While the Immersive Engineering strip curtain can tell when an item stack is passing through, the strip curtain isn't very good at precision logistics. I think that Control Engineering could offer a very natural solution to this. The 256 different states of the bus would allow for large and accurate item counts, which could be provided by some sort of item counter block. This block could either sit on top of a conveyor like the strip curtain, or act as a full block like the item batcher.
I think that it would make sense to use an aggregate count with a reset channel, since this would allow the player to either directly count the number of items which have travelled over a conveyor line up to 255, or also allow for discrete measurements by regularly resetting the count and integrating the total number at a Logic Cabinet (logic like this at the logic cabinet could bring the maximum item count up to 65535 or higher by using multiple channels). It might be nice to also allow the use of a clock on the reset channel, removing the need for an extra clock channel on the network.
Item counting could offer a very advanced logistics solution, and with enough planning could allow for an item system similar to logistics pipes, although much bulkier.
While the Immersive Engineering strip curtain can tell when an item stack is passing through, the strip curtain isn't very good at precision logistics. I think that Control Engineering could offer a very natural solution to this. The 256 different states of the bus would allow for large and accurate item counts, which could be provided by some sort of item counter block. This block could either sit on top of a conveyor like the strip curtain, or act as a full block like the item batcher.
I think that it would make sense to use an aggregate count with a reset channel, since this would allow the player to either directly count the number of items which have travelled over a conveyor line up to 255, or also allow for discrete measurements by regularly resetting the count and integrating the total number at a Logic Cabinet (logic like this at the logic cabinet could bring the maximum item count up to 65535 or higher by using multiple channels). It might be nice to also allow the use of a clock on the reset channel, removing the need for an extra clock channel on the network.
Item counting could offer a very advanced logistics solution, and with enough planning could allow for an item system similar to logistics pipes, although much bulkier.