2 Magnetizers on 1 Elevator? (+ Redstone Question)

[DanielMcClane]

Hi. New to the forum. *waves*

So I'm early on in an Infinity game. Got some basic IC2 machines and resources, still mostly working on basic foundational stuff.

Anyway, I have a question regarding IC2 elevators with magnetizer. I have a hole near my mountain-side cave-house that goes straight down to a lava lake I've been getting lava from to power my generator. So I decided rather than take the time to use the ladder I'd make an elevator and keep it powered with batteries (steady power source not yet practical given the location and lower quality cabling).

Issue is, one magnetizer can only power 20 fence above and below itself, and I have almost 60 blocks through which I need this thing. So I put down the 20 fences from the bottom up to a mag, then slightly less than 20 above it. Then put down another mag there and put more fence from it to the top.

Now that I've done that, and each has a battery, only the top portion works. I have to use a ladder up until I get to the fence powered by the topmost mag, then it works fine. Plus the bottom mag doesn't seem to want to show a visible connection to the fence. Not sure what the issue is there.

Is this workable on one long piece of iron fence, OR do I need 2 separate units?

Tl;Dr: Trying to use two IC2 Magnetizers to power a longer-than-40 fence elevator. Only the top section works. Can it be done in this way?


Bonus question: Once I get this set up, I was planning to run some redstone wire between the mags and a couple of lights at the top of the elevator to act as 'service lights' which would come on when the batteries get low. Is it possible to emit redstone from a mag when a battery gets low to allow this to be built?

Uploaded a few files that might help with the visuals.

Thanks a lot. Forgive any noobishness. Pretty new to most of this stuff.

 

[DanielMcClane]

Okay nevermind about the magnetizers. I got it working. My problem is I hadn't used the wrench to attach the fence to the second mag. It just wasn't providing power to the fence. Fixed now and works great. Just Need to clean up the elevator shaft now and set up a service tunnel to use to replace batteries and I should be good.

The question above about redstone is still active however. I'll be looking into it myself, but if anyone knows about this, that would be helpful. Thanks!

 

[KingTriaxx]

Open the batbox interface, and there should be a redstone button on the top left. Click that and watch the chat, and it'll cycle through the options.

 

[DanielMcClane]

@KingTriaxx Thanks. I should have been more clear in the original question. I was actually referring to using redstone with portable RE batteries rather than a batbox, but after I posted here, I ended up going with a batbox anyway because it makes much more sense.

I've got two mags making up the elevator down to the bottom, and between which is a batbox connected to each mag with HV cable. From the batbox I have red alloy wire running up to the small building above the elevator shaft and to a red light that will turn on when the batbox is empty (I set it using the menu you reference here). When the batbox is empty the mag will start draining power from their respective Re batteries to give me enough time to replenish the batbox without falling to my demise from a depowered elevator.

Also a service tunnel runs behind everything so I can get down and charge batteries/batbox as needed.

All in all it's working like I wanted it.

I understand this is all quite basic stuff as far as FTB goes, but it's really cool to me because I'm just starting with it. Last time I played this I mostly worked with magic stuff and never played with Redstone.

 

[KingTriaxx]

You can actually automate that if you're interested, by using Thermal expansion conduits, and servos, and have it extract empty RE-batteries from the batboxes. As long as it's filtered for metadata, it'll only pull full/empty ones, then you shouldn't need to worry about running IC2 cables.

 

[DanielMcClane]

@KingTriaxx That sounds pretty cool. I've only ever used fluiducts from TE to move stuff around; mainly in lava pump setups. I'll have to look into that. Do you use conduits from TE for your transport needs mostly? Are they better than buildcraft stuff? I've kinda gotten that impression, but I still use BC for the basic rigs like macerator > furnace > chest in the early game.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Actually, I use trains and EnderIO. The former because it can move quite a lot, and the latter because I can have several different conduits running in one block space.

Better is subjective. Buildcraft has it's gate system that can do some very cool automation tricks, like only pulling when there's more than a specific amount, or transmitting the amount to other points in the system and then telling them to pull. TE doesn't need the wooden pipe to extract from a machine. Just a servo on one side, and turn it on. Then it'll extract constantly and output the other side of the block. You can also decide if you want to see the items moving or not.

 

[DanielMcClane]

So this is my setup. Now that it's come up it seems quite viable to set up a railcraft system. Given how cramped things are. (image 3 is just the basement of that single room fyi).

Anyway, you've given me some ideas.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Glad to hear it. The more people I can bring to the Railcraft side of things, the better.

 

[Inaeo]

Glad to hear it. The more people I can bring to the Railcraft side of things, the better.

Way to pimp your brand. If all else fails, you could have a career in sales.

 

[KingTriaxx]

All the people who don't like Railcraft, I'm going to wave the flag as hard as I can. Besides, trains are fun. (He says, having spent three hours working out why they kept running out of fuel/water/whatever.)