Wiring Base Doors?

[srpadget]

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to wire up the basic sliding door so that it opens and closes. Is there a tutorial for this?

Note: I am aware of the basic relevant factoids:
*Doors are open when unpowered, closed when powered
*Opening/closing doors requires applying or removing power
*Control of doors therefore requires addition of switches

So, telling me the above stuff is not helpful.

(I HAVE figured out how to directly wire a door to a live power line so that it's permanently closed rather than permanently open. But seeing as this basically leaves me with a WALL that sucks down valuable electricity, that's not terribly helpful.)

So my problem boils down to: I can't figure out how to use switches. Either how to wire them, or even how to operate them.

So it's really two problems:
1) What do I need to connect, and how, in order to get a switch to operate the door when the switch is toggled? (That, I assume, is a standard answer that applies for any kind of switch?)
2) This one I feel really stupid for having to ask, but--What do I need to do in-game in order to operate a switch? (That answer presumably changes for each switch type.)
- Button switch or wall switch: There is no "Press E to interact" message when I get close...What do I need to do with my Windows PC keyboard/mouse to THROW THE SWITCH/PRESS THE BUTTON?
- Proximity switch: Where/how do I place the thing so that when I walk up the ramp toward a door I am in its 'detection zone'? I assume the 'light cone' indicates the area it's sensitive to?
3) (Okay, I have another problem--which is that apparently I can't count to 2. Or 3. Whatever. *g*) If I'm really ambitious, I'll want to be able to operate the door from both the inside and the outside. What hellish additional complexity is necessary in order to make that happen?

I am giving serious thought to just leaving all my base doors 'broken' in the open position until I am ready to replace them all with holo-doors. (I assume I can just walk right through them, and that they don't require all this stupid power-switch nonsense?) I mean, really--I fly interplanetary missions to the outer solar system in Kerbal, with ships of my own design and manual piloting/no autopilot mods. Yet in this incarnation of NMS, I am about to throw up my hands in frustration over "how do I make a DOOR work?"

[Strontium Dog]

I leave them broken because they look awful with all the wires everywhere, i hate the f@#king wires!!!

[Orion Invictus]

Automated door setup. Uses a proximity sensor and power inverter:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1841625308

[Strontium Dog]

I hope they implement some sort of wireless electricity and get rid of those f@#king wires!!!

[Taikutsuna]

The basics of the door.

Looking at it place a sensor above an inverter.

Have the inverter positioned so that the green side is on the left the middle is pointing to the sensor and the red is pointing to the door.

Hook a power line to the green side of the inverter. Then connect a wire from THAT terminal to the left side of the sensor.

Now put a wire from the RIGHT side of the SENSOR to the MIDDLE of the inverter.

Then put a wire from the red side of the inverter to one of the door plugs.

You can connect power from any plug that is lit green.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

What is an inverter? Why do we need one? What are they ideally used for other than a fancy connection to a door? I assume we have more flexibility and choice to build stuff but not sure how to use them.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Johnny in the Clouds:

What is an inverter? Why do we need one? What are they ideally used for other than a fancy connection to a door?

An inverter is something that outputs the opposite signal that you put into it. It's needed if you want a fully automated door because the door opens when powered and closes when not, to prevent you from being locked inside your own base should you run out of power. If you know circuit logic, you can do some nifty stuff with inverters. One guy built a combination lock, for example.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Ah thank you. I'll have to experiment with it all then. Logic circuit stuff could be quite fun but never really tried it before.

[jwinter]

Originally posted by Strontium Dog:

I leave them broken because they look awful with all the wires everywhere, i hate the f@#king wires!!!

If you are creative you can hide everything.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1850701578

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1850701485

[SteelFire]

I find it kind of annoying how we went from nothing needs power to requiring an understanding of electronics and circuit mechanics just to have a working door. There's really no reason doors couldn't have just been left as powered = works as before Beyond and if you want an automated door, then use automated circuits.

Of course, I'm finding a lot of little frustrating things with Beyond, like my base parts not seeming to be 'stable' any more and some stuff just having disappeared... or relocated weird places.

[srpadget]

Okay, so I think I see how to set up a switch/inverter so that I can go in the door from the outside, OR get out from the inside. But if this stuff all works the way I'm picturing it in my ignorant head, then if I put together that circuitry on both the inside AND the outside of the same door, then it will be eternally closed because when I'm on the outside and the proximity sensor sends power to the inverter (which then kills power to the door), then the proximity sensor/inverter combo on the INSIDE will continue to feed power to the door -- and it will therefore stay closed.

So...do I need two separate doors, one to go IN and another to go OUT? That seems...wasteful.

Or (and I suspect this is the case) is there something obvious to electrical engineer/tinkerer/maker types which I am utterly missing, here...?

[jwinter]

Originally posted by srpadget:

Okay, so I think I see how to set up a switch/inverter so that I can go in the door from the outside, OR get out from the inside. But if this stuff all works the way I'm picturing it in my ignorant head, then if I put together that circuitry on both the inside AND the outside of the same door, then it will be eternally closed because when I'm on the outside and the proximity sensor sends power to the inverter (which then kills power to the door), then the proximity sensor/inverter combo on the INSIDE will continue to feed power to the door -- and it will therefore stay closed.

So...do I need two separate doors, one to go IN and another to go OUT? That seems...wasteful.

Or (and I suspect this is the case) is there something obvious to electrical engineer/tinkerer/maker types which I am utterly missing, here...?

Connect it only to ONE side and put proximity switch close to the door so it can notice you from both directions.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

The proximity switch has a circular proximity boundary, that if you enter the boundary, activates the switch.

[Markus Reese]

I also put mine underneath. So many ick wires otherwize

[AwfulAwkward]

The idea of wiring things isn't terrible. The fact that it exists doesn't bother me. In fact, I kinda like it, in theory. It's that the wires remain visible ALL the time with zero way to really hide them other than maybe making an underground tunnel and trying to run wires through the floors and down there. Then there's that odd design choice of putting the power connections on the front of devices instead of the back so you have no real choice but to run wires right through the middle of the room?

Using prefabs helps, but that kills the entire sense of getting creative with building things yourself. Even worse, you can't even place half of the useful items in something that isn't prefab.

I resorted to making an underwater prefab and putting a bunch of solar panels and batteries in the snap points and running a single wire out of the prefab, through a tunnel and running it up through the ground from there.. lol

As for the doors, yeah.. proximity sensor and power inverter seem to be the way to go. Once again, zero good way to hide the wires without running underneath because they just stick out of the front and back of the doors. I haven't tried this with a prefab yet.. I'm wondering if it kills the power to the entire prefab if you try to wire it up this way... lol

[Zuleica]

Originally posted by Orion:

Originally posted by Johnny in the Clouds:

What is an inverter? Why do we need one? What are they ideally used for other than a fancy connection to a door?

An inverter is something that outputs the opposite signal that you put into it. It's needed if you want a fully automated door because the door opens when powered and closes when not, to prevent you from being locked inside your own base should you run out of power. If you know circuit logic, you can do some nifty stuff with inverters. One guy built a combination lock, for example.

Not quite, it won't create a signal if there is none on the input. It's basically an NPN transistor, apply a negative (off) signal to the bottom of the 'T' and power flows through. But if there is no power on either side then there won't be any on the other no matter what the bottom of the 'T' has.