Peripheral Suggestion: SmartChests

From what I understand, the Turtle only has 9 slots of inventory. That's useful, I guess, but I was thinking: What about having a standard-capacity chest that allows peripheral inventory control? For example, using computers to see if a certain number of a certain item is there. With Monitors, you could have a large-scale display of how much of a certain item you have. I imagine automated crafting wouldn't even be out of the question.

For use with other mods, perhaps rearranging a chest? An auto-sort feature could be designed, perhaps?

I ask because I hope to use RedPower and some other mods to keep track of large numbers of items in chests, making sure they don't overflow, sorting them, etc. And I don't believe something like this already exists.

Any thoughts?

You could take a look at the Advanced Resource Processing peripherals. The Inventory reader can provide you with most information, and with two chests, a digital allocator and some inspiration you might be able to create a chest sorter… (I never even thought about that application!)

Ah.
Your signature links to page 2 of the topic, by the way. :)/>/>

Well, at the moment, I'm sorry to say this, but the amount of peripherals required to manage each individual task seems messy. The system I'm working on requires Redpower, EE, Industrialcraft, and Buildcraft (maybe, trying to get out of it), Enderchest, maybe more, and honestly, it seems like the idea of the chest and the crafting bench would be better combined. I also don't really see the usefulness of the database, especially as a block type, when someone could just put the thing in a floppy. Block numbers are kind of a concern here.

However, besides that, your mod looks really nice. Just not what I think I'll be using, sorry.

Well, I thought about it a bit, and I think I could build an advanced "Digital chest" which combines storage, inventory reader and chest. I'll look into it.

I was actually thinking, it would be really ideal to replace the inventory checker and the allocator with a chest, giving it the functions of all of them.
So you could use programs on a computer attached to a DigiChest to move something into itself, and then output to a separate chest. This would allow it to still function very well with custom inventories (I.E. Dispensers and whatnot) and be invaluable as a chest in and of itself. Also for consideration is the idea that, if it can interact with other inventories, it can serve as a backup to inventories with fewer amounts of spaces.

Also, some functions to think about:

• Check what is in a slot
• Check how many of an item (total) is within the entire chest (VERY useful for monitoring)
• Check how many items are in a slot
• Swap a slot with another (you want to have it swap, not to move, obviously, so that it can function with items in both slots)
• Find the next unoccupied slot
• Find the next occupied slot
• Have chest output X of item Y to a side, if available.
• Have chest output everything in a slot to a side
• Have chest input/output to a specific area (fuel, input, etc)
• Have chest grab something from a chest

I think that's most of it covered.

Just to be shure you understood me right: I'm talking about an advanced version, not a replacement. If I invest coding time, the players should also invest resources…

Yeah. Without some sensible RP or BC items to add to the recipe, there's no cost-correct way to do it that makes sense, I guess. :


Stone Redstone Stone
Stone Chest Stone
Alloc. Reader Alloc.

Or something similar?
Eh, whatever you decide, you're the genius here. Thank you so much for considering my idea. :)/>/>

GPS Hosts are fine - have turtles lay out a grid of them :)/>/>
Besides that you ca check if it moved with redstone connection as was stated