Turtle sucks a certain kind of item from the chest

Is there a way that a turtle can suck only items of a given ID from a miscellaneous chest?

My first idea is to pick up a stack of items, check their ID, and put them back if they are not wanted. But when turtle drop them back, they will go to the first empty slot so that in the next iteration, the turtle picks them up again, and it will never reach the items truly required.

Thanks a lot for your help.

You could try making a chain of hoppers with an extra turtle that would wait for a signal to start putting stuff back n the chest, so you put the stuff back into a hopper and once the chest is empty you have that turtle send the signal that it's done so the hopper turtle will begin placing stuff back into the original chest for the next time?

jerimo, on 28 June 2015 - 07:12 AM said:

You could try making a chain of hoppers with an extra turtle that would wait for a signal to start putting stuff back n the chest, so you put the stuff back into a hopper and once the chest is empty you have that turtle send the signal that it's done so the hopper turtle will begin placing stuff back into the original chest for the next time?

Thanks.

Actually I'm trying to avoid using lots of hoppers and other materials since I'm still at the very beginning of a survival world, no iron farm built yet… The turtle I described shall work for an oak tree farm, where there is a chest collecting samplings and apples. If there is no better solution I think I prefer a simple sorting system to separate the samplings and apples…

Use a second chest and two slots in the turtle. Suck items from the normal chest and deposit them in the second chest until you find the items you want, then use the other slot of the turtle to put everything from the second chest back into the normal chest.

How are the items getting into the chest in the first place? Would it not be easier to have one chest per type of item involved? The average tree farm isn't all that likely to encounter a great deal of variety of items, assuming you're only raising one species.