Melon slices to seeds, and some TE stuff.

[Cash_monkey]

I have a melon farm setup that is giving me an excellent amout of seeds for my squeezer, the problem is that I have to manually convert them into seeds, and then replace them in my processing system. Is there a way to automate this?

Also, with all of the stuff I have going on at this point, 500k is just not enough storage to leave my base to run on for any decent amout of time, so I've upgraded to 1m for my main storage. The problem is that I'm daisy chaining the second cell into the first, wich is powering the base, and I have no way of seeing the charge on the second cell without getting back there and manually checking it. Is there a way to balance the energy stored between multiple cells, such that I can check how much total energy is in the system from a single cell?

 

[warfighter67]

Buildcraft has automatic crafting tables. I don't know how you are harvesting the melons--probably with forestry, i dont know much about it--but sending them through buildcraft pipes into an autocrafting table will allow you to automatically craft the melons into seeds.

 

[WTFFFS]

I have a melon farm setup that is giving me an excellent amout of seeds for my squeezer, the problem is that I have to manually convert them into seeds, and then replace them in my processing system. Is there a way to automate this?

Also, with all of the stuff I have going on at this point, 500k is just not enough storage to leave my base to run on for any decent amout of time, so I've upgraded to 1m for my main storage. The problem is that I'm daisy chaining the second cell into the first, wich is powering the base, and I have no way of seeing the charge on the second cell without getting back there and manually checking it. Is there a way to balance the energy stored between multiple cells, such that I can check how much total energy is in the system from a single cell?

Currently there is no way to balance the energy level in the cells as it would invalidate a future feature planned for TE, of a multi block immobile massive storage, this is taken directly from the Minecraft Forums thread. Basically view the current energy storage cells as batteries ala IC2 RE batteries and that the Batbox\MFE\MFSU equivalent is still coming.

 

[MrAgle]

Also, with all of the stuff I have going on at this point, 500k is just not enough storage to leave my base to run on for any decent amout of time.

The first thing I'd try would be setting up more than one cell to run your base - just not necessarily by daisy-chaining them. Conduits are smart enough to charge multiple, non-connected cells, so you could have one to run your farms, another to run your workshop, etc. etc. And if they're connected via conduits, if one runs empty it would pull power from the others in the network.

Second thing - and this might not work with your setup, but it's worth mentioning... Buildcraft logic gates don't work with energy cells - yet - but they do work with other machines.

Maybe connect a blue wire to your melon harvester, and run that to your power plant. (I suggest the melon harvester simply because it's a machine that should be constantly running, unless the system is out of power.) Set the gates up so that if the melon harvester stops running ("Machine Off" condition), it sends a signal to turn on the engines that will recharge your system. That's fairly simple, but has the downside that as soon as things start running again, the harvester signal to start your engines will stop. With some gate programming, you should be able to keep those engines running for a longer time. For instance, until they run out of fuel - or start running red - or whatever.

Just guessing here, but you could have a second gate activate from the same blue wire signal sent by your stalled melon farm, and send a yellow signal, also to your engines. Your engines will be told to activate (again) by the yellow signal, and will stay on even when the blue signal stops. Keep them running until whatever condition you set is met, and then, when they do stop, send a green wire signal to reset the yellow switch. By then your cell would have a fair charge, and when it runs empty again, the logic gates will repeat the whole process.

I'm just rambling off the top of my head, here - I haven't set up a system like that, or tested it. I tend to use the gates very simply.
There's probably an easier way to do all that.
Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Antice]

If you are using a melon harvester from forrestry then just pipe the melons into an autocrafting table. use a redstone engine to pull the seeds out the other side of the table.
then feed directly to your squeezer array. (use more than one preferentially. your seed production should easily outpace 3 squeezers at full tilt.
run the squeezers on biogas engines directly (2 engines per squeezer), and pipe the liquid seed oil past the engines, so that these are preferentially filled by being the closest receptacles for seed oil from the squeezers.
once the engines are full the excess seed oil will go further along the pipe and you can choose to store it in a tank farm, or just feed it directly into another biogas engine array for turning it into power imediately. There is no point in using any logic gates or anything in this setup. it will work as an over unity machine and make seed oil for you practically for free. Don't worry about any wasted fuel. you will never be able to use it all no matter how hard you try annyway.

 

[MrAgle]

Ha! See? I knew there was an easier way!

I love this community.

 

[Magicferret]

You can use gates to check whether an energy cell is full which could be useful to you. Just put the gate on and reload the world. Tadaa, you have 'full energy' conditions in all the slots, which do actually work when they're next to an energy cell. Gates and TE machines are obviously planned seeing as this exists but not fully implemented yet I'm guessing.

I'm using several separate systems which run engines as long as the cell is not full so that as long as there's space for more power the cell is being charged. Therefore the cells last a lot longer even if the engines can't keep up with the rate of energy output. TE engines are good for this as you can set them up to run on a low redstone signal, with the full energy condition shutting them off.

You could make a redstone circuit that turns a set of lights or redstone torches on as the cells fill up based on the full energy gate conditions as well. For example if one light is on you know you have between 500k and 1 mil, two lights means between 1 mil and 1.5 mil etc. Make your own display rather than using the cells themselves as one. I'm planning to do this once we have Redpower, I might even have a go with Computercraft and monitors.

 

[MrAgle]

...all I had to do is reload the world?

Right. Less time futzing, more time reading up.

 

[Magicferret]

...all I had to do is reload the world?

Right. Less time futzing, more time reading up.

I actually figured that one out myself, I was annoyed with those conditions popping up in every gate whenever I reloaded the world. Much to my surprise the condition actually worked so it's infact really useful.

But yes, reading makes you smart.