Readme

This set of programs for RFTools Control is used to automatically manage a Draconic Evolution Reactor. This document will attempt to explain how to put them into use, and I will also produce a video showing this at some point, soon.

There are two parts of this "style" of control for the reactors. One is the Control Room where "decisions" and "buttons" and "displays" live. The other is the Reactor Room which is where the reactor itself lives. To use these programs, you need a minimum of 4:

1. The Master Reactor program. If you do not use the Timing Loop, you will need to replace the starting opcode from a network event to a timer. This program makes decisions about "what to do" about the state of the reactor. Most of the decisions will simply be to "Update Count" in some way, either increasing or decreasing the energy pulled from the reactor.

2. The Update Count program. There are several small routings on this program which update the energy levels extracted from the reactor. Once complete, it sends a signal to "Update Flow" in the Reactor Room.

3. The Update Flow program. This controls the energy extraction in 100 RF/t increments.

4. The Shield Pulse program. This is used when the reactor is about to go critical and explode. Ideally, it keeps that from happening by allowing the reactor to operate in the "red zone" for a while longer, but if you are in the "red zone," you WILL have to do something else to keep it from eventually exploding.

======================================================================
Supplemental programs

1. The Timing Loop program. If you want to operate more than one reactor, and create reports on each of the rectors in turn, it is important that data passing around the system not get out of sync. This is the method I decided to use because it was pretty simple and I didn't have any intention of building more than 8 reactors.

2. The Report program. This program goes into the Reactor Control Room Processor. It passes tokens back-and-forth with a storage to keep a copy of the current reactor state data on a set of tokens. These tokens are then used by "Update Display" to create graphical output of the reactor state.

3. The Update Display program. This passes tokens back-and-forth with a storage to present feedback about the state of a reactor. The programming to create the display was too complicated to fit on a single program card. The "Plot" program is the second half. This part of the program is primarily concerned with creating "colors" which it stores on tokens in the processor.

4. The Plot program. This uses GFX opcodes to display reactor state. Colors for the reactor states are stored in tokens as part of the Update Display program. This program retrieves these values and draws boxes of the appropriate colors.

5. The Aggregate program. This creates a total RF/t output for display.

======================================================================
Conventions
You don't HAVE to follow these rules, but if you have more than one reactor, they will keep you from screwing things up.

1. RF Transmitters and receivers use 4 channels per reactor. I set North to the lowest channel number and go around the compass clockwise. Example: N = Channel 43, E = Channel 44, S = Channel 45, W = Channel 46.

2. These are then set in order to a different Redstone Output of the reactor in the order "Temperature," "Shield," "Saturation," and "Conversion." Example: N = Channel 43 = Temperature, E = 44 = Shield, S = 45 = Saturation, W = 46 = Conversion.

3. Output to Flowgates goes from highest-order to lowest-order clockwise around the compass. Example: N = 6,144,000 max gate (4096's place), E = 384,000 (256's place), S = 24,000 (16's place), W = 1,500 (1's place).