I don't know if this is the right forum or not, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway.
I am *not* looking for Youtube videos. Any monkey can tell you to place blocks here, put redstone there, add a comparitor there. That is NOT what I am looking for.
I am wanting someone to explain the basic principles of an item sorting system and why it works. I am looking for explanations on what the redstone components are doing, why the hoppers are arranged the way they are, etc. IF there is a video that explains this, I haven't found it.
The usual item sorter has a pipe of some sort (usually hoppers), and each cell has two hoppers underneath. The upper hopper contains 22 of the target item (usually filling the slots as 18+1+1+1+1) and doesn't feed into anything (usually it points to the comparator). The bottom hopper feeds into a storage chest). The upper hopper has a comparator facing out, then two redstone dust, then a repeater, and ends in a redstone torch powering the bottom hopper.
When items go through the pipe, the top hopper pulls down only those that match the item it contains (since it doesn't have any open slots to get other items). Once the total hits 23, that's enough that the comparator will power both redstone dusts instead of only one. Thus the repeater gets powered, which turns off the redstone torch, which lets the bottom hopper start to pull items out of the top hopper and to push them into the chest.
Once the top hopper gets down to 22 items again, the comparator's signal is only enough to power the one redstone dust, so the repeater doesn't get powered, so the redstone torch turns back on, so the bottom hopper stops pulling items from the top hopper.
The top hopper will always be pulling items into its first slot, and the bottom hopper will always be pulling items from that first slot, so it never accidentally empties a slot. And even though the redstone dust for all the adjacent cells winds up being connected, the top hopper will (hopefully) never get enough items (46) to power 3 units of redstone dust so one cell will never manage to power an adjacent one. But if you let the output chest fill up, and then let the bottom hopper fill up, then the top hopper might manage to fill up too and that cell could break adjacent cells. Or if you use a water pipe and send a whole stack of something down, that could do it.
And, of course, this design can't handle sorting non-stackable items.
This is great info, thank you both. I always wondered what was preventing the filter hopper from emptying its contents. So if I understand this correctly, the comparator is sensing the item counts in the filter hopper. When the count reaches a certain threshold, the signal to the comparator increases and unlocks the hopper below it, allowing items to transfer. Is that the gist of it?
Like I said, 99% of the videos don't explain this. They just say, "Put your hoppers like this, put this many of this item here, etc..." Not what I wanted to know.
I am *not* looking for Youtube videos. Any monkey can tell you to place blocks here, put redstone there, add a comparitor there. That is NOT what I am looking for.
I am wanting someone to explain the basic principles of an item sorting system and why it works. I am looking for explanations on what the redstone components are doing, why the hoppers are arranged the way they are, etc. IF there is a video that explains this, I haven't found it.
Anyone?
When items go through the pipe, the top hopper pulls down only those that match the item it contains (since it doesn't have any open slots to get other items). Once the total hits 23, that's enough that the comparator will power both redstone dusts instead of only one. Thus the repeater gets powered, which turns off the redstone torch, which lets the bottom hopper start to pull items out of the top hopper and to push them into the chest.
Once the top hopper gets down to 22 items again, the comparator's signal is only enough to power the one redstone dust, so the repeater doesn't get powered, so the redstone torch turns back on, so the bottom hopper stops pulling items from the top hopper.
The top hopper will always be pulling items into its first slot, and the bottom hopper will always be pulling items from that first slot, so it never accidentally empties a slot. And even though the redstone dust for all the adjacent cells winds up being connected, the top hopper will (hopefully) never get enough items (46) to power 3 units of redstone dust so one cell will never manage to power an adjacent one. But if you let the output chest fill up, and then let the bottom hopper fill up, then the top hopper might manage to fill up too and that cell could break adjacent cells. Or if you use a water pipe and send a whole stack of something down, that could do it.
And, of course, this design can't handle sorting non-stackable items.
This is great info, thank you both. I always wondered what was preventing the filter hopper from emptying its contents. So if I understand this correctly, the comparator is sensing the item counts in the filter hopper. When the count reaches a certain threshold, the signal to the comparator increases and unlocks the hopper below it, allowing items to transfer. Is that the gist of it?
Like I said, 99% of the videos don't explain this. They just say, "Put your hoppers like this, put this many of this item here, etc..." Not what I wanted to know.