How to? Redstone signal to control transport nodes.

[Snaef98]

I have a large refinery set up and I would like to be able to turn on or off my setup with a switch or switches.

Will post a few pics of my setup.

Setup 9x9x8 Steel Tank Fueling 28 Lava Generators (Extra Utilities)

Dumps into 2 redstone energy cells. Each cell outputs 1,120 RF/t

Running 32 Refinerys @ Full Speed Dump into 2x stacked 9x9x8 Steel Tanks for over 41,400 buckets fuel holding capacity.

4x stacked 9x9x8 Steel Tanks feed the refinerys with over 82,800 buckets capacity.

This setup refines about 1 bucket of fuel every 3.5-4 seconds.

 

[Omicron]

The most obvious solution here is to turn off the energy cells. Like all TE machinery, they can be configured to respond to redstone signals (and do so by deafult, IIRC). Since they're sitting so conveniently spaced apart by three blocks, that's the perfect spot to put a lever.

Like so:
[energy cell] [redstone dust] [lever] [redstone dust] [energy cell]

Then whenever you flip the lever on, the energy cells stop outputting power and the refineries will wind down over the next 10 seconds. if you have Wireless Redstone installed, you can even replace the lever with that and switch the whole thing on/off remotely.

 

[Snaef98]

The most obvious solution here is to turn off the energy cells. Like all TE machinery, they can be configured to respond to redstone signals (and do so by deafult, IIRC). Since they're sitting so conveniently spaced apart by three blocks, that's the perfect spot to put a lever.

Like so:
[energy cell] [redstone dust] [lever] [redstone dust] [energy cell]

Then whenever you flip the lever on, the energy cells stop outputting power and the refineries will wind down over the next 10 seconds. if you have Wireless Redstone installed, you can even replace the lever with that and switch the whole thing on/off remotely.

Wasn't sure that was possible but still the lava generators I believe continue to burn lava even if there is no power being pulled? not sure on that part.


That's basically the how to deal with the transfer node part without having to keep breaking the pipe when I shut it off.

 

[Omicron]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with ExtraUtilities generators, so I can't tell you anything about that. You'll have to try it out, or hope for someone with more experience with that mod.

 

[Snaef98]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with ExtraUtilities generators, so I can't tell you anything about that. You'll have to try it out, or hope for someone with more experience with that mod.

I just tested it out and the lever indeed turns off the energy cell. However once fully charged 500,000 RF the generators continue to burn lava even when full and system is off. Question now is how to fix that? Only idea I had was a bridge tank where I put pump from the main to the bridge and put the liquid transfer node on that but not sure if ordinary gold BC pipe and a redstone engine will have enough mb/t to handle all them generators

 

[Omicron]

Have you tested whether or not the generators themselves respond to redstone? If so, you could rig all of them them and the energy cells together to one single lever. It can be done even with vanilla redstone but it'll be somewhat elaborate (involving underground wiring and plenty of repeaters).

Or you could do it aboveground if you don't mind redstone wiring all over the back part of your place.

EDIT: the problem is that even if you control the lava supply pipes via redstone, the pipes and generators will have so much internal lava buffer that they'll continue running for ages after shutting off, wasting tons of lava. It's better to disable the generators themselves, eleminating this issue.

 

[rouge_bare]

Either turn off the energy cell - or cut the lava supply to the lava generators. I'm fairly sure extra utils generators (aside from the solar one) don't respond to redstone signalling at all. Either case isn't exactly ideal though, as you could waste lava either way.

EDIT: all kinds of transfer nodes won't work if a redstone signal is applied to them

 

[jordsta95]

*Clears throat* Ok... Time for some complex stuff...
Comparators... you will needs some... by some I mean 1 for ever generator.
Next off you will need an "AND gate" for every 2 generators. (You can use vanilla, project red, bluepower, anything that has them)
NOW! Here comes the complex part. You WILL need to move your engines around... Sorry :/
You put a comparator to every generator, they will emit redstone signals when their RF buffer is filled.
And hook up every and gate to the engines, and keep going so that all the and gates lead to an and gate that lead to an and gate, all the way until you are left with just one and gate.
THEN what you do with that last and gate it make it so when that is giving off a signal (all other generators' buffers are full, or however much you want them to be filled) that redstone signal will deactivate the transfer node that is sending the lava to the generators. And then when one, or more, of your generators dip below that magic number you will get lava flowing again.
Pretty complex, but it'll work

 

[Omicron]

Or you could just deactivate the transfer node together with the redstone cells without requiring any of that! ...But that would still not solve the issue with the generators continuing to run even when the transfer node is off.

Do the generators really not obey redstone, not even optionally? I find it a little hard to believe that ExtraUtilities of all mods, which adds so much borderline broken stuff that vastly simplifies almost every aspect of the game, would skimp out on such a basic thing as redstone control for generators that even Buildcraft already had before Minecraft itself was out of beta.

 

[jordsta95]

Well it may respond to a redstone signal, I don't know, but if it starts a new "cycle" (where it consumes the lava and makes RF) then it would still carry on, even when activated. But the thing is with toggling redstone signals (without comparators) is that you cannot automate it. I mean, it may be an idea to have it so the generators (if they can accept a signal) are always being given a signal, and only when your energy cells start to get low on power do they emit a signal that will disable the signal stopping the generators? Again, this would work, but I think it'd be a little more wasteful with the lava.
*This would be done with comparators on the energy cells

 

[Omicron]

He doesn't want to automate anything though. He wants to be able to switch the whole complex off and on with a single lever.

If the generators were smart enough to stop when their internal buffer fills up, then that could be achieved by toggling the cells, but according to his test that isn't the case, so he needs to turn the generators themselves off.

 

[jordsta95]

He doesn't want to automate anything though.

BLASPHEMY! You can't NOT automate something. If you can automate something, you DO automate something

 

[Omicron]

Oh my. Remind me to never let you onto one of my servers... for your own protection. You see, I like interacting with my builds. The amount of manual control you'd see in my bases would probably give you a seizure in no time flat

 

[jordsta95]

Oh my. Remind me to never let you onto one of my servers... for your own protection. You see, I like interacting with my builds. The amount of manual control you'd see in my bases would probably give you a seizure in no time flat

XD I have no issues with manual labour. But some things, such as power generation, should be automated (in my mind). Apart from big reactors... I tried automating with CC once... never again

 

[Snaef98]

He doesn't want to automate anything though. He wants to be able to switch the whole complex off and on with a single lever.

If the generators were smart enough to stop when their internal buffer fills up, then that could be achieved by toggling the cells, but according to his test that isn't the case, so he needs to turn the generators themselves off.

Yes this is what I'm saying. Sorry for the late reply wasn't expecting so much chatter! I was busy trying to clean up my old base and get some chunks unloaded. Another question I have noticed with /chunkloaders a very larger square area near where my old base was that's loaded its bigger then a player footprint and there are no anchors there. What could be causing it to be loaded/what is it if anyone knows.


As for the generators I already have them fueled belowground so I don't really want to change my compact setup. Its not that bad if I have to cut the pipe to turn them off, as it is Im dealing with so much oil that I can literally leave it on 24/7 to refine. I'm holding like over 250,000 buckets atm cause I just tapped like 70 oil wells in the ocean. I'm currently moving to a Drum based storage in a deep storage unit to remove a lot of the old iron tanks. Also just upgraded the refinery to 6 oil tanks and 3 fuel (63,000+ fuel) 126,000+ oil capacity so it can literally run all day xD

 

[jordsta95]

Could it be the spawn chunk? I don't know whether it is just the spawn chunk, or the surrounding chunks, that get loaded, but I know the spawn chunk is FORCE loaded always

 

[Snaef98]

Could it be the spawn chunk? I don't know whether it is just the spawn chunk, or the surrounding chunks, that get loaded, but I know the spawn chunk is FORCE loaded always

If by spawn chunk you mean 0x0 then yeah there is 1 little block but there is also a huge footprint a solid square not my character it seems centered in the middle of of 4 (256 chunks) area some of the edges of it shrunk when I moved over that area on the map but its still a solid box.

The spawn chunk is 0x0
See the medium sized chunk and little bits around the 2 large ones. (The one with the dot in the center is my character)

 

[jordsta95]

Hmm IIRC in 1.7.10, one of the reasons it is so bad (lag wise), is because it renders the world as if you had your render distance on super ultra mega far. So it could be that (for the one you are in) dunno about the other chunk though :/

 

[Snaef98]

Oh yeah also as for automated stuff my quarry system is automated. 4 quarry's powered by lava generators that feed into an ender chest with item node's that feed into deep storage. This is at full speed btw so I can literally get 1000s of ores overnight! All of this is on my dedicated server that runs survival mode not creative. Next up I am going to be working on a fuel powered furnace system for my glass and stone production for my long distance rail network I'm going to be building. (its about 800 blocks distance fully lit and encased at the moment with power rails) also gotta build me a few more blast furnaces to keep up with steel demand for drums.

 

[jordsta95]

Oh yeah also as for automated stuff my quarry system is automated. 4 quarry's powered by lava generators that feed into an ender chest with item node's that feed into deep storage. This is at full speed btw so I can literally get 1000s of ores overnight! All of this is on my dedicated server that runs survival mode not creative. Next up I am going to be working on a fuel powered furnace system for my glass and stone production for my long distance rail network I'm going to be building. (its about 800 blocks distance fully lit and encased at the moment with power rails) also gotta build me a few more blast furnaces to keep up with steel demand for drums.

If you have mekanism in your pack, steel is so much easier to get in that