Bit of help with the Relay/Pneumatic tubes? :)

[Smilomaniac]

Hi guys, I'd appreciate if you could help me with this, give me some facts, pointers or tips.
I've looked through the wikis but I either can't find what I'm looking for or there's no info on the matter.

So, based on the youtubers I was very intrigued with the pneumatic item sorting system, using a relay, barrels and pneumatic tubes. Screenshots are below for reference.

Basically, I have a single relay and just tubing, that passes all the barrels in a snake pattern, but doesn't loop anywhere.
When the tube has made its rounds, it reconnects to the relay.

So my problem is this, with this setup items will just float around the system indefinately, go into the relay again and go through again, without being deposited anywhere.
If I connect the end to the beginning of the tube, it will go nowhere, because it can't find a barrel to deposit the item into(or that's my assumption at least).

So, do I need more blocks to fix this? More relays, buffers, sorting machines or something else?
Is there a cap to the amount of barrels I can use with a single relay?
Is there some other tubing I should use?

I'm using Direwolf20's packs.

 

[ItharianEngineering]

Does it do this with any item or just ones you don't have a barrel set up for already? Not sure if I understand correctly, but are you saying that the items come through a relay into your barrel setup and then back to the relay? Since there isn't a picture of how you have the relay setup I don't know if I get a clear understanding. basically if there isn't a barrel for an item it will not know where to go and you should just have a chest at the end of the line, maybe using a restriction tube, so they gather up there.

 

[Golrith]

First, I like the pyramid design. I'm in the process at the moment of starting my sorting system. Consists of a big empty room at the moment!

Sounds like you've got items that cannot find a destination, due to there being no barrel for the items to go into. Put a chest at the very end of the pipework to capture all the unsorted items.
The relay is a valid destination, but the relay keeps spitting them out, so all your unsorted items are stuck in a loop.

 

[Smilomaniac]

I'll clarify:
It doesn't matter what item I put in, if there's a barrel for it already, the item will skip it and just loop around. HOWEVER, if I have an empty barrel somewhere along the line, it will just deposit the item there, no matter what.
I initially thought my system actually worked, because it deposited items in barrels just fine. After a bit however, when I deposited items already in there, I noticed that it didn't actually put items in barrels already designated to them, it just skipped them and started a new one down the line.(I put in cobble in all the empty ones, as placeholders, because I wanted a specific pattern to where things go).

I've checked the piping over and over, it goes from the relay, visits all the barrels and ends up in the relay at the end again, on the side of it. At the moment, the relay is in the ceiling, you can't see it on the screenshot, I apologize.

First, I like the pyramid design. I'm in the process at the moment of starting my sorting system. Consists of a big empty room at the moment!

Thanks, glad you like it. Just bear in mind that it takes forever for items to reach their barrels, at least when it goes like I've set it up, a single line.
This might also be a solution, but one that I'm loathe to test at the moment; connecting all the pipes so there's no A to B but a mash of pipes everywhere.
This might make sense if there's a restricted length to which the relay can work with.

 

[Golrith]

Make a small test setup, see if you can repeat the issue with just a few blocks. Based on what you are saying, things should be sorted, apart from the items without a destination.


In my design, I'll be using a sorting machine first to allocate colors, and different rows of barrels will have their own colour, and overflow capture area. This is so that if I put in some new barrels, I don't get a random item sneaking into it before I manage to put something in it, and I can then handle the different overflow capture areas differently. Bit overkill, but feels a bit safer to me and a bit more control.

 

[Smilomaniac]

That might be the way to go if this is a setup that just doesn't work.
I'm still fiddling with it, but I'm hoping to hear whether or not someone has had the same issue or knows exactly what's wrong, so I skip a lot of grief over this.
At the moment, I'm just putting stuff in manually and that's kind of okay, although I'm tempted to just going back to having rows of chests(especially because retrieval is a bit easier that way).
My biggest gripe would be all the wood that's wasted.

 

[Supremeone]

were are you inputting your items from ?

are those your screenshots or just for references for how you sorta made it ?

 

[Smilomaniac]

were are you inputting your items from ?

are those your screenshots or just for references for how you sorta made it ?

They're a general reference, to get the basic idea. I put them in a relay, which is not on either screenshot.

 

[Peppe]

Router works, but is honestly overkill. Barrels work, and filters on chests also works quite will and no blutricity needed.

Try a restriction tube on the return side of the relay.

Or maybe try a second relay that inputs into the first or into the tube network. Maybe there is a quirk with redpower 2 routing where if it can route back to itself it considers that the shortest route no matter how long the path back to itself is.

A loop design could be bad though if you have automated systems inputting into it. After they fill their assigned barrels the will be stuck in the loop. The relay in a loop will never jam -- normal redpower 2 machines jam/hold thier item when they have no destination. The loop will load up with items. Redpower seems pretty efficient on, but if you get thousands of items running through the loop eventually its gonna cause lag or crash the game.

Consider using a filter to pull trash items out before looping them back again. Best practice seems to be to end a storage tube system with an overflow chest. Whenever you get overflow adjust storage or trash items to keep the overflow clear.

 

[Supremeone]

They're a general reference, to get the basic idea. I put them in a relay, which is not on either screenshot.

i meant that if you based yours on it but dint do it just like that like feed the barrels from the underside that may be your problem , if you feed items from the underside they only accept one stack
and than dont take any more items

 

[Smilomaniac]

i meant that if you based yours on it but dint do it just like that like feed the barrels from the underside that may be your problem , if you feed items from the underside they only accept one stack
and than dont take any more items

Well there you go! That's my problem, I'm sure of it, because the bottom row is connected from the bottom
That must be my issue!

They're SS' of my setup, yes, didn't base it off of it.

Now I just have to get my server updated, since FTB forced updated my client. And ofc that isn't working atm

Thanks mate!

 

[CFalzone]

I am not sure, but I think you also need to have every barrel have something in it first, like a placeholder item. For instance if you have something like this in your barrels down the line:

Input Relay -> Wood Barrel -> Empty Barrel -> Cobblestone Barrel

And you throw some Cobblestone in, it will go into the empty first because it is the closest available inventory that will accept cobble.

Maybe you already knew that though. Nice Pyramid design though, might have to steal that.

 

[Freakscar]

I recreated the setup with a single line of tubes and about a dozen barrels. Stuff gets pulled from a Crystal chest by a wooden transport pipe leading to the relay. It throws the items into the tubes just fine and they all got sorted as they should. Except the item I threw in after all barrels were filled, which, as expected, traveled around, back into the chest. The only thing I noticed was, tubes (as well as BC pipes) ignore barrels with the according item "further down", they deposit the item as soon, as it reaches an empty barrel. But apart of this obvious behaviour, I could not recreate the problem. Maybe take a few more shots of your own design, so we can examine/compare it in detail?

Edit: Kinda Ninja'd by CFalzone.

 

[Badjr]

I'm fairly certain OP has already figured out his problem guys, which was that he was inputting some of the items from the bottom of the barrel. The way factorization barrels work is that you can only input from the top, and can only take out from the bottom; OP's bottom row of barrels had the pipes coming in at the bottom, which would result in the items going around infinitely because there isn't a suitable place for them to go(the top of the barrel). What I find weird is that the relay sent the items out in the first place, usually they check for an open inventory before sending items out, and if they don't find one they keep the items in their inventory or don't pull them from the inventory they are linked to. Although, my information on some redpower items may be outdated I'm sure Eloraam has made some changes to the mod since I last used it in Tekkit.

 

[Peppe]

I'm fairly certain OP has already figured out his problem guys, which was that he was inputting some of the items from the bottom of the barrel. The way factorization barrels work is that you can only input from the top, and can only take out from the bottom; OP's bottom row of barrels had the pipes coming in at the bottom, which would result in the items going around infinitely because there isn't a suitable place for them to go(the top of the barrel). What I find weird is that the relay sent the items out in the first place, usually they check for an open inventory before sending items out, and if they don't find one they keep the items in their inventory or don't pull them from the inventory they are linked to. Although, my information on some redpower items may be outdated I'm sure Eloraam has made some changes to the mod since I last used it in Tekkit.

He had the tube looping back to the relay directly, so the relay saw it's open inventory slots at the end of the loop as a valid destination and sent the items out its front to be returned to it's side.

 

[Badjr]

He had the tube looping back to the relay directly, so the relay saw it's open inventory slots at the end of the loop as a valid destination and sent the items out its front to be returned to it's side.

Ah, yeah that'll do it. I wonder how much lag that creates and whether the items can despawn while in that loop. This could be a viable means of overflow storage that I hadn't considered.