Pipes overflow

[predator152154]

Dear FTB community,

I'm trying to build a material transportation system in my minecraft server using Buildcraft but I have a problem when it comes to send many stacks of cobblestone to some chests located into a room.

As you can see in the picture below there are many chests (2,3,4,5 and so on) which receive a lot of cobblestone from the pipe number 1. The problem is that when a chest is full some stacks of cobblestone (I'd say 1 every 3 coming from the pipe) are still going to be sent to that full chest, causing an overflow and a huge cobblestone spill on the ground.

How can I avoid that? I just need something that will ''detect'' if a chest is full so as to send the material to the next one. I tried with a gate but it doesn't work if I set it on ''Full Inventory-Closed or Output Only''

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

predator152154

 

[Brian Cherrick]

Dear FTB community,

I'm trying to build a material transportation system in my minecraft server using Buildcraft but I have a problem when it comes to send many stacks of cobblestone to some chests located into a room.

As you can see in the picture below there are many chests (2,3,4,5 and so on) which receive a lot of cobblestone from the pipe number 1. The problem is that when a chest is full some stacks of cobblestone (I'd say 1 every 3 coming from the pipe) are still going to be sent to that full chest, causing an overflow and a huge cobblestone spill on the ground.

How can I avoid that? I just need something that will ''detect'' if a chest is full so as to send the material to the next one. I tried with a gate but it doesn't work if I set it on ''Full Inventory-Closed or Output Only''

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

predator152154

Knowing what mod pack you use would be helpful, but if it includes logistic pipes, I'd use that over standard bc pipes. At least for the pipes that connect to the chest.

There are many modules that connect to logi pipes that will prevent this issue from creeping up.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

You only need wooden pipes to extract from a chest, any pipe can put items in. (this'll make your routing easier as you don't need to branch out to the chests)
Clay pipes act as insertion pipes- so they'll only put items into an inventory if theres space for them to go into.

So if you run your main feed pipe (1) directly past chest in turn, using a clay pipes to directly connect to the chests; all your chests will fill in turn without overflowing. You may want to put a void pipe after your last chest to catch anything extra after they all fill.​

Its worth noting if you're only keeping cobblestone down here- switch the chests for barrels; which can hold a large amount (64 stacks) of a single item.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Without Iron pipes, Buildcraft pipes have no direction of flow, so you can create a loop at the end and have the cobble cycle in that for a while. BC pipes will randomly choose a direction if something isn't enforcing it.

Instead of closed/open, use two gates, one on the wooden pipe and one on the next to last chest. Then run Pipewire between the two gates. Now you can have the wooden pipe only function when it's got room.

Second, I'm pretty sure you can't insert via wooden pipes, but I may be wrong. In any case, you should be using iron pipes on your wooden outputs so you can gaurantee the output is continuing along to the final part of the system.

That said, after filling one double chest, or barrel if you have it, I'd suggest just direct voiding of cobble. You'll have so much of it, and it's infinitely renewable, that there's no point in stockpiling it.

 

[GreenZombie]

I have not used gates with item inventories so haven't really paid attention to the options offered. As gates can report on relative energy and fluid levels of adjacent devices I had - incorrectly it seems - surmised that there were inventory "level" detectors when adjacent to physical inventories.

That said - rather than resorting to logistic pipes or something so clever as to take all the thought out of the system, we could can solve the problem entirely with buildcraft + vanilla mechanics a couple of ways:

1. Use a buffer to allow for extra "in flight" items. In this scheme, the gate would be adjacent to a chest, but you would terminate the supply pipe into a hopper that feeds the chest. When the chest is full the gate will send a BC pipe wire signal to stop supply, and the hopper will then buffer up to 5 stacks of excess: this assumes that you are pumping items slower than hoppers can push items.

2. Use a timer (I believe there is a gate that can do this now) - compute how many items per second you are capable of sending - then use the "empty" gate signal to start a timer. This does mean the chest will periodically run empty before a resupply is requested.

3. Use an overflow loop. You can place a small loop at the end of the pipe - use an iron pipe to keep items in the loop, and a clay pipe to insert items as and when space becomes available, and two segments of regular pipe to connect the two. When the inventory is full, items will flow past the clay (insertion pipe) and simply loop around. This could build up over time and cause lag if you can't prevent the inventory requesting new items be sent the instant it is empty.

4. Use a return loop. Use a clay pipe to insert items, then an iron pipe to "bounce" items back up the pipe. Excess items go the whole way back up the pipe and you find some way to re-store them in the source storage.

 

[predator152154]

Thanks a lot guys! I really appreciate your help.
@Brian Cherrick Thanks, I tried using logistic pipes in single player mod and it worked
@Celestialphoenix Thanks a lot, that's exaclty what I needed for the multiplayer server I set up a loop in order to catch all the extra cobblestone.
@KingTriaxx Thanks for your advice regarding iron pipes, I didn't know that, I'll probably use them soon.
@GreenZombie Thanks, I finally used a return loop worked perfectly.