81–90 of 376 posts
Same goes for work. If you join a well oiled machine that just seems to be working great, you may never understand how it works, since you won't be exposed to various people diagnosing issues. Join a place that used to work and is now creaking, or a place that never worked, and there's more pain but also more learning. Also when does a Factorio system ever work? There's permanently a pressure for it to do more, stuff…
One reply tweet notes "a complex system always operates in a failure state", but to find more discussion on this point it's worth noting that this is a restatement of: > "The Fundamental Failure-Mode Theorem (F.F.T.): complex systems usually operate in a failure mode." -- John Gall, General Systemantics (aka Systemantics , aka The Systems Bible ), 1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics > Searching for "funda…
What does it have to do with Factorio?
The linked tweet is part of a larger thread which details an issue with how they set up transmitters in factorio which led to the destruction of the entire base. The thread then pivots to how it applies to other areas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current flow is independent of wire length, the sender only has to turn up the voltage high enough to overcome the wire resistance.
This happens because the real insulators are better approximations of ideal insulators, than real conductors are approximations of ideal conductors. In electrical circuits made with normal conductors and insulators, e.g. copper wires and organic polymer insulators, it is possible to ignore the currents that branch from the wires and close through the insulators, because they are extremely small (e.g. in the femtoampe…
This is why 4-20 mA is a common signaling standard in industrial automation. 4 mA means zero and 20 mA means one. 0 mA means broken transmitter !
My favorite is, after fixing a system in prod, asking "how did that possibly work in the first place?"
boolean deliver = false;
while( polling ){
deliver = readyToReceive();
if( deliver ) {
send();
}
}This is why 4-20 mA is a common signaling standard in industrial automation. 4 mA means zero and 20 mA means one. 0 mA means broken transmitter !
The transmitter and receiver are wired in parallel and connected to a power supply through a series resistor. When the receiver receives the signal from the transmitter, it pulls the supply voltage down, which then causes the transmitter to stop transmitting, which then causes the receiver to stop pulling the supply down, and the cycle continues. The end result is that if there's no obstruction, the supply voltage pulses and the system checks for this. If there's any other type of condition, the signal is either 0 or VCC. Basically, the system is designed so that false positives are extremely unlikely since that's the worst case scenario.
There's some capacitors in the transmitter/receiver to control the frequency.