Traffic monitor

[Scottishtroop]

can anyone explain how to read the traffic monitor and what i would use it for as i have no idea why i should use it as its confusing.

[Nekogod]

It hard to explain in words, you're probably better off watching a video, Nilaus and JD plays among others have done videos on it.

Essentially it can tell you by way of a sound alert or warning top middle of your screen when there is a problem with your factory.

Essentially you tell it the time period to monitor over say 5 seconds and then you tell it how many cargo you expect to see in that time period 1 per second 2 per second etc. It's a little confusing as it says 'cargos' meaning cargo per second, rather than absolute number of cargo.

You can then set the failure condition, ie if the number of cargo per second drops below this number then alert me etc.

[Cheet4h]

First, the monitor settings:
The first slider is the time period to monitor.
The second is an amount of items you expect to be moved along the belt within that time period.
Below that you set what should be considered passing or failing that: The default is "less than", but you can set up any condition, and whether meeting that condition should be thought of as failure or success. You can also set which items should be counted, which might be useful if you use mixed belts.
If the set conditions fail, the monitor lights up in red, otherwise green.

The alert settings let you set up global alerts if the conditions set above are not met, so that you don't have to actually look at the monitor to be warned when something is wrong. They have a few possible conditions:

None, Pass and Fail are pretty self-explanatory:
"None" never shows an alert
"Pass" shows an alert if the condition set above passes
"Fail" shows an alert if the condition set above fails

Next is "Pass Cargo" and "Fail Cargo" - these two conditions ignore the time period you set in the monitor settings:
"Pass Cargo" shows an alert if any item passes the monitor. If you set a filter, then it only shows up if that specific item passes the monitor
"No Cargo" shows an alert if no cargo passes the monitor. If you set a filter, then it only shows up if no cargo of that item passes that monitor.

The last two are "Fail and Pass Cargo" and "Fail and No Cargo". As with the previous, "Pass/No Cargo" ignore the time period.
"Fail and Pass Cargo" shows an alert if the condition set above is failed, and there are items passing the monitor.
"Fail and No Cargo" shows an alert if the condition set above is failed, and there no items passing the monitor.

Finally, the graph at the top displays flow rate over the monitored time period and frequency of items passing the monitor.

Personally, I use them for monitoring important resource intakes, alerting me if I'm not supplying enough raw material:
My smelters are in arrays of 12, consuming 720 units of ore per minute (one green belt).
I've put a traffic monitor on the iron ore intake set to:
Monitoring Cycle - 30 seconds
Target Flow - 360 cargos (720 units / 2)
Condition: ≥ (Greator or Equal), Pass
Alert Settings:
Global Alert: Fail and No Cargo

This way the monitor notifies me if the smelters can't work at full capacity (=> belt moves less than 720 items per second) but only if there's actually items missing, so I am not notified if the belt is backed up when my iron ingot storage is full and the smelters can't work because of that.

[josmith7]

I use them in 2 ways.

First, as a permanent alarm to let me know if a belt has gone empty.
* I have those on the inputs to my science cube production to alert me to a shortfall.
* I also have those on the belts to my power plants to give me early warning if something goes wrong with the fuel supply. (As a backup I also have at least one power plant there set to alarm so it'll tell me if it's out of fuel -- but hopefully I fixed the fuel supply before the power plants ran out any my power grid potentially crashed)

Second I use them temporarily when building / modifying blueprints.
* There I don't care about pass/fail or setting an alarm - I'll just stick one on a belt and crank the time period up to a full minute to let me see how much material is passing. That lets me double-check that a given block of my design stabilizes at the expected production rate.
For that I'm just reading the numbers off the side of the monitor (which is items/min - averaged over the sampling interval you set; from 1 - 60 seconds)
Once I'm happy I'll delete the monitor.

[Cheet4h]

Originally posted by josmith7:

(As a backup I also have at least one power plant there set to alarm so it'll tell me if it's out of fuel -- but hopefully I fixed the fuel supply before the power plants ran out any my power grid potentially crashed)

Remember to power them independently of your main grid. Using wind power is probably sufficient, if it's far enough away from any power poles.

Originally posted by josmith7:

I'll just stick one on a belt and crank the time period up to a full minute to let me see how much material is passing. That lets me double-check that a given block of my design stabilizes at the expected production rate.
For that I'm just reading the numbers off the side of the monitor (which is items/min - averaged over the sampling interval you set; from 1 - 60 seconds)

Any reason you set the interval at all, considering that the outside of the monitor will always show the items/minute rate?

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Cheet4h:

Originally posted by josmith7:

I'll just stick one on a belt and crank the time period up to a full minute to let me see how much material is passing. That lets me double-check that a given block of my design stabilizes at the expected production rate.
For that I'm just reading the numbers off the side of the monitor (which is items/min - averaged over the sampling interval you set; from 1 - 60 seconds)

Any reason you set the interval at all, considering that the outside of the monitor will always show the items/minute rate?

Because some production is 'lumpy' (e.g. Titanium Alloy -- 4 output in a clump every 12 seconds) and setting the interval to the max causes the displayed number to be the average over that entire interval-- which mostly smooths out the lumps so the item/min number stabilizes around its long term average; instead of cycling up and down as the lumps come through.

[Cheet4h]

Ah, thank you! Didn't consider that, since I tend to expand my production up to full belts >_>

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Cheet4h:

Ah, thank you! Didn't consider that, since I tend to expand my production up to full belts >_>

I used to until I started trying to make all-in-one blueprints.

Can you imagine the size of blueprint you'd need to output, say, a full belt of rockets, or antimatter fuel rods, or even particle broadband from basic materials! <eek>


In those spaghetti factories, where things often can't quite be a perfect ratio, I find it helpful to get a running average of each sub-component block to catch when I've done something stupid -- before I lock the design into a blueprint.

[Scottishtroop]

wow thank you for all the answers guys

[Snakespur]

Thank you to Cheet4h for explaining that. I didn't quite grasp what it was for until you this post. I actually just put them on random belts without setting anything in order to get them out of my inventory without actually destroying them :D

[higgybunch]

Is there a way to set up a traffic monitor so that it is GREEN if items are on the belt (does not care how many per minute) and RED if the belt is empty?

I have them on my main bus/mall planet and just want to be able to glance and see that things are there or not. I dont want alerts pinging me all the time.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by higgybunch:

Is there a way to set up a traffic monitor so that it is GREEN if items are on the belt (does not care how many per minute) and RED if the belt is empty?

I have them on my main bus/mall planet and just want to be able to glance and see that things are there or not. I dont want alerts pinging me all the time.

Don't think so. Red and Green are controlled solely by item flow rate - and you can have a zero items per minute flow rate with an empty belt of a full one.

The only place the monitors differentiate between empty and full is in the alarm section where you can add "no cargo" and "pass cargo" atop pass/fail.

[jamiechi]

This thread has been very helpful to me. Now I think I will quit deleting the Monitor things I get after researching and find a use for them. Thanks everyone.

[rotsch]

Did they break the traffic monitor? The condition "Fail and no cargo" doesn't seem to work anymore as I always have an alert even if the belt is full and not moving.