Ender Chest Ultimate Sorting System

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Guswut

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It'll carry on running on internal power for quite a while. I was hoping that a redstone signal would shut it down if it's in Automatic mode, but no such luck, I tried that.

What about having a turtle next to each machine that then places an empty battery box, and then an empty BC battery into that battery box which should suck out all of the power? And yes, I know, this sounds crazy.
 

trunksbomb

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Better to place that turtle down the tube line somewhere and remove a tube. If there are no valid destinations before the break, the machines won't do anything.

You could use a deployer in place of the turtle.
 

Guswut

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Better to place that turtle down the tube line somewhere and remove a tube. If there are no valid destinations before the break, the machines won't do anything.

You could use a deployer in place of the turtle.

I think he is specifically looking to depower the machines, though. Otherwise, yeah, a single turtle/etc at the start of the line at a choke point (or if you are a decent engineer, a few turtles/etc at your distributed smallest choke point) would work well.
 

PhilHibbs

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Yes, what I want to do is use the same Ender Chest for item processing. Lets say I want to recycle a load of Cobblestone. My Ender Chest sorting system sends Cobblestone to a barrel, but what I want to do is stop it from retrieving anything for a moment while I fill it with Cobblestone and then press a Wireless Remote that extracts everything from the chest and sends it to the Recycler. I think maybe I need a Sortron. Unless maybe a Manager can be disabled by a redstone signal? Mm nope.
 

Guswut

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Yes, what I want to do is use the same Ender Chest for item processing. Lets say I want to recycle a load of Cobblestone. My Ender Chest sorting system sends Cobblestone to a barrel, but what I want to do is stop it from retrieving anything for a moment while I fill it with Cobblestone and then press a Wireless Remote that extracts everything from the chest and sends it to the Recycler. I think maybe I need a Sortron. Unless maybe a Manager can be disabled by a redstone signal? Mm nope.

I would seriously suggest finding the easiest path, and designing it around that. In this case, carrying a single ender pouch and a remote is going to be a lot more difficult to do versus carrying two different ender pouches (or as I suggest to EVERYONE, a main ender pouch, and the other ender pouches in that one [just don't put the main pouch back into itself accidentally, hahah]). This gives you a more robust system (able to process and retrieve at the same time) at a small amount of increase in resources.
 

PhilHibbs

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I would seriously suggest finding the easiest path, and designing it around that. In this case, carrying a single ender pouch and a remote is going to be a lot more difficult to do versus carrying two different ender pouches (or as I suggest to EVERYONE, a main ender pouch, and the other ender pouches in that one [just don't put the main pouch back into itself accidentally, hahah]).
Yeah, a separate processing chest is probably sensible. And is it even possible to put an Ender Pouch in itself? I know that Canvas Bags can't be placed inside a Canvas Bag, but I never tried it with an Ender Pouch! Does it explode? That would be cool.

Has anyone done a remote control processing system before, where you select a frequency on a Wireless Remote and send the contents of an Ender Chest to a Macerator, Recycler, Alloy Furnace, or whatever? I'm almost embarrassed to ask as it seems like everything has been done already so many times that everyone's bored of everything and it's all new and exciting to me.
 

Guswut

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Yeah, a separate processing chest is probably sensible. And is it even possible to put an Ender Pouch in itself? I know that Canvas Bags can't be placed inside a Canvas Bag, but I never tried it with an Ender Pouch! Does it explode? That would be cool.

Nope, it just goes into itself. When you close it, you cannot reopen it as you don't have the bag any longer.

Has anyone done a remote control processing system before, where you select a frequency on a Wireless Remote and send the contents of an Ender Chest to a Macerator, Recycler, Alloy Furnace, or whatever? I'm almost embarrassed to ask as it seems like everything has been done already so many times that everyone's bored of everything and it's all new and exciting to me.

Surely someone has, but it'd be a LOT more logical to just make the system automatically put stuff where it needs to go based upon what it is being sent into it.
 

PhilHibbs

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Surely someone has, but it'd be a LOT more logical to just make the system automatically put stuff where it needs to go based upon what it is being sent into it.
I don't want to macerate all my Cobblestone, just a few stacks, and my overclocked macerators are all the way down in my automated basement. If I need 10 stacks of Sand I want to just load it into the pouch, set the remote to the "Macerate" frequency and hit the button. If I want Stone, I select "Furnace".
 

Guswut

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I don't want to macerate all my Cobblestone, just a few stacks, and my overclocked macerators are all the way down in my automated basement. If I need 10 stacks of Sand I want to just load it into the pouch, set the remote to the "Macerate" frequency and hit the button. If I want Stone, I select "Furnace".

I'm starting to get the bigger picture. Now tell me, is cobblestone a resource that you need to keep around in massive amounts, or something you do not get enough of, as such?

If you are like most other people, you will agree that cobblestone is void pipe worthy in most cases, so what I would suggest is this: Build your sorting system around the concept of automatically making those ten stacks of sand (I'd suggest sixty-four stacks at the least on hand) before you need them so you can grab them when you want them and your system will then remake more. I'd say the same for smoothstone, gravel (hey, sometimes you really want some ugly falling blocks, right?), maybe stone bricks as well.

If you take into account that, someday, you are going to want to have a few stacks of something cobblestone can produce, you can use that to your advantage to make those earlier and remove the waiting time, and the need to have a system that can switch around to different settings, all because you planned ahead! And, finally, when you are left with nothing else for cobblestone to make, store it until you have more of it on hand than you think you'll ever need, and then recycle it for some delicious UU matter.
 

PhilHibbs

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I have a barrel for cobble at the moment, I haven't gone in for a supersize remote quarry as I don't have a Buildcraft or TE power infrastructure set up yet. All my gravel goes to a Macerator to feed my diamond factory which isn't a problem so far as I haven't stuffed vast amounts of gravel in yet. I might stick a Manager on my first diamond factory chest to keep the gravel stacks down and prevent backstuffing. I have a spare Manager that I built but never used.

Anyway this isn't about cobblestone. It's about remote control processing of a number of common items e.g. Cobblestone to Sand, Sand to Glass, Cobblestone to Stone, Anything to Scrap, etc. I'm coming to the opinion that I should set up a separate Enderchest (and a separate pouch) for this automatic procesing though. I have in-process items e.g. Iron Dust passing through the sorting chest and I don't really want to risk flushing a diamond into the Recycler that should be en route to my gems chest. What I'll probably end up with is a frequency to flush my sorting Enderchest into my processing Enderchest, and a set of frequencies to flush my processing chest into a variety of destinations. That will stabilize the contents of the processing buffer so it doesn't pick up items "passing through".
 

Guswut

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I have a barrel for cobble at the moment, I haven't gone in for a supersize remote quarry as I don't have a Buildcraft or TE power infrastructure set up yet. All my gravel goes to a Macerator to feed my diamond factory which isn't a problem so far as I haven't stuffed vast amounts of gravel in yet. I might stick a Manager on my first diamond factory chest to keep the gravel stacks down and prevent backstuffing. I have a spare Manager that I built but never used.

Anyway this isn't about cobblestone. It's about remote control processing of a number of common items e.g. Cobblestone to Sand, Sand to Glass, Cobblestone to Stone, Anything to Scrap, etc. I'm coming to the opinion that I should set up a separate Enderchest (and a separate pouch) for this automatic procesing though. I have in-process items e.g. Iron Dust passing through the sorting chest and I don't really want to risk flushing a diamond into the Recycler that should be en route to my gems chest. What I'll probably end up with is a frequency to flush my sorting Enderchest into my processing Enderchest, and a set of frequencies to flush my processing chest into a variety of destinations. That will stabilize the contents of the processing buffer so it doesn't pick up items "passing through".

I'll make one more go at this, then: You are adding an extra step to a system that should not need an extra step. In almost all cases, you should be having your system make the resources that you may think you will need before you need them. To continue our example, your system should store a certain amount of cobblestone, and then it should start making sand, gravel, smooth stone, stone bricks, and whatever else you can think to make out of cobblestone without needing you to tell it to do that. And when you start turning sand into glass and that starts to run down, it'll then turn more cobblestone into sand. And when you run out of things for your excess cobblestone to do, you send it into a recycler.

That way you only need an input ender pouch, for when you want to toss some loot into your system, and an output ender pouch, where your system stores things that you request it to constantly keep on hand in case you need them (it becomes MUCH easier if you get Logistics Pipes, as that adds a "remote orderer" feature with allows you to request things be sent to a certain inventory. So much easier to deal with, that you'll never want to go back).

My current sorting system works just like that for cobblestone, and the difference in usage is vast. Instead of having to manually tell it what I want it to do, my system just keeps an extradimensional barrel full of sand, gravel, and smooth stone. I then have a normal barrel full of glass. When I take six stacks of glass so I can make a small glass cube in which I shall house a baby pig for reasons that are unknown, the system gets a redstone signal from the barrel saying that it is not full. From there, it then pulls sand out of the sand barrel, which is then sent down into an electric furnace which smelts it and tosses it into the glass barrel, filling it up. The sand barrel then sends a signal that it is not full down to the cobblestone barrel, which tosses cobblestone into a macerator and fills up the sand barrel. And when my cobblestone barrel runs low (which means that all of my quarries have stopped), it runs an ingenuous extruder until it is full on cobblestone again.

By setting up the system to require an extra step (change the wireless redstone signal to determine the mode) you add more wiring requirements, more possible points of failure, and more complexity to a system that I really suggest you should design for simple usage. I won't try and push my ways on you any longer after this post, because your idea isn't horrible (unlike my first system, which I'm not going to discuss if at all possible) and should work, but will be a lot more work to set up and to run, but that is your choice.

Good luck!
 

trunksbomb

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Gus, I've got a kid on the server I play on that never listens to anyone's advice. For example, he wanted diamonds so instead of mining them by hand, or making a quarry, or making a tunnel bore.. he decides that mining nikolite with silk touch so that he can process it into dust for diamonds is a much better idea. Or a tier 5 blaze spawner using the vanilla piston farm layout (in the overworld, no less). Or building a matter fabricator while still operating on a small bank of geothermals, a handful of solars, and an MFE. He constantly surprises me with how inefficient he is.

Some people just refuse to listen and want to do it their way and that's the vibe I'm getting here. Nothing personal, Phil, just making an observation. All that matters is that you enjoy yourself and play the game how you see fit.
 

Guswut

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Some people just refuse to listen and want to do it their way and that's the vibe I'm getting here. Nothing personal, Phil, just making an observation. All that matters is that you enjoy yourself and play the game how you see fit.

Of course, and I am aware that it is just the way people are. I dislike inefficiency without an amusing reason, such as rube goldberg machine (magic mirror for a quarry, perhaps), but I only try three times (or four if I forget one of the first three, which I then review later and say "Oh, wait, that is one too many!" which I then mentally associate that with my post, and avoid a fifth try) before I move on. Sometimes a second or third try, explaining my position in a different way, is enough to make someone see what I mean (or sometimes enough for them to explain to me what they mean, and for me to see the error of my ways, which happens often enough that it is not a discountable factor).

But yes, if Phil wants a remote controlled sorting system using a wireless redstone remote, then that is what he'll get. It sounds like a fairly awesome project to build if only for the programming part (gods help you if you don't use a computercraft computer though), and I'll be interested to know how it goes for him, either way.
 

Guswut

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It definitely would be an interesting build, no doubt, and I'd like to see it in action.

I'm thinking a binary sort as that'd be the easiest way I can think to remember the different redstone frequencies, and allow full customization of the different pathways. But sans a computercraft computer, perhaps a few frequencies and different colored wire to keep it from becoming a wiring nightmare.
 

PhilHibbs

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All I need is a Sortron connected to the processing chest, and program it to set the colour based on the frequency of the remote. So I need one Wireless Receiver per function, and to work out how to write a Forth program to detect what colour wire is active, which limits me to 16 functions per Sortron.
 

trunksbomb

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You could have a lot more choices than that if you go with a binary system on the colored wires.

White on is 0, white on yellow on is 1, etc. That leaves room for 2^16 options.
 

whizzball1

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If you are still on the topic of shutting off your entire sorting system, just make a frequency that disables input to the sorting machines. That is, if you have a filter hooked up to a chest with the tubes hooked up to the sorting machine. If the sorting machines are attached to the chest itself, then impossible. Most likely.
 

PhilHibbs

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I can't do the same thing even twice before crushing ennui sets in. I genuinely envy you.
So what tech is your latest system based on?
You could have a lot more choices than that if you go with a binary system on the colored wires.
White on is 0, white on yellow on is 1, etc. That leaves room for 2^16 options.
Harder to wire up, each Wireless Receiver would have to be connected to several wires, but I guess I could just connect all the wires into a bundle without having to worry about 8 OR gates since OR is the default behaviour for multiple wires of the same colour going into a bundle.
If you are still on the topic of shutting of your entire sorting system, just make a frequency that disables input to the sorting machines. That is, if you have a filter hooked up to a chest with the tubes hooked up to the sorting machine. If the sorting machines are attached to the chest itself, then impossible. Most likely.
Direct sorting machines around the chest, as per my screenies a couple of pages back.
 

whizzball1

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Yup, Manual is the fastest way. No other way unless somewhat invents a block that would click buttons for you. You wouldn't have space for it though, with the wiring you would require to power the machines. Unless the block was Redpower Blulectric.