Forgive me if I'm making some obvious mistakes, but I've only just started playing with Lua about 6 hours ago. Had some C/C++ classes in college years ago, but still.
I'm playing on a 1.7.10 single player world with OpenComputers 1.6.0.9 (Feed The Beast Infinity with a couple extra mods on top). I use level emitters to turn on and off machines and processes in my base. Say, I need more of a particular Thaumcraft essentia (stored using Thaumic Energistics). The level emitter goes high, a machine starts up and produces the essentia until there is enough, then the emitter goes low again.