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[Sadgasm]

Pressure plates are the obvious go to for most projects, but they're not without limitations, so I'd like to make a thread discussing the alternative triggers. So far there's a couple I've come up with:

1 Frightenable Animals/dwarves
Put a small animal in a 1x1 pen between a glass window and a pressure plate (ok yes, I'm still using a pressure plate), if anything scary walks in front of the window the animal will run away onto the pressure plate.

Uses
Trapavoid Pressure Plate alternative:
Enemies that don't trigger pressure plates can still scare animals into triggering them.

Highly Efficient Aggressive Creature Trap:
Build a one space wide trench around a large rectangle of land with a cage trap in the middle and mine out outside edges so it can't be climbed out of , then cover it all with bridges and make the trigger at an inner edge with the window facing the center. If anything wanders close enough to scare the animal, it triggers the pressure plate, removing the bridges and stranding itself in the rectangle with the cage trap. You can catch flying creatures in a similar manner using a NOT-gate to close a ceiling bridge.

Set a Trigger for a Wide Area:
Why waste mechanisms building and hooking up multiple pressure plates when you can use just one and a puppy?

2 Aggressive Animals/Creatures/Dwarves
The same thing but with the plate between the animal and the window and the meek creature replaced with a war dog or other aggressive animal. You can set the plate to release your war dog in addition to performing any other functions so he's not wasted as just a trigger. Actually, the window isn't necessary in this case unless you need your dog shielded from arrows or whatever may be on the floor until enemies are close and the trap is triggered.

Uses:
Pretty much the same.


3 Shallow Water Behind a Door:
Put a floor grate in front of a door holding back level 3 or lower water. Whenever anyone opens the door water will fall through the grate where it can turn a water wheel or activate a pressure plate. Have the water sandwiched between two doors and connected to a large reservoir at the same z-level through a U-bend to save on/simplify refilling.

Uses:

By using a waterwheel with this input you could avoid the reset period that pressure plates require (assuming you don't use them anywhere down the line in your computing).

4 Maybe something that's triggered when a cart on a looped track crashes into something big enough to stop it?

Uses:
I have no idea.

Anyway, that's all I have, maybe you have something better, or better uses for them. I'd love to hear your ideas.

EDIT: While I'm spitting out my newb ideas, has anyone tried dwarven daycare with beehives? The wiki says stings don't even cause a negative thought.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Not my ideas, but I'm too lazy right now to search for where I read them:

1. Dog/cat/bird/etc. in 1x1 room behind locked door. When the PLAYER unlocks the door, the animal runs out (with a random delay before moving) across a pressure plate. This gives the PLAYER dwarf-independant "lever" control if necessary. Optionally, the animal could be standing on a pressure plate. Use it with a latch logic to give the PLAYER the ability to seal all drawbridges in an emergency.

2. Water above door, or beside door in a diagonal hallway. Similar to the OP's (3), except that you can now use 7/7 water.

[UnlawfullyDeranged]

Pressure plates are the obvious go to for most projects, but they're not without limitations, so I'd like to make a thread discussing the alternative triggers. So far there's a couple I've come up with:

1 Frightenable Animals/dwarves
Put a small animal in a 1x1 pen between a glass window and a pressure plate (ok yes, I'm still using a pressure plate), if anything scary walks in front of the window the animal will run away onto the pressure plate.

Do you think the same setup, but with a vampire burrowed to the 1x1 spot, would make it self-resetting once the dangerous creature had passed?

[ImagoDeo]

Do you think the same setup, but with a vampire burrowed to the 1x1 spot, would make it self-resetting once the dangerous creature had passed?

Don't think so, unless you can get the vampire to step off the plate somehow. Maybe burrow him off of it? Or designate a meeting zone off of it? Get creative and you may have a damn good idea there.

[BoredVirulence]

Pressure plates are the obvious go to for most projects, but they're not without limitations, so I'd like to make a thread discussing the alternative triggers. So far there's a couple I've come up with:

1 Frightenable Animals/dwarves
Put a small animal in a 1x1 pen between a glass window and a pressure plate (ok yes, I'm still using a pressure plate), if anything scary walks in front of the window the animal will run away onto the pressure plate.

Do you think the same setup, but with a vampire burrowed to the 1x1 spot, would make it self-resetting once the dangerous creature had passed?

Its a great filter for undead. Combine this with another animal trigger and you could have 3 entrances, a dwarves only entrance, a generic hostile entrance, and an undead only entrance.

[UnlawfullyDeranged]

I now realize that I may have misunderstood the original configuration of the proposed mechanism, but that matters little in this case. I had misread the original post, and for some reason thought that the vampire would be burrowed on top of the pressure plate initially, only moving off of it when something that scared him came along. I now see that my version of the original mechanism should have had the vampire burrowed off the pressure plate, only stepping onto it once the scary creature came along. Of course it works either way, it's just a difference in the activated signal being an "off" for my first configuration, and "on" for the second (correct) configuration.

The idea is that the vampire would (presumably) leave the burrow in fright upon viewing a hostile creature, then return to it upon the creature's leaving. The window/fortification is just something to keep out building destroyers and arrows while still allowing a view.

--------     F = Fortification, W = wall, w = window, V = burrow with the vampire, p = p-plate, — = path the hostile creature would take
W F W
W w W
W V W
W p W
W W W