How do I work with wires and circuit networks? I can pick up a green wire from my crafting tab, but can't see how to attach it to anything. I'm trying to wire an inserter from a box to a roboport to control how many bots are in the network.

If you're not in map mode (which, without a character, it's a little hard to tell) it should just work like normal. The stuff you're wiring up does need to be near the center of the screen.

I'm in the normal mode, and have checked on the minimap that the player dot is where I think it is. I go to the crafting menu (e), left-click green wire, cancel out of the menu. I'm now holding a green wire icon without a count by it. I then click on an inserter, and instead of attaching the wire, it opens the inserter menu. I click on a roboport, and instead of attaching the wire, it opens the roboport menu. It doesn't attach the wire.

My workaround was to use the console to insert 100 green wires into my inventory. Then it worked.

Oh! You shouldn't have to use the console to do that. There is a very short whitelist of things you're allowed to have in your inventory. Red and green wires are on that list. You still have to get an assembler to create the wire in the first place of course.

Ah OK. That hadn't occurred to me. It's such a faff, and they are such low cost items that I'm comfortable cheating them in for now. But good to know. Cheers.