AE - Level emitters, ME Interface, ARRGH!

[Delcar]

Not really as worked up as the title implies ... yet.

I've got a single ME interface piping stuff for my Biomass production out - sort of. Its set to export both Fertilizer and Saplings, which then go to a diamond pipe, and then to their respective chests to pump into the fermenters as needed.

From Chest to Fermenter is working fine. Autarchic gates are set to pipe empty/energy pulsar.

The problem is somewhere between the ME interface and the feeder chest - No matter how many or few items I specify, it never 'finishes' pumping the first item to switch to fertilizer.

Spoiler

OR is it my Newbishness with gates... I've tried different pipe and chest settings on the gate, and it keeps chugging along.

An obvious (inelegant) solution would be a second ME interface dedicated to Fertilizer. I can't get the level emitter interfaced to help either, and I am very low on quartz (roamed quite far before AE was added to the pack).

 

[Milaha]

The problem you are having is that the interface is too awesome at keeping itself stocked. You need to account for this in your design. This means either using an emerald pipe to pull each item type, multiple interfaces, or possibly using a different system entirely.

Oh, and the level emiter wont help here (unless I am overlooking something) as all it does is emit redstone based on the stock of an item in the ME network. Since you want to keep a stock outside the ME network it will be a no-go.

Personally how I keep things stocked is to use export busses attached to tesseracts. One export bus and sending tesseract will keep any number of directly attached inventories on the receiving end stocked without overflows or spills. I use a LOT of tesseracts though as a result.

edit: Oh, just had a thought. Golems might make a great solution to keep your chests stocked, since they can pull based on item type as well.

 

[Peppe]

I don't see any level emitters?

It sounds like what you are saying is the single fertilizer is replaced by AE faster than the gate can pull it out?

Best BC solution i can think of is to use an emerald pipe. It will cycle through items in it's filter in order. But if you ever run out of something in its filter it will be stuck on that item.

A redstone solution might be to add a dark cable to the interface and put simple redstone clock/timer on the interface. So it is only on a few ticks then off a few ticks. You could try adding redstone output to the gate itself and run redstone back to a dark cable to turn on the interface if the pipe is empty -- might need a repeater or something to tweak it so it is off / on long enough for the gate to pull items out, but not on so much that the gate never gets to the second/third item.

 

[MrZwij]

What you want are ME Export Busses connected to the top and bottom of your fermenters (plants on top, fertilizer on the bottom). That will always keep them fully stocked.

Edit: Set up the fertilizer option to "single/craft", and put a recipe for fertilizer in your AE computer. As long as you have apatite and sand you'll be fine.

 

[Delcar]

Ok wow, flurry of good information.

You didn't see level emitters, because I haven't included them yet - I thought that might have been an option.

I haven't tried golems on all the different ME gadgets, I think I tested them on the main interface thingy, but not the ME interface.... Hmmm.

With my current resources, its either Emerald pipe or golems, but I'll definately migrate to Export Buses (once I have enough for the 'trash' barrels).

Thank you all! All good information and solutions.

 

[Delcar]

Confirmed: Clay Golems work fine on the ME Interface, and that's my current solution, till I get more Quartz.

 

[CodaPDX]

Wood golems work great on an interface, too. Plop an interface down in the center of a farm plot with straw golems, and the wood golems will deposit things directly into your network. It's probably a good idea to use a level emitter to shut off or cut off the interface when you get a certain number of farm products in the system, though, because otherwise the golems will fill your ME drives up with wheat and seeds in remarkably short time.

 

[Milaha]

Wood golems work great on an interface, too. Plop an interface down in the center of a farm plot with straw golems, and the wood golems will deposit things directly into your network. It's probably a good idea to use a level emitter to shut off or cut off the interface when you get a certain number of farm products in the system, though, because otherwise the golems will fill your ME drives up with wheat and seeds in remarkably short time.

This is blasphemy! You can never have too many of something. Deep storage chests exist for a reason. (and that reason is that I am a hoarder)

 

[Spachi1281]

What you want are ME Export Busses connected to the top and bottom of your fermenters (plants on top, fertilizer on the bottom). That will always keep them fully stocked.

Edit: Set up the fertilizer option to "single/craft", and put a recipe for fertilizer in your AE computer. As long as you have apatite and sand you'll be fine.

Not necessary, I just tried configuring a fermenter and I found that I only needed 1 Export Bus (Configured to stock fertilizer then saplings without the need of a red stone signal) and it works just fine. Moreover, you get better fertilizer production with Ash over Sand. Also, if you have a setup for squeezing Apples in to Juice (to feed the fermenter) the resulting Mulch can be used in lieu of Fertilizer.

 

[Heliomance]

Incidentally, is there any way to combine AE with ender storage and/or tesseracts and/or anything else to be able to effectively have a single network distributed over multiple locations?

 

[Poppycocks]

Incidentally, is there any way to combine AE with ender storage and/or tesseracts and/or anything else to be able to effectively have a single network distributed over multiple locations?

Yes.

Ender chest + storage bus.

 

[Heliomance]

That won't let you access your storage network remotely, though. It'll let you put things into the network, but you won't be able to take them out from the enderchest if they're in the network proper, will it?

 

[Skirty_007]

Not necessary, I just tried configuring a fermenter and I found that I only needed 1 Export Bus (Configured to stock fertilizer then saplings without the need of a red stone signal) and it works just fine. Moreover, you get better fertilizer production with Ash over Sand. Also, if you have a setup for squeezing Apples in to Juice (to feed the fermenter) the resulting Mulch can be used in lieu of Fertilizer.

Aye that's what I have (one Export bus on top of my fermenter), in fact before I had enough saplings coming into my system (I now have thousands of them...) I had it configured for mulch, then saplings, then wheat, and it worked well. When there were no saplings to go in it put wheat in instead.[DOUBLEPOST=1365581894][/DOUBLEPOST]

That won't let you access your storage network remotely, though. It'll let you put things into the network, but you won't be able to take them out from the enderchest if they're in the network proper, will it?

The storage bus turns the ender chest into a chest that can be read by the AE system, so the items will still be in the chest to access with your pouch/whatever else.

 

[Heliomance]

Aye, but anything that went into the network through some means other than the ender chest won't be accessible from the chest.

 

[Poppycocks]

That won't let you access your storage network remotely, though. It'll let you put things into the network, but you won't be able to take them out from the enderchest if they're in the network proper, will it?

That's the thing about the storage buss, it doesn't suck stuff into the network, it just stores the specified items in the external storage AND makes those items accesible in the network.[DOUBLEPOST=1365582385][/DOUBLEPOST]

Aye, but anything that went into the network through some means other than the ender chest won't be accessible from the chest.

You just need chests for everything you wanna access then.

 

[Jorge]

Incidentally, is there any way to combine AE with ender storage and/or tesseracts and/or anything else to be able to effectively have a single network distributed over multiple locations?

If they are close locations, you can connect them with cables. Long distance base, you will need to set some "logical" system to have a central storage system, and some enderchest system to supply required items to different locations.

You can also work in a system to ask for items using computers (cc or rp2)

EDIT: In my map im using the white ? ? enderchests for this matter. white white white is the input storage. white yellow ? is bee related. white red ? is energy related. white green ? is farming related. etc, etc...

 

[Milaha]

Trying to make a distributed AE net would be... interesting to say the least. Depending on the specific needs I would go with a few different implementations. Lets assume the two primary sets.
First:
Small number of resources need to be provided to the remote location, but need to be able to export them quickly, and an unlimited number of items for return (the return part is easy).

In the main base I would set up a seperate ender chest for each export resource and afix an export bus and low priority storage bus to each one. This should cause the export bus to pull from the main network, while keeping those in the ender chest available. If you have sufficient overstock to not worry about losing access to one ender-chest worth, ditch the storage bus. At the remote location a storage bus would be attached and it would be set to only allow that item. For easiest implementation all storage at this location is filtered, and a single "export" ender chest is set with an unfiltered storage bus. Back in the main base there is an import bus attached to the other side.

Second:
Smaller throughput but more items available.

I would use a combination of interfaces and golems (or any other 3rd party solution, redpower managers would work great but I am dropping RP from my builds so I can update to 1.5 sooner) to keep a chest stocked with 1 stack of each item I want to be available remotely. A storage bus would be afixed at all bases including the main base, but it would be set to filter for an item that will never input to it. (for example I might filter for red rock, knowing I will never gather it.). This will cause the network to be aware of all the items that are kept stocked by the golems, but never actually store more in there so that there are no jams or overflows. The same return system would be used as above.

Final:
I have not installed Logistic pipes in 1.4, but my understanding is that they talk to LP very well (in both directions). I imagine you could use LP through tesseracts to make two AE networks talk, but it might also die in fires and explosions.

 

[CodaPDX]

Do logistics pipes interact with each other through tesseracts? Based on my understanding of how tesseracts work, I imagine that the pipes would treat the tesseract as an inventory, not a pipe, which means that two LP networks hooked up to a tesseract would still be two networks. You could probably pull some similar tricks to the ender chest shenanigans you're describing, though.

 

[Peppe]

I don't think you can have one ME network accessible across all dimensions.

I am not super familiar with LP, but I think it has a pipe that works across dimensions.

So you could have LP connected to each ME network through an ME interface. LP pipe would then connect to the cross dimension LP pipes. So your LP pipes are linked and they have end points in each dimension to ME networks, so all the ME networks are pooled together in the LP system. With that you should have access to all connected ME networks through LP remote orderer in any dimension.

 

[Milaha]

Do logistics pipes interact with each other through tesseracts? Based on my understanding of how tesseracts work, I imagine that the pipes would treat the tesseract as an inventory, not a pipe, which means that two LP networks hooked up to a tesseract would still be two networks. You could probably pull some similar tricks to the ender chest shenanigans you're describing, though.

I have no recent experience with LP, I was basing my assumption on how they worked with teleport pipes back in 1.2.5. Thus the disclaimer that it might just explode.