Factorio - Circuit Networks

Explaining after basic example. It is like explaining how bacteria look like, and after You let students look into the microscope. But if You do the opposite then imagination is in play and even more stubborn students maybe would engage :) .... Regardless .. Cool Video :) Thank You :)

Great video! Thank you -- one thing that you can do to clean things up a bit is that you can hop from item to item directly without needing a power pole in between. That might clean up some of your light displays.

One practical use for switches is to allow selectively shutting off parts of the factory to reduce pollution. In one of my Deathworlds, I used switches for each of my mining patches, as well as switches for smelting, science pack production, oil processing, research and more. Each one was enabled based on the presence of a corresponding signal on the circuit network, for example an iron ore signal would enable the power switch to the iron mine. Then I used a centralized “control panel” of constant combinators to set each signal to 1 or 0, enabling or disabling each part of the factory remotely. This gave a nice way to control my pollution cloud without running around removing power poles (which was my pre-circuit solution to the problem!)

Here's a circuit you might like; a different way to reduce coal usage:

Since boilers have no concern for the power demands of the grid, if you connect the boilers to a series of tanks, and connect (with circuit wire) those tanks to the inserters that fuel the boilers, then you can set the steam amount which activates the inserter feeding. This will cause the power plant to regulate its own intake since turbines(of either type) increase steam consumption linearly with power output. This works for nuclear fuel too, which was the only way I found to not run the reactor plant at 100% when my factory was using 20%. The circuit basically caused the reactor to flicker on and off 1/5th of the time and the steam tanks buffer out the cycle.

Solar and other sources of power generation also make fuel last longer, which would otherwise not be true.

I didn't found a third color network mod actually. I may have fail my search but it's surprising enough to be said.

There's way too many things you mention that "You haven't found an use for" to convince me that you know that much of the circuit network; Especially with the power switch thing or the enable / disable belt function (another user in the comment already pointed an example for the power switch).
If you know how it works, you can also image a possible use, not to mention, practical examples are often the best way to convey / teach information, so it was in your best interest to come up with usage examples if you really wanted your video to be informative.

You can use green for input and red for output.

You can do the light within a range setup with only two combinators- first has the output as the color, then that feeds into the second, which outputs the input count of that color. That way, both conditions have to be met for the signal to pass

Use case for the gate as a sensor:
You can sense that your dude is on the rail crossing, and use that signal to turn lights red, and close gates on the rail tracks, so that if your dude is standing on the crossing, the trains will never enter the crossing.

Other use cases for circuit networks: Speedrunners use a lot of blueprints with circuit networks all over the base that manage how many of each item is produced, and try to always shuffle resources to the things that are the most needed to progress quickly at each tech stage in the game.

Nice video - one comment that you don't mention. You do not need a power-pole between detection and action. You can directly connect an inserter to a chest or a tank to a pump, etc. I use this for my 'mall' extensively to control the quantity of items placed in the output chests, and of course in my oil setups to control the pumps for cracking.

Your videos are amazing and so well done

Thank you for this video

I haven't seen any new circuit mods but i have seen different colors.

I’m first? Really?
But thank you for this video.
Good job on being able to translate the insanity that is the network into something shorter than an hour.