Smart Belts

[Freetambo]

So I was trying to make a mixed belt kind of setup. The problem is of course that you run the risk of one item flooding the belt, leaving no room for other items, breaking down the entire system.

The only solution seems to be a system of filter inserter > smart chest > regular inserter. The filter inserter picks up a certain item put it in a box a regular inserter takes stuff from the box, if the slower regular inserter falls behind, it must be because too much stuff is left on the belt. So the smart box sends a signal to the inserters putting the item on the belt to stop.

This works fine, however it takes up a lot of space (since it seems you need one box for each item due to the order in which the inserters take stuff out of the box) which in my mind kind of defeats the point of the mixed belt. Ideally the amount of stuff on the belt would just be counted. If there's too much, production stops. So if you could just connect wires to the belt system, you could build super compact loops, that retain full flexibility.

[rk84]

Is the layout loop or is there dead end? Where does the regular inserter output stuff? Can you post picture of your system?

I'm sure there is other solutions. I would probably try to keep belt empty as possible by control both inputs and outputs. output only take what it request, inputs inserts as much as outputs requests in total. if there is more inputs than outputs, it would probably need loop.

If you really need get item count from transport system, how about a smart chest chain?

[Freetambo]

What I am experimenting with now is basically what is being demonstrated in this thread.

For it to work you need a loop so things keep moving. If not, at some point all inserters might end up having stuff in front of them that they don't need, and everything grinds to a halt. However loops might get overflowed with one type of material.

Just to be clear, this works. And you get to control inputs very well. It's just that I feel there should be a more elegant way of doing this. And one that takes less space, having one buffer chest per item type on the belt could turn out excessive if you try to have a belt with all intermediate products on it.

[_0rbit_]

Of course such setups are loads of fun. I have tried a few times, but eventually it fails, because one resource is always going to be more prevalent than others.

I can imagine the following solution:

The products on the belts now stay on belt when the belt ends. The belt just moves under the products. If this feature would be switched off, the products would keep moving even when the belt is full. This is a more realistic approach, but it would also mean products would fall off the end of belts. So as a consequence, making loops work using more realistic belt transportation systems, would require all belts to be made into loops.

Perhaps having this is not desirable. Perhaps a more simple primitive type of belt that has this property should be made?

[ssilk]

I think I have found a good solution, which also fits some other needs.

A requester belt
- consists of two entities: the motor-house and the belt.
- this belt can be only straight, no curves, but of course you can side-insert or at the end you can continue with normal belt... It's like built like normal belt, but needs one el. circuit more.
- the motor-house needs energy (of course), depending on the length of the belt (exponential rising) and speed. It's size is 2x3 and needs some belts and other stuff to be built. The stuff looks together like so:

Code: Select all

 - -
|x v|
|x > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
|x ^|
 - -

- the "v" and "^"-pieces are ultra fast inserters for the left and right side of the belt and they do the whole magic. They don't need extra energy!
- the motor-house has also some controls
--- SPEED: how fast is the motor? Exponential energy for more speed.
--- LEFT/RIGHT ABSOLUTE: the belt know how many items are laying on it (like logistic network), if it is too less, an item is inserted into the belt. If nothing is set, it tries to take two stacks with different items and outputs them on one one side of the belt each.
---- LEFY/RIGHT RELATIVE RATIO: a mode-switch changes "absolute" to "relative ratio". In this mode the items are inserted in a fixed ratio. If one item type is missing, it waits, until it comes. If nothing is set every input is outputted in the ratio, which is inside of the chest-part!
--- STOP IF JAMMED: this is from _Orbits_'s suggestion: if an item comes to the end of belt, the whole belt stops. This is useful to avoid energy wasting, when the belt is full/production stopped.

So, what can be done with it?
---------------------------------------------

• big factory streets where the input belt is the output belt. See this thread. See also this: modulated Item stream

• factory streets with complicated production process.

• inserting an item with different speed, e. g. only one every 4 seconds. This is done by setting the speed of the belt to a very low rate and continue just with normal basic belt. Useful to keep a belt filled with low density, for example for ammo.

• a splitter with a fixed ratio, see this thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=1278
This is how it can be done: relative ratio mode, then left side e. g. 1 iron plate and right side 10. The output is then, that every 10 iron plates, there is one on the left. Now we put that into a splitter, and use the underground belt hack (
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 6118#p6104 ). Voila, two belts with a fixed ratio of iron plates.

• nearly same trick: filtering of items (left side what you want, right side what you don't need)

• token based stuff to avoid filling belts with unused stuff: I mean its too complicated to explain here. But the idea is to use the output item of an production street as trigger/token for the next "round".

• usage as a big chest with many inserters (up to 9 are possible!)

• with an upgrade (research logistics) the chest-part might also work as requester chest (one control more)

• simple useable storage, maybe we have storage modules to expand the capacity.

• usages as counter-device, research a counter module and everything which goes through it is counted.

• no extra coal-belt-side/line for furnace. If e. g. about every 10 ore one coal is used. That's the ratio for the belt. Unused coal needs to be filtered out at the end. Or differently for absolute: there must be 100 iron ore on the belt and one coal. Then the output is at maximum speed iron ore and one coal is output, when it is used or when it leaves the requester belt.

• ... And especially the misusing of it could be quite interesting