from enderIO for quick fluid transfer

Edit: I should probably mention the fact that I am using 20 input/output ports on each to make sure to well overcome the ender fluid conduit limit

Can you please check whether the turbines get enough steam regardless? (The turbines steam input tank should not be empty). Just to make sure. SLOW SPINUP means each turbine gets 2000mB/t with inductors engaged.

56 minutes ago, simcye said:

It seems to work fine, then it decides to turn the reactors down, then turn them back up, which causes the turbines to go all over the place

I need the Turbines running at top speed, I don't really need the control aspect, all I want is the display

This program does not support display-only-mode. It propably never will, sorry.

The controller requires you to put all reactors on the same "steam network" so your setup can't work. If the turbines internal capacitor is not empty, the turbines should be at full speed at all times. If they're not, your reactors not being on the same network will propably cause this issue.

The image has been deleted, but I think I know what you mean. It's going to be fixed.

@corbanj6534 talk about simultaineous posts lol

Your first guess is correct. You use "edit /etc/draconic_control.cfg" to create the file and then set up your reactor. The easiest way to do this is by copy&pasting a preset from the website and then put in your adapter addresses where the placeholders are.