Getting Started with Redpower Pneumatic Tube Machines

[eable2]

After my long months of being to lazy to learn redpower piping, I finally see how much better pneumatic tubes are than transport pipes. So far, however, I'm finding the amount of machines that can move things around slightly overwhelming. Would someone mind posting a summary of what each of the machines do, and what they're practical uses are? I've played around with the basic ones (transposer, filter, retriever), but I don't really know what the high-level machines do.

Then, I'd appreciate some help with a specific situation: I want to automate the distribution of the output of a steve's carts tree farm. I want, let's say, a barrel of charcoal and a barrel of wood to be constantly stocked for me, first priority. I want the rest of the wood to get smelted in electric furnaces, and I want the excess charcoal produced to power generators (let's assume I have enough of both machines to handle the output). What are the best machines to use for this purpose, and how should I set them up?

Thanks for help!

 

[Unium]

There are some new kids on the block in all that pipe managing and automation, those beeing the manager and the sortron. I didn't tinker with that yet but i'm willing to give you a hint of a possible outcome for your ''imaginary'' plan.

Travel distance in redpower pipes counts, so, if you want to have allways a full barrel of something, and smelt the rest you can set up a retriever to pull all those blocks from whatever container its ahead of it, and store them in closest proximity in those barrels... and further down the line you can put another container to smelt.. the retriever will allways fill the closest container first, and the next allways regarding proximity. Use that to your advantage.

Another way is also using a Sorting machine with colored pipes, and stack priority... it only moves along the color priority if the first one in full or met.

Again.. i don't know about the manager and the sortron, because i'm still in my first tier 1 sorting system, when i start to see my chests and barrels explode full of items i'll go tinkering with those new 2 blocks.

I hope give you any help at all.

Cumpz Uni

 

[paperlord]

For your problem an easy solution for the first part would be to use a filter to pull out stacks from a chest (with the charcoal and wood) and run tubes over the top of the barrels. Since barrels can only accept what is inside them, the tubes will fill them automatically. When you connect the end of the tubes to a sorting machine or chest, the overflow will go there.

 

[MilConDoin]

For the first part:
Added to your list:
- The Manager (needs blutricity) to be complete. It will manage its connected inventory by allowing only the configured items inside (either exact number or arbitrary number, depending on mode). The "exact match" mode will request items from other connected managers to fill its quota. (Higher priority number can pull from lower priority number.)
- The Sorting Machine (needs blutricity) will pull stuff from its connected inventory, mark it with the configured color and send it on its way. Depending on the mode, the exact behaviour will change.
- The Regulator. I haven't used it, so someone else needs to fill in.
- The Sortron. It needs to be programmed with RP2's computer, programmed in Forth. Good luck with that.

For the second part:
I'm not sure what you mean, let me try to rephrase it, answer that rephrase and then you'll let me know, if I interpreted you correctly, OK?
The wood from my steve's carts tree farm shall go in a barrel. Excess of that shall be cooked to charcoal in an electrical furnace. The charcoal shall be collected in a barrel, with the excess going to a wall of generators.

First connect either a filter with a timer to the cargo manager, or use a RP2 manager (unconfigured, so it will simply auto eject everything from its managed inventory (the cargo manager)), to get the goods flowing into your tubes. The tubes will have the top of the barrel of wood as the first target (and barrels for saplings and apples, so your line later on will not get clogged up with them). Next the wood will flow into 1-2 hopper on top of your el. furnace with a generator next to it. The charcoal gets pumped out from the side (again with filter/transposer on timer or with manager), flow first along the underside of your furnace-feeding generator, next over your charcoal barrel and finally to the undersides of your wall of generators.

The key with tubes is: Nearest valid inventory will win, equidistance means equal split.

 

[Dark0_0firE]

I could absolutely be wrong, but the only use I have found for managers is to set them up to keep an exact amount of something inside a connected inventory... Sounds great for an autocrafting system but other than that? I dunno. The sortron is supposed to be an even more powerful sorting machine but its run from RP Computers... so you would have to learn to program that. Personnaly I didn't see anything in the OP that couldn't be acheived with clever use of filters or sorting machines. Just make sure to keep overflow options .

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

After my long months of being to lazy to learn redpower piping, I finally see how much better pneumatic tubes are than transport pipes. So far, however, I'm finding the amount of machines that can move things around slightly overwhelming. Would someone mind posting a summary of what each of the machines do, and what they're practical uses are? I've played around with the basic ones (transposer, filter, retriever), but I don't really know what the high-level machines do.

Then, I'd appreciate some help with a specific situation: I want to automate the distribution of the output of a steve's carts tree farm. I want, let's say, a barrel of charcoal and a barrel of wood to be constantly stocked for me, first priority. I want the rest of the wood to get smelted in electric furnaces, and I want the excess charcoal produced to power generators (let's assume I have enough of both machines to handle the output). What are the best machines to use for this purpose, and how should I set them up?

Thanks for help!

Okay, here's how to go about doing this...

Tubes and Barrels get along REALLY well, and tubes are really good at finding the first available inventory. So really, the only thing you'd need to do to make sure the barrels get filled first is to be sure they're the first 'stop' on the line. This might mean using a Restriction Tube in front of the second stop, depending on how your room is configured.

You would need a Filter and a Timer hooked up to your Cargo Whatzitz (attached to the cargo manager) to pull out the raw output from the tree farm. If you don't want to use a Timer due to lag concerns, the alternative is a Sorting Machine set to automatically pull stuff out. While this might also make it a bit easier to declare where things go in the line, that's also a bit more convoluted than it needs to be.

To pull stuff out of all of your machines and stick them in generators, you'd probably want a single Retriever hooked up to a timer, since it can pull out of all of the furnaces at once. Just make sure the barrel to store the charcoal is 'first' on the line, then the generators.

 

[zooqooo]

The most important block in red power is the relay, it makes interacting with other mods so much easier.

It auto-ejects items in its inv into connected tubes

 

[Dark0_0firE]

You might not want to have to many active timers in your world if you can avoid it... I personally find they creat too much lag. But really thats only an issue with SMP.

 

[eable2]

Thanks everyone for the great advice!

Yeah, I actually was playing around with those managers in a creative world. It seems like they are only for really complicated tube circuits. It also works as a blutricity-powered filter + timer that gets rid of everything, but it looks like the less-expensive sorting machine does that too.

The one thing I hadn't played around with was the retrievers. Those seem really useful! Before, I was trying to put filters on the side of my furnaces.

I'm going to try to have enough machines to prevent overflow issues.

One thing - there any practical uses for the transposer?

 

[Exasperation]

If the transposer's input isn't connected to anything, it can pick up items from a small area around it (3x3, centered on the transposer, I believe), so you can use it to get items into tubes the same way you would use an obsidian pipe to get items into BC pipes. Good for item farms using soul shard spawners, automatic egg collection from a chicken farm, paired with a deployer you can automatically open scrapboxes and have the results go right back into your sorting system, etc.