Moving AE Storage

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PhilHibbs

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Jan 15, 2013
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I wonder if it would be possible to move ME Storage cards automatically. Does anyone know if the cards in the drives or chests can be pulled out and moved by, say, turtles or sortrons?
 
Not sure if you can pull them in/out of drive bays or ME chests, I'd be quite surprised if you could (Cause for the chest how you'd tell it to get that and not the items I don't know, and the drive bay... I guess maybe it could work but i can't see how you could control which ones you're pulling which would make it kinda pointless), but you should be able to use an ME IO Port to transfer the items out of the system as a storage card then move that.
 
I think getting the patterns out of the interface would be very tricky (and manual to set back up) but the IO ports can be used for automatic transfer of items (and you can put in the cells in the top or bottom and pull them back out after they are done out the side)
 
I think getting the patterns out of the interface would be very tricky (and manual to set back up) but the IO ports can be used for automatic transfer of items (and you can put in the cells in the top or bottom and pull them back out after they are done out the side)
I don't see how an IO port can be used to transfer items from a remote AE network. A Sortron pulling out the storage card and dropping it in an Enderchest, though, I can see that working. If the drive appears as a standard inventory, that is.
 
You can pipe (or whichever automation tool you prefer for this task) empty storage cells into the top/bottom of the IO port, then pipe full ones out of the side (and into an enderchest or the like). Then at the other end, you can have an IO port set up to do the reverse (full cells in the top/bottom, empty out the side). It's a lot like using liquid transposers to pump lava from the nether.
 
But how do you control what goes onto the cards as they go in and out of the IO port? Would you set up two ports, one for output and one for input? With a drive, you could lay out your cards the way you want them. I suppose if you throw a pre-formatted card into the IO, then it would only suck out the items that it is formatted to take.
 
If you don't want to have to intervene (there's a button in the IO port GUI that controls transfer direction), you would need separate ports for input and output. Pre-formatted cards do only accept items they're formatted for when used in an IO port.
 
Lets say I'm away from my base, and I want to get hold of a bunch of resources that are in my AE system. That's the situation that I'm thinking of. I don't want to suck it dry of 100% of the items that I want though. I might have some automated process going, like maybe my AE system is converting coal to diamonds, so it needs to keep flint and obsidian in stock.

If I want some obsidian then I can format a card to only accept that, and throw it into my AE retrieval Enderchest, but can I limit the amount of obsidian that the card can take? I don't think so. I'd have to use take out the obsidian that I want, and drop the card back into my AE Insertion Enderchest to put the rest back in. I guess that wouldn't cause much disruption.
 
Yeah, the biggest problem is that you need to have 1 of the item you're looking for in order to preformat for that item; it would work well for things you know in advance you might need more of (food, torches, etc.), since you could format for those before setting out, but wouldn't be so great for spur-of-the-moment things.
 
unless you use logistics pipes remote orderer-enderpouch combination as logi pipes can request items from the interface
 
Ok, now you've said what you're trying to achieve... you really don't want to yank the whole drive out just some materials...

For the automated systems & keeping stock it sounds more like a Level Emitter and an Export Bus would do the trick. Use the level emitters to measure how much you have, then apply the redstone signal as a control on the export bus so it won't export if you get too low on an item. I use this kind of setup to ensure I always keep at least a few stacks of regular iron while automatically creating refined iron & steel. Alternatively you could use an Interface block with an export config of the desired items for your exporting, which is then essentially a chest with whatever you configure in it constantly refreshing from the network. But since it doesn't have redstone based controls you'd have to use the level emitter signals to control whatever's pulling the items out.

For non-automated systems where you want the items always accessible, have you considered using a Storage Bus and actually storing the items in an ender chest (That way they're in the ender chest but still accessible to the ME network)? Other than that I suppose an ME interface to an RP2 manager setup maintaining a certain amount of different things in your ender chest for you might work nicely... not sure what other options you'd have for maintaining specific amounts in a chest outside of the network or requesting items you don't have any of on you...