how do you use red and green wires for logistics

[imaginnation]

When I watch videos on logistics, some people use red/green wires and hook them up to inserters and machines. I was wondering how does that work and how do I use them in my factory

[Xterminator]

You actually don't have to have logistics set up for it to work.
Pretty much you take 2 wires of the same color and connect one from a Smart Chest to an electric pole, and the other from the chest to the smart inserter you want to set a condition for.
Then when you click on the smart inserter, there is an option for a sire condition. That works like the logistics conditions, except obviously isn't connected to a logic network.
So for example you use it to tell a smarter inserter to only place items into the chest if there is less than 5 of that given item in the chest.

[sonic]

Honestly, wiring is of limited use and it can be worked around in most cases. It should be more useful in the future given some of the things the devs have been posting about.

Understanding the difference between a logistic network (smart or logistics chests inside the orange box around a roboport) and a circuit network (things wired together with green or red wire) is important. Smart inserters can be set to use both conditions if they are inside a logistic network *and* wired to something and they can be simultaneously green and red wired, allowing a total of three conditions that must be met before they'll move items. Their item filter can make this even more complex.

One example would be supplying repair packs to your remote roboports via train so they can repair anything that gets damaged: http://i.imgur.com/WeSRRlO.png

This uses red wires to connect the smart inserter to the storage chest so it won't place more than 50 repair packs for the bots to use. I could have used a logistics connection instead since the chest and inserter are both inside the logistic network of the roboport, or simply limited the storage chest so it would only hold one stack of items. The latter isn't desirable because I might want to have the bots clear out trees or remove other construction, and the former might not be useful if there are other chests containing repair packs in the logistic network. (If the orange boxes from multiple roboports touch they combine to form a single logistic network.)

Logic gates (AND, OR, XOR, edge conditions etc.) can be constructed using wires and smart inserters. Here's a simple example using an OR gate: http://i.imgur.com/plVVfFK.png

[ssilk]

https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ic_control