Knob and Tube, Conduits, Pole Safety

[BinaryDustFF]

• [ ] Electrical isolators - place on any surface for running wires similar to Immersive Engineering
  • [ ] Compat with Immersive Engineering wire guides?
• [ ] Knob-based transformers to be used with the knob-based electrical isolators
• [ ] Knob-based fuse compartment
• Electrical conduits
  • [ ] metal
  • [ ] plastic
• Electrical boxes
  • [ ] metal
  • [ ] plastic
• [ ] Electrical gloves
• [ ] High voltage pole fuses (the kind used on telephone poles for 13kV wiring)

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Hello there!

First, I wanna say that I love ELN and I thank you a lot for keeping this mod updated. Being able to do complexe electric/electronic stuff in a game like Minecraft is just awesome!

So! By playing to the mod a good amount of time and after reading what you're planning to do for ELN2, I found out that it could be a great idea to add some blocks/items/tools to the mod.

First, electrical isolators! They would be an alternative to utility poles. They could :

• Be placed on any faces, to create custom poles, or simply directly hook utility pole's wires to cables on the side of a building, and so not having to place a utility pole and lay cables on the ground.
• Handle various voltages, for exemple depending on the amount of ceramic units added to them, like dielectric in capacitors.
• Embed a transformer (DC/DC Converter) to also step up or down the voltage on the same node;
• Maybe (with already existing poles) embed a high voltage fuse, those long ones who are operated with isolated poles, and used to isolate parts of the grid;

Speaking of a use case for buildings, electrical conduits and junction boxes could be great. They could have multiple functionalities like :

• Passing cables thru walls, without the need to carve 1*1 holes;
• Maybe hide cables inside walls, thus not having to place them on the wall;
• Being placed like regular cables and allowing us to pass a bunch of cables inside of the same conduit. Multiple conduit sizes would allow us to pass more or less cables of different sizes inside of the same conduit (before the conduit saturates);
• Help us to route wires from point A to point B, or between junction boxes. When doing that, the mod could ask the player a quantity of cable, like when we put wires on utility poles;
• Protect wires, to make an installation more resistant against explosions, as they could happen quite easily...

These 3 additions could add some tools to the game:

• Isolated poles and isolated gloves, to maneuver electrified high voltage fuses and electrical isolators without getting an electric shock;
• Ceramic units, to add to isolators to increase the maximum voltage level they can handle;
• High voltage pole fuses (or just use regular high voltage fuses);
• Tools to install conduits thru/inside walls like drills and chisels (maybe) and tools to pass cable inside of conduits and junction boxes (or just use the wrench);
• For conduits and junction boxes, why not making them out of plastic, so we could use the part 6 of your agenda (Oil processing);

I hope you will like my ideas, or that they will inspire you for others ones!

Regards, BinaryDustFF

P.S.: Sorry if my English is not a 100% correct, it's not my mother tongue!

[jrddunbr]

Whoof. Let me unpack this.

Electric Isolators

• Placed on walls, allow wires to be run similarly to Immersive Engineering wires.
• Different size/count of insulators for different voltages

DC/DC

• Allow placing an electric "isolator" on the side of it to allow wires in the air to be connected to it.
• Could be used for other devices too and made more generic

Fuse Frame

• Allows for a fuse to be placed in a frame, with electric "isolators" connected to the sides to isolate the voltages
• Is attached to side of pole or other locations. Could be placed on the ground perhaps

Junction boxes

• Allow for wires to be passed through opaque blocks
  • This probably requires a whitelist of acceptable blocks, eg glass would not be acceptable (or any tile entities)

Isolated gloves

• These should be made of rubber, reversible, and are black and yellow. These are actually pretty common

Isolated Poles

• Maneuver electrified high voltage fuses and electrical isolators without getting an electric shock
• To those who are confused, these are fiberglass poking sticks that are used to manipulate things on actual transmission poles. They are about 10-15 feet long or so.

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Some of the other ideas I think are aligned with the conduit plans, and those would take up the space they travel through or along.

Being placed like regular cables and allowing us to pass a bunch of cables inside of the same conduit. Multiple conduit sizes would allow us to pass more or less cables of different sizes inside of the same conduit (before the conduit saturates);

This is in fact planned.

Help us to route wires from point A to point B, or between junction boxes. When doing that, the mod could ask the player a quantity of cable, like when we put wires on utility poles;

Ditto above.

Protect wires, to make an installation more resistant against explosions, as they could happen quite easily...

Explosions are going to be far less common, but the conduit won't really protect the cables.

For conduits and junction boxes, why not making them out of plastic, so we could use the part 6 of your agenda (Oil processing)

So, this is probably not a half bad idea, but conduits will likely also be steel.

[jrddunbr]

Regarding junction boxes - they would allow you to pass wires and other things through 1-2 blocks thick of material without affecting the actual material, so that for mods like Galacticraft that check for specifically their blocks, we can actually seal the area because the blocks in question would not actually be affected by us placing those junction boxes on it. The restriction there is that the junction boxes would need to face one another on the wall and would require to be in the same X/Y/Z direction as the other box for it to actually connect through. We can assume that the box requires a piece of conduit to be connected, and that could be handled in the UI or something for the box.

[jrddunbr]

Here's some ideas for the junction box.

An electrical panel would be a more complex version of this, probably a multiblock to allow for more cables and conduits to enter.

[jrddunbr]

Meh.

[BinaryDustFF]

I've seen the deleted comment, it may be a good idea, but since there is a lot of things to do and junction boxes are a new feature, maybe keep things relatively simple for now 😄 Bus bars would work fine, even if they will be mostly empty, it's the easier and quicker solution for junction boxes to be added to ELN2.

@jrddunbr : Sorry for the response time, I'll soon read your comments again and try to think further about all of this, but it already sounds great!

Regards

[BinaryDustFF]

So!

Electric Isolators

I totally agree with you. Initially, I was thinking differently. I thought Electric Isolators would exist with different variants (isolator only, isolator with a DC/DC converter and isolator with a fuse). But making isolators as a generic block is in fact way simpler, for you and the players, because we won't have a tone of different isolators. We would only have one new block, "empty isolator" or "isolator base":

• To which we should add ceramic units to adjust the maximum voltage;
• Which can be placed on appliances (Machines, DC/DC converters, Fuses) to connect them to overhead power lines;
• Which can also be placed on solid (opaque) blocks and connect to wires;

How these appliances would handle the isolator is another question. Maybe on the same node, by rendering an isolator on the same block, or maybe by doing multiblock, the appliance would then detect the isolator and connect to it.

And an idea just crossed my minds. If an appliance is powered by an isolator, and connected to a cable laying on the ground, then the cable could be considered as connected to the isolator? This way, we could connect one appliance to the overhead power lines with an isolator, an also power all the other appliances connected with regular cables to the first one.

Junction boxes and conduits

Junction boxes

I've thought a lot about it, and drawn a schematic on paint after reading your comment and looking at your drawing. The picture is pretty big because I've added small details:

Soooo... where do I start ? First, all of this is only what I'm thinking about after mixing my and your ideas, there are maybe better/simpler solutions, that are to be found out! 😄 Everything written between [ ] is a reference to the drawing.

1. Junction boxes would have multiple purposes:
   1. Accepting power cables, signal cables and conduits on 4 of there sides. In the GUI, the connected sides would have the knockout plate removed [full circle]. Else, the knockout plate would still be there [dash circle];
   2. Accepting only conduits on their backside only if another junction box is found on the other side of the wall/ground/ceiling. It require that the 2 junction boxes are exactly back to back on the same wall, which can be 1 to idk how many block thick];
   3. Junction boxes would be used as an interface to route power and signal cables between its sides and into conduits (see below about conduits);
   4. They are also used for their bus bars, which allows us to link multiple cables together and why not to a ground bus bar;
2. They could be used as the following:
   • Linking junction boxes through a wall: 2 junction boxes would be linked through a wall by placing the necessary amount of the desired conduit size/type in the middle knockout plate. [In the 2 upper junction boxes, I've written "2" on the "itemstack" to mean that 2 conduits were asked to link the junction boxes]. Hovering the middle knockout plate would show us the needed amount of conduit to reach the other junction box (if any);
   • Linking junction boxes without going throught a wall: Simply connect the junction boxes with one or more conduit lines of the desired size/type;
   • Placing a conduit line: See below about the conduits;
   • Passing cables throught connected conduit lines:
     • [By opening the junction box GUI, we could see the conduit throught the removed knockout plate. Hovering the knockout plate hole would show us the needed amount of cable item to add a new cable in the conduit line];
     • [I've drawn squares of grey, red and blue color with a diameter/section to indicate that it's a conduit or a cable of a certain size (I don't use imperial measurements), but we could simply show the itemstack of the used conduit/cable];
     • Then, a new cable will be added to the conduit line by right clicking with an itemstack of cable on the hole;
     • [A new ""card"" is then added in the GUI next to the conduit's hole. This ""card"" shows an editable label (to name the cable in the conduit) and the itemstack of the used cable (so we can see it's physical parameters and the quantity of cable in the conduit line)];
     • [The more you add cables into a conduit line, the more it'll be full. The percentage shows the space used. If a cable is to big for the space left, it'll not be added to the conduit line];
   • Connecting a cable to a junction box: Simply place a signal or power cable right next to a junction box, it'll connect to it. [In the box's GUI, the itemstack of the connected cable will appear in the knockout plate's hole];
   • Connecting cables together in the box: [On the ""cards"" of the 2 cables to link, connection points will be displayed. Simply drag a point and drop it on a point of the other card. A connection point can only be connected to one other connection point];
   • Connecting a cable to a bus bar: Same thing as connecting 2 cables together, but instead, drop on a bus bar point;
   • Add/Remove bus bars to/from a junction box: I haven't drawn it, but bus bars could be added by placing copper ingots in a slot of a junction box (2 ingots = 2 bus bars);
   • Removing cables from a conduit line: This could be done with a left click on the cable's ""card"" in the junction box's GUI, but a double click is maybe more secure?;
   • Removing conduit lines from the inside of a wall: Same as cables, but on the middle knockout plate's hole. Removing a conduit line will give you back both used conduits and the cables that were into it;
   • Breaking a junction box: This will:
     • Give you back the ingots used as bus bars;
     • Break the conduit on the backside and give us back the used conduits and cables (prevent us from loosing cables in the wall);
     • Not break conduit lines placed on walls/ground/ceiling (see "conduit" section below);
   • Placing junction boxes: They can be placed on ground/wall/ceiling, and will connect to cables/conduit lines next to it. It can only be placed on solid (opaque) blocks;

Conduits and conduit lines

Just to be clear, "conduit" is the item and "conduit line" is a line of placed conduits.

Conduits:

• Could be of multiple sizes, [I've used 10mm and 25mm in my drawing], but that's for the example;
• Can be placed on any face of any solid (opaque) block;
• Can't connect to signal and power cables (a jonction box is needed to do that);
• If two conduits of different sizes are placed next to one another:
  • Keeping it simple, the two conduits will not link, preventing from creating a complex conduit line;
  • More complexe, the two conduits would link but the created conduit line would have the diameter of the smallest conduit of the line;

Conduit lines:

• Can have turns (right/left/up/down);
• Can't have a junction (connection with a third or more other conduits). Conduit line's junctions are only handled by junction boxes;
• Conduit line's content can be seen and edited with the right click of a wrench. The below GUI will be displayed and will show the cables with the same previous ""card"" system (cable itemstack, amount and label);
• Conduit lines could be labelled;
• Cables could be added to the conduit line by:
  1. Right clicking the conduit line with a wrench;
  2. Drop an itemstack with the needed amount of cable in the cable slot;
  3. Edit the cable's label;
• Cables could be removed by displaying the GUI and single or double left click a cable's card;
• Conduit lines on wall/ground/ceiling will stay in place when a junction box is broken. They'll keep their label and cables;
• When breaking a conduit "node", the conduit item will be dropped with one of each cables in the conduit line. Having a conduit line long of 10 blocks and filled with 2 1.5mm² cable, if I break one conduit "node", i'll get the conduit item and 2 1.5mm² cable;
• Could go throught walls, but only by using 2 junction boxes;

I think that's all, but i'm maybe forgetting things, since I've given a lot of explanations. I feel guilty for this brick of a reply, and I'm sorry about it, but I've got these ideas in mind and I wanted to share them with you.

Regards! 😄 BinaryDustFF