Yeah, mine also uses sticky piston + detector braking-- the issue is that the lag makes some of the platforms trigger strange. One corner will stop on time, but the other three carry on for another block (this despite the fact that redstone power reaches all 4 pulleys at the same moment-- they're on the same string of cable). I may rework the design to use a single pulley (I prefer the look of a circle-ish 4-pulley platform, but they're too finicky) and possibly to be expandable. If I set aside another two signals, I think I could cut two from the original 12 possible floors and boost it to 20.
I think i know what you're talking about, i ran into a timing problem when i tried to use 2 pulleys...
I couldn't figure out the problem for the life of me (i even tried using 2 different power sources and cutting the power at the same gearbox and still timing was off), it seemed that if i got it timed right for one floor it would throw off another floor. so i just removed some platforms and went with 1 pulley.
Use a third signal from the buttons to trigger sticky pistons engaging the wiring for the first or second set of 10, respectively. And if I got really fancy (though the height limits on the world would make it kinda silly) I could do 3 sets of 9 floors, or go even up to 6 sets of 6 for the max possibilities of the design I use.
Dear god though-- trying to fit 35 buttons every floor for an elevator with a shaft that's supported by one pulley...? Dx
lmao that would be rediculous, the contol panel would be hell to configure even if you managed to fit a 5x7 wall full of buttons (not to mention extra room for all the freakin signs to label them). you would have to use at least 3 different color bundled cables to even get all the signals, then just imagine trying to keep track of what color insulated wire from what color bundled cable goes to which floor. OH GOD MY BRAIN.
Just out of curiosity (too busy with my own projects to take a look just yet) what design scheme do you use? Mine's pretty much an assload of RS latches hooked up to various circuits that are engaged or disengaged by yet other RS latches xD
Ok.. let me try to explain this... Before i started workin on this i had no idea how to do it.
Each floor has a detector block attached to a piston, which is engaged/disengaged based on the signal from an rs latch. The detector block as you may know controls the brake and the doors.
The rs latch on each floor has anywhere from 1 - 3 inputs per side ( on / off ) these come from the buttons on the control panels.
each floor has a 4 button control panel (1 button for every other floor). i've got these configured like this
I used the same color insulated cable on each floor (except the top, which is confusing). these cables lead off to every floor (via the bundled cable to the left) to perform checks based on the input... for example if you're going from floor 1 to floor 5, it needs to check that all of the detector blocks are disengaged. and if you go from floor 2 to 4 it checks to make sure that three is disengaged and that 4 is engaged. that way it can go up to the right floor stopping. so i connect the signal to the appropriate side of the rs latch.
At the same time that it performs the checks, it sends a signal out the other side (to the right) of the bundled cable which converts the 4 different inputs to 1 of 2 outputs (up/down). I used red for up and grey for down. you can see an example here:
the repeaters keep signals from other floors from interfering with the detector block check.
I did that for each floor except the top and bottom (because you can only go one direction from those floors).
Then the third system i have implemented is a really simple indicator. it takes the signal from the doors (if they are open it sends a signal) and i direct it to the appropriate lamp. you can probably see this from the pics in the OP.
so yeah thats the best i can explain it, it was probably overkill considering you've made one yourself.
Seeing another great elevator makes me inspired to get back to work on mine haha. I'm tempted to make a new one legit, but the thousands of cables needed, not to mention how hard it is without flight... ugh... I don't think it's worth it to fix my old one though-- a lot of the time I spent on it was figuring out the wiring anyway.
Personally I'll probably never build an elevator of this scale on a legitimate world, the effort involved wouldn't be worth the result. and like you said, having to craft all the cables, and doing it without flying would increase the time a ton. and because of that, keeping up with the wiring would be damn near impossible (unless you wrote out a diagram, which i didn't i just kept it all in my head).
But you should keep working on them, i love seeing what people can make with BTW and i'll be on the lookout for more redpower contraptions now.
Sorry for an extremely long post. lol