Redpower: stopping backflow from going to the wrong place.

[DoctorOr]

I got tired of my humus carpenter getting wedged up when it fills up with one or the other ingredient, and rebuilt it as just autocrafting with manure.

That part works perfectly, ending in filling up a relay for inserting to the arboretum. Only problem is it's not a single-use tube, and as soon as either arboretum has a single space the buffer spits out its entire inventory. This isn't a problem until the humus when reaching the arboretum do a reverse and go randomly to any other inventories. Specifically a different relay, which then wedges as its backflow inventory is full

If the backflow went only to the originating relay, there would be no problem. So how to force that situation?

Edit: My bad, I mean relay not buff.er

 

[budge]

I would suggest coloring tubes at both ends of a connection. For example, let's say the path for the humus starts at a filter. Set the filter to color its output yellow, and paint the tube directly behind it yellow. Then paint the humus's destination yellow. Repeat this process for every material that shares tubes with the humus. Then, when the humus backflows, it has only one valid destination: its originating filter. (Relays can't color code items but you can remedy this by putting a filter just behind it in-line. Color the pipe after the filter still.)

Also, in the future, you might consider regulators. You can tell them how much of an item to allow into a connected inventory, after which they will refuse further items. I use them extensively to keep things stocked with multiple items without overfilling on one or another.

 

[Predatorkillol]

Have an overflow chest on a restriction tube

 

[DoctorOr]

Replacing the relay with a chest and using a filter works, but was trying to avoid a timer. Oh well.

Have an overflow chest on a restriction tube

Doing that just means that the humus relay empties itself out. My goal was to have no valid destination except the arboretums.

 

[Predatorkillol]

Instead of a filter you could use a sorting machine with its internal timer though it requires bt power

 

[Omicron]

You don't need timers for inline filters.

You can also use inline filters in a far more simple way. Just put one in front of the relay you do not want humus to go in. Then set that filter to accept all items you want to go into that relay, by playing them in the filter's GUI. The result is that everything works as normal, except humus will no longer recognize that relay as a valid inventory to go to.

Unfortunately since I don't know your assembly, I can't say if that fixes all your issues. You could probably sidestep it entirely if you used Buildcraft pipes and gates, you know - Redpower is not always better or smarter, contrary to popular belief! The arboretum has a "less than 25% soil" conditional that can be read by an adjacent buildcraft gate and will become True once the arboretum has emptied three out of four stacks of humus. Consider the following setup:

[arboretum] - [wooden pipe with gate] - [chest full of humus]

Now set the gate to "<25% soil = redstone signal" and set a redstone engine next to the wooden pipe. At any time the conditional returns true, the redstone engine will start up and pump humus into the arboretum; when it stops being true, the engine turns itself off again. In fact, if you use an autarchic gate set to "energy pulse" you don't even need the engine. And the "chest full of humus" can be your autocrafting table as well.

 

[noskk]

Actually you can try adding some GT advanced buffer+diamond chest+electric translocator, but this will get complicated with other RP2 pipe there.. *no more backflow* lol

 

[DoctorOr]

You don't need timers for inline filters.

Then I'm doing something wrong. I placed a filter between the relay and the tube and it sat there, doing nothing. I even reversed it to see if I had it backwards, still nothing.

You can also use inline filters in a far more simple way. Just put one in front of the relay you do not want humus to go in.

Unfortunately that's the problem. There's lots on the tube I _don't_ want to get humus, and only two things I do. It's becoming cumbersome to make sure every single inventory on the tube has an otherwise unnecessary filter. This simple straightforward design is belying the supposed ease of redpower.

Unfortunately since I don't know your assembly, I can't say if that fixes all your issues. You could probably sidestep it entirely if you used Buildcraft pipes and gates, you know - Redpower is not always better or smarter,

In fact, I was using buildcraft pipes on the farms, but there was never a moment when something wasn't clogged, or didn't run out, or got spit out of the pipes. Specifically, every time the chunk loaded (SSP, so that means logging in) every single pipe dropped everything on the ground.

Now set the gate to "<25% soil = redstone signal" and set a redstone engine next to the wooden pipe. At any time the conditional returns true, the redstone engine will start up and pump humus into the arboretum; when it stops being true, the engine turns itself off again. In fact, if you use an autarchic gate set to "energy pulse" you don't even need the engine. And the "chest full of humus" can be your autocrafting table as well.

With two, soon three, arboretums that would duplicate the construction at each one. Besides, the problem is getting the items to the farm, not producing the humus. The intended design was to fill a single relay (or chest, now) with humus and then have construciton stop, and then stop again when that chest empties. That works. Until the tube system dumps the entire contents of the inventory into the tube and backfills it in an invisible inventory on a random relay or transposer.

 

[Omicron]

Then I'm doing something wrong. I placed a filter between the relay and the tube and it sat there, doing nothing. I even reversed it to see if I had it backwards, still nothing.

That's because the relay masquerades itself as a chest, in order to be a valid destination inventory for vanilla and any and all mods that don't directly iterface with Redpower. By placing a filter directly next to it, the filter detects a chest and behaves as if attached to a chest. If you want to use it inline, there must be at least one piece of tube on both sides of the filter. Same goes for transposers, sorting machines and any other block that can be used inline.

In fact, I was using buildcraft pipes on the farms, but there was never a moment when something wasn't clogged, or didn't run out, or got spit out of the pipes. Specifically, every time the chunk loaded (SSP, so that means logging in) every single pipe dropped everything on the ground.

Never had this issue, unfortunately, so I can't help you with that.

With two, soon three, arboretums that would duplicate the construction at each one. Besides, the problem is getting the items to the farm, not producing the humus. The intended design was to fill a single relay (or chest, now) with humus and then have construciton stop, and then stop again when that chest empties. That works. Until the tube system dumps the entire contents of the inventory into the tube and backfills it in an invisible inventory on a random relay or transposer.

In that case you have only one option that's guaranteed to work: Make the tube that supplies the humus a dedicated tube doing nothing else.

Depending on your setup, you might be able to multiplex humus onto your main transport tube by clever use of filter gating at each farm, but from how you make it sound it will probably involve redoing your tubing from the ground up. In fact, I like this engineering problem, so I'm gonna jump into my test world to see if I can whip up something.

 

[Omicron]

Ah, here we go, that was quicker than I thought: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/44754370/2013-01-19_15.52.42.png

This is how I would build the tube network, if I had multiple tree farms to connect with minimal effort. It's just a quick mockup; think of each compartment as one tree farm. In practical application all the tubing would be underground, of course.

Filter 1 in each compartment accepts any items you need inside the farm, except humus (for example catalyst, if you use a Forester). Filter 2 accepts only humus. The relay next to the arboretum feeds farm products back into the main tube; obviously you'd place your logger next to this relay as well, or hook it up with pipes.

Then all you need is one single exit filter at one end to let through all products, but not inputs, from the main tube; and of course your input sources, such as your autocrafting table for humus. Now, because all exits are fitted with filters that only let through what you want, you can use the same main tube for any number of other, unrelated item transfers as well - so long as you keep using filters on every exit.

 

[DoctorOr]

Ok, need to explain myself better I think:

The problem is that items get backflowed into non-input sides of blocks that are not their origination in the tube system.

Humus gets to the arboretum. The arboretum then fills up, and the excess in the tube chooses a random filter or relay or whatever to clog up until the the arboretum needs more humus.

It's "workaroundable", but it's fiddly. Using a filter at the origination point for humus to paint them helps, but even just now I just found another filter I forgot to paint the tube leading into (some _other_ color) and humus was blocking it. I'm coming to the conclusion though that this is a fundamental design flaw of redpower. Items don't seem to remember their origination and will flow into any close by output face.

In fact, I think that this is going to be a general problem and has nothing to do with humus or arboretums and instead will occur anytime there is an inventory trying to fill a smaller inventory over the tube network. More items than can fit in the target inventory will be sent, and the excess will find random other blocks to sit in and clog.

 

[slay_mithos]

The real workaround would be either to only create when needed, or to have some kind of overflow chest. Restriction tube and/or longer route are your friends for this build.

You can easily take stuff out of the chest with a filter or similar, when the system needs more.

 

[budge]

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!" But honestly, that's the way it's designed - items in Redpower tubes always travel to the nearest valid destination, or when they are backstuffing, to the nearest machine with an output that isn't already backstuffed. (Better than dropping items everywhere, in my opinion.) The simplest way to remedy this is to give each item its own individual tube, or since that would be very inconvenient, paint both ends of a path the same color and color code every item in that tube network.

Oh, also, have you looked into managers? They may be appropriate for what you're trying to do.

 

[Bagman817]

Odd, I'm having an issue with hummus myself. Sorting machine pulls everything fine and then jams when it gets to the hummus. Haven't had enough time to fully trouble shoot it yet, but it'll be interesting to see if RP2 might have an issue with the particular block.