Circuit / Crate Supply all in one place?

[Fxguy1]

Is there a way to place a bunch of crates to use as a central supply station and then have my construction / logistics robots to place all items of a selected resource into that crate or several crates?

[Serenity]

You can filter storage chests and bots will prefer putting that item there

https://wiki.factorio.com/Storage_chest

[Fxguy1]

But will the worker bots stash a particular item in that box or does it have to be a requester box?

[5thHorseman]

They won't move things to that chest from passive provider chests, but if they will prefer the filtered storage chest whenever they have that item and are looking for a place to store it, including IIRC items taken from active provider chests.

[Serenity]

It really depends on what you want to do exactly. Storage chests can be useful for trash or to store stuff you deconstruct. Then construction bots will deconstruct things and put the material into storage. But logistics bots won't actively fill them from anything but active providers (which only have a few very specific use cases and generally aren't used much).
You can also use them as output chests for assemblers. But only when they are filtered! That will cause bots to take excess items back there.

If you want some kind of forward supply area that is filled from provider chests but also makes its contents available for bots, that's what buffer chests are for

[SoShootMe]

But will the worker bots stash a particular item in that box or does it have to be a requester box?

Logistic bots will move items from active provider chests (but not passive provider chests) to storage chests. They won't put anything in a storage chest with a filter except the filtered item, but note they prefer a storage chest containing the item to one with a filter.

[Fxguy1]

Honestly my goal is simply to clean up where the heck I've stored all my resources at. I've got them spread out in storage boxes throughout the map in different locations and at times its easier to run to the nearest roboport than to craft all that I need at the moment.

[robot256]

I think trick you are looking is fast-replacing a storage chest (or any chest) with an active provider chest. This will make bots immediately try to empty it and put its contents somewhere else. If you have already set up a nice central bank of filtered storage chests, they will sort everything into them.

[SoShootMe]

Honestly my goal is simply to clean up where the heck I've stored all my resources at. I've got them spread out in storage boxes throughout the map in different locations and at times its easier to run to the nearest roboport than to craft all that I need at the moment.

I think robot256's suggestion (fast-replace storage chests with active provider chests) is the best way to get (logistic) bots to move items to a central "bank" of storage chests.

If you want items in your inventory that you know you have stored in the logistic network (instead of crafting new ones), maybe character logistics requests are the answer. In this case the only reason to care where the items are stored is to speed up the process.

If by "storage boxes throughout the map in different locations" you mean the boxes are in multiple logistics networks, you have a different problem.

[Fxguy1]

Thanks everyone! I had this thought this morning, that I needed to replace all my passive chests with active provider chests. Still new to the game.

[Serenity]

That's one of those few uses for active providers. They aren't used much at all, but there are a handful of situations where you want to force bots to empty some chests. This is one. Another one is to empty a trash train for example.

[robot256]

Thanks everyone! I had this thought this morning, that I needed to replace all my passive chests with active provider chests. Still new to the game.

This will work great. Just make sure there is enough space in the central storage chest bank, and that the inserters removing items from the assembler are limited based on the "logistic" inventory, not the contents of the active provider chest

[Fxguy1]

In the meantime, is there a way to easily / quickly link all the storage chests I have strewn everywhere? Can I run logistics wire to each chest and then to the nearest roboport?

[Serenity]

Why do you need to that? You can see what is contained in each logistics network without wiring up the chests. Roboports have an output for that

[Fxguy1]

Yeah, noticed that after I posted. Is there a way to see which chest something is located in?

[starlinvf]

Yeah, noticed that after I posted. Is there a way to see which chest something is located in?

Not really.... at least not without mods. The game's UI treats the logistics network as one large enumeration pool. Half the point of the logistics network is to get rid of the concern of where things are located, as the network sorts it for you. But I do know the pain associated with bot routing behavior, and the inefficiencies, bandwidth and variable response time due to how they travel around.

A sort of half solution to this, is use the same Bridging Techniques of Accumulators and Train Loaders; where you keep the networks separated, and use a something as a buffer to get a resource across without having the networks touch. So you put a 1 space gap between the Logistics ranges of the Robot ports, and set up an exchange buffer using 2 or 3 chests (depending on how complicated the sorting needs to be). One chest at the edge of each network to allow the Bots to drop off and/or pick up stuff, and an inserter setup to move them into the other network's chest. It limits the bots travel range, keeping them fairly efficient.... but the setup at the Junctions get really complicated if you need something beyond simple PUT or Replenish functions.