Need clarification on redstone energy conduit mechanic

[PoisonWolf]

Hi folks,

I'm trying to build a wireless MJ station that involves one ultimate solar panel, 3 MFSUs, 10 electrical engines (with upgrades to do 100 mj/t combined) that are connected to a redstone energy cell. The redstone energy cell is connected to an energy tesseract.

Now, I recently learned that the conduit can be toggled between blue and orange. Wikis use the blue for input and orange for output. Herein lies my confusion. When you use the term input, does it mean it is inputting MJ to the adjacent block it is connected to, or is it, to use the more accurate term, RECEIVING MJ from the block it is connected to? Thus, should blue mean "receiving" MJ whereas orange means "sending" MJ?

As an example, I put 3 conduits in a line between the redstone cell and the energy tesseract. On the redstone cell, the conduit there is set to orange (if I understood it correctly), whereas the conduit on the tesseract is set to blue (i.e., sending MJ to the tesseract).

Did I get this right?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Symmetryc]

You got it right I believe. Orange accepts energy from outside sources into the conduit line. Blue outputs the energy from the conduit line into a machine/cell/etc.

 

[namiasdf]

Isn't that the other way around? A lot of RP machines output with orange and input with blue.

i.e. A magma crucible accepting cobble to generate lava will (a) receive/input cobble from the blue face and (b) send/output lava from the orange face.

Though I have never played with conduits, this is the convention used for that machine. Do some checking out yourself. I might also suggest finding a better way to convert EU into MJ, unless you aren't aiming for efficiency. Electrical engines suck real bad.

 

[Symmetryc]

Isn't that the other way around? A lot of RP machines output with orange and input with blue.

i.e. A magma crucible accepting cobble to generate lava will (a) receive/input cobble from the blue face and (b) send/output lava from the orange face.

Though I have never played with conduits, this is the convention used for that machine. Do some checking out yourself. I might also suggest finding a better way to convert EU into MJ, unless you aren't aiming for efficiency. Electrical engines suck real bad.

Uhhh RP as in RedPower? I looked up a picture of the conduits on the internet and saw in the picture, it showed engine>orange conduit>blue conduit>cell.

 

[namiasdf]

I guess my specific example was for the magma crucible, but that's the convention on that machine. Same with igneous extruders. Though other machines have a lot more coloured output faces, I don't see why they would all of a sudden make orange an input and blue and output.

Inconsistent.

 

[RedBoss]

Skip the colors, there are arrows that indicate the flow of energy. Where ever the arrow points is the direction of flow. Plopa machine down, if the arrow points at the machine (and it accepts MJ) then power is being sent into it.

The neat thing is that if the arrow isn't pointing where you need, then click with a wrench and change it.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Isn't that the other way around? A lot of RP machines output with orange and input with blue.

i.e. A magma crucible accepting cobble to generate lava will (a) receive/input cobble from the blue face and (b) send/output lava from the orange face.

Though I have never played with conduits, this is the convention used for that machine. Do some checking out yourself. I might also suggest finding a better way to convert EU into MJ, unless you aren't aiming for efficiency. Electrical engines suck real bad.

Efficiency doesn't matter to me. Space efficiency matters more. If I can get 100 mj/t in a 8x5x4 space, that's better.

Skip the colors, there are arrows that indicate the flow of energy. Where ever the arrow points is the direction of flow. Plopa machine down, if the arrow points at the machine (and it accepts MJ) then power is being sent into it.

The neat thing is that if the arrow isn't pointing where you need, then click with a wrench and change it.

Where are these "arrows" that you speak of? I tried staring at them conduits and can't seem to notice any arrows.....

 

[Symmetryc]

They're blocky arrows like this:

O
OO
OO
O

..O
OO
OO
..O

Ignore the ".."s

 

[RedBoss]

http://ftbwiki.org/Redstone_Energy_Conduit

Watch the video at the bottom

 

[Norfgarb]

the arrows do help but i can also understand not being able to tell which is which

Orange from energy source e.g Engines
Blue into machine e.g powered furnace

 

[PoisonWolf]

the arrows do help but i can also understand not being able to tell which is which

Orange from energy source e.g Engines
Blue into machine e.g powered furnace

Thank you, that cleared it up. I realized that my setup worked even though the conduits connected to the electrical engines were blue. *shrugs*. But to make things right, I made sure all the power-sources were orange, and that the tesseract had a blue conduit.

Having said that, what happens if I setup four of these wireless stations that are tuned to the same frequency? And when I want to use the power, does it drain evenly across the four tesseract stations?

 

[Norfgarb]

Engines do seem to work on the blue lines but, when i've had setups like this i've noticed a drop in energy when the engines where on blue instead of orange, so i think there may be some penalty or something for not changing direction,

When it comes to a RS Energy cell its much easier to test which colour does what.

 

[ArcticDreamz]

I recommend not linking the tesseract and the energy cell with conduits , because there is a 5% loss in cables adding to the 25 % loss of the tesseract , you would only get 70 MJ/t out on the receiving end.
Just place the tesseract and the energy cell side by side , that works too

And yes, orange is for the things that produce/send power and blue is for the things needing/receiving power.

 

[Daemonblue]

The 5% loss is only factored when the energy enters KL's energy network, so going condtuit -> cell -> conduit isn't lossy in the 1.5 versions.

 

[Methusalem]

The 5% loss is only factored when the energy enters KL's energy network, so going condtuit -> cell -> conduit isn't lossy in the 1.5 versions.

Even this 5% loss is now gone since version 2.4.5. The same update also reduced the loss for the Energy Tesseract down to 20%.

Efficiency doesn't matter to me. Space efficiency matters more. If I can get 100 mj/t in a 8x5x4 space, that's better.

If that is the case, then look into the Power Converter mod. You can get everything crammed into a 2x1x3 space. (Ultimate Hybrid Solar -> MFSU -> HV Consumer -> Energy Bridge -> MJ Producer -> Tesseract)

 

[PoisonWolf]

I recommend not linking the tesseract and the energy cell with conduits , because there is a 5% loss in cables adding to the 25 % loss of the tesseract , you would only get 70 MJ/t out on the receiving end.
Just place the tesseract and the energy cell side by side , that works too

And yes, orange is for the things that produce/send power and blue is for the things needing/receiving power.

I definitely see where you're coming from. What you're suggesting was how I was initially doing it as well.

The reason why I added conduits was for the following question. If I have 4 of these stations, all identical to each other, with the goal of producing 400 mj/t, what happens when one redstone cell is depleting faster than the other? By putting the tesseract next to the redstone cell in the design, will the other three stations "charge" the redstone cell that's depleting faster (thus drawing away from the power that's supposed to be sent to the target receiving location)? I don't know the answer to this question and figured it would be safer to "force" a flow of MJ to prevent the redstone cell from pulling from other stations.

The 5% loss is only factored when the energy enters KL's energy network, so going condtuit -> cell -> conduit isn't lossy in the 1.5 versions.

So if I'm running Mindcrack 1.4.7, do I still have to worry about the 5% loss? And is the 5% loss linear? For example, when combined with the tesseract, is it a straight 30% loss, or is it 5% of 100 first, resulting in 95 mj/t, then 25% loss of 95mj/t, finally resulting in 71.25 mj/t?

Thanks everyone so far for your input, it's great to discuss this as I have little experience in these things.

 

[Daemonblue]

I'm not exactly how sure it works in the 1.4 versions. I believe it works like this though:
each example is 100mj/t for simplicity
for conduit > machine the machine would get 95 mj/t
for conduit > REC > conduit > machine the REC would get 95mj/t and the machine would get 90.25 mj/t, at 5% loss per conduit
for conduit > REC > conduit > Tesseract > REC the first REC would get 95mj/t, the tesseract would get 90.25 mj/t, and the second rec would get 67.6875 mj/t, at 5% loss per conduit and 25% loss at the tesseract

 

[LittleMike]

I definitely see where you're coming from. What you're suggesting was how I was initially doing it as well.

The reason why I added conduits was for the following question. If I have 4 of these stations, all identical to each other, with the goal of producing 400 mj/t, what happens when one redstone cell is depleting faster than the other? By putting the tesseract next to the redstone cell in the design, will the other three stations "charge" the redstone cell that's depleting faster (thus drawing away from the power that's supposed to be sent to the target receiving location)? I don't know the answer to this question and figured it would be safer to "force" a flow of MJ to prevent the redstone cell from pulling from other stations.




So if I'm running Mindcrack 1.4.7, do I still have to worry about the 5% loss? And is the 5% loss linear? For example, when combined with the tesseract, is it a straight 30% loss, or is it 5% of 100 first, resulting in 95 mj/t, then 25% loss of 95mj/t, finally resulting in 71.25 mj/t?

Thanks everyone so far for your input, it's great to discuss this as I have little experience in these things.

The Mindcrack pack has an older version of TE (Thermal Expansion - where the conduits and REC come from) so it still has the 5% energy loss. Honestly, the mechanics are very confusing. I started a thread the other day because I had some REALLY odd experiences with them. Namely, it seems that the engines were doing all the work in my setup and the REC just stood there until I set the REC to output more (even though it was still less than the engines could handle.) King Lemming made that mod, so if you have any questions, maybe he can chime in.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Okay, I just discovered the multimeter. Lol.

I did some testing in single player to understand the mechanics of the tesseract, etc.

Thus far, if I didn't get my message conveyed appropriately, was that I needed to confirm that tesseracts didn't go "backwards" into the wireless MJ stations if there were multiple MJ stations set to the same frequency on all the energy tesseracts

When I tested in single player, this is exactly what I'm observing when I just put tesseracts down next to energy cells. So this means that if you have multiple stations, the stations will attempt to "recharge" one another, resulting in a perpetual loss of MJ, due to the 25% loss from sending the MJ. For example, energy tesseract (ET) and redstone energy cell (REC) from Group A will send MJ to ET-REC B that's not fully charged. Now, because ET-REC A has lost power, ET-REC B will send power back to ET-REC A. The % loss means you're fighting a losing battle.

In order to get the four wireless stations to work in harmony, the conduits are not just optional, but required. So the RECs from each wireless station needs 2 conduits before reaching the ET, with the conduit on the REC being orange, and the conduit on the ET being blue. This forces the MJ in one direction and prevents a reversal as noted above. However, this results in minor losses here and there, which makes it impossible to send the full 100 MJ/t to the ET. Thus, this is easily solved, by having two RECs at each wireless station so that the ETs are all getting 100 mj/t, and the receiving end gets 75 MJ/t.

Hope this helps some people in the future!

Now onward to my egregiously inefficient combined 1k MJ/t wireless stations provider! Yeeeaaahhhh!!!

 

[Zelfana]

You can configure tesseracts to only send or recieve (little tabs on the right) so setting the tesseracts that should only send power elsewhere to send only mode would solve your problem of energy cells drawing power from other energy cells on that frequency. If you have nothing else connected to the tesseract there is no need to use a conduit to achieve that same thing.