module-sensor.md

layout	title	summary	module	usable	image
module	Entity Sensor	The entity sensor provides a way to query information about surrounding entities. There are so many ways this could go wrong…	plethora:sensor	Manipulator Minecart computer Neural interface Pocket computer Turtle	module-sensor.png

Basic usage

The entity sensor provides many nifty methods, but .sense() is definitely the one to get started with. After all, it's what the sensor does best! This finds all entities within 32 blocks of the sensor and reports some very basic information about them.

local sensor = peripheral.wrap(--[[ whatever ]])
for _, entity in pairs(sensor.sense()) do
  print(("We found an entity (name: %s, uuid: %s)"):format(entity.name, entity.id))
end

If you want to find some more information about an entity (maybe you want to find out how hungry your friends are), you can use .getMetaByID and .getMetaByName. The first of these is a little more general, at the cost of being slightly more confusing. .getMetaByID takes an entity's UUID and returns lots of metadata about it. This ID can be found with the above .sense method, though beware - it's possible the entity may have wandered off and thus no longer be within range.

local entities = sensor.sense()
if #entities > 0 then
  local meta = sensor.getMetaByID(entities[1].id)
  if meta then print(textutils.serialise(meta)) end
end

.getMetaByName does much the same, but only operates on players, taking a username instead.

Other functionality

Holding the entity sensor will display an orb on every nearby entity. This provides a nice way of hunting down those pesky zombies!

![Observing nearby entities]({{ "images/items/module-sensor-usage.png" | relative_url }} "Observing nearby entities")

Configuring

The entity sensor can be configured using the sensor category of the plethora.cfg file:

• radus=16: The maximum distance that a sensor can query. Note that the area is a cube, not a sphere.