How to Automate Meteor Mining with Redstone and AE2 [No OC/SFM]

[silver aurora]

(note: This guide doesn't cover the actual mining process. If you want to read up on how to set up mining itself, check out this excellent guide by @umbral elm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXH-RWW_Tjw)

Hamcorp's guide made my brain bleed so I decided to try my own hand at setting something up for my singleplayer world. I'm quite proud of what I arrived at, so I decided to write a guide about it.

This setup doesn't require a personal dimension, isn't reliant on the time of day, and all its delays are easily adjustable for laggier servers. It uses six wireless redstone channels, but could be tweaked to use as little as one (I do NOT recommend this). The hard part of automating meteors is detecting when it's time to summon the next one, and this setup solves that with a level emitter on the MBM / Arcane Bore output subnet, combined with a direct ME Drive -> ME IO Port connection to move items out of the subnet in a timely manner while not fully emptying it.

== What you'll need:

• 7x Wireless Receiver (+ however many your MBMs / Arcane Bores will need)
• 7x 64k ME Storage Cell (will work with larger / smaller ones, will work with more. Will also work with less, but may break if your oreproc isn't fast enough and its subnet fills up)
• 6x Wireless Transmitter
• 2x Pulse Former
• 2x State Cell
• 2x RS Latch
• 2x Repeater (ProjectRed)
• 2x Basic Item Filter
• 1x NOT Gate
• 1x AND Gate
• 1x Timer
• 1x Redstone Comparator (Vanilla)
• 1x Dropper
• 1x ME Level Emitter (Items)
• 1x ME Drive
• 1x ME IO Port
• 1x Item Conduit
• 1x Redstone Conduit
• 1x Item Conduit Speed Downgrade
• 1x Lever (optional)
• ~10+x Red Alloy Wire

== Legend for Wireless Channels:

• 1 - "Miners" - Controls MBMs / Arcane Bores
• 2 - "Items Present" - Connected to the output subnet's Level Emitter, if it's ON it means there are still items in the output subnet
• 3 - "Ritual Start" - Controls the activation of the Ritual
• 4 - "Finished" - If it's ON, it means the mining is complete and we're ready to send the next meteor
• 5 - "Queued" - Connected to the Dropper's Comparator, if it's ON it means there are items left in the input Dropper
• 6 - "Reset" - Pulses to reset the state of Channel 4

== Notes:

• Main Control Module:
  This part controls starting the ritual + miners. Make sure the State Cell is oriented the right away, otherwise the miners will start right away (which I'm led to believe is Bad™).

• Reset Module:
  This is where the magic happens. Once the output subnet is empty (Channel 2 is OFF), it starts a countdown until setting the "Finished" signal (Channel 4), which gets reset if the output subnet stops being empty at any point.

• ME Module:
  The combination of a Timer + Speed Downgrade in the Item Conduit ensures that we only remove one drive at a time (which is still more than fast enough to keep up with production from the miners) while ensuring there are always items left in the output subnet (because they'll keep filling the other drives and keep the Level Emitter, and thus Channel 2, ON).

In the ME Drive side Item Conduit config, both filters are filled with an empty cell of the same type the ME Drive will house.

• Ritual Module:
  The Dynamism Tablet is set to Right Click + Redstone Control.

[maiden pewter]

Glad to hear my version did that, it was the intended experience

[umbral elm]

^ what tooj said 😂

[foggy estuary]

I had a problem with this Setup which was if the Insertion into my ore processing was full or it couldnt insert anymore items all the cells would move into the me io port and the system got decalred as "Empty" even though there were still items not processed and no where for the new items from the meteor to go. So i just filled the drive up with 7 Cells so if all the cells move to the me io port there will always still be a cell left in the drive for new items to go in if it fills up again. (ME io port only has 6 slots for cells) Im not sure if this will fix the problem i havent fully tested it yet.

[silver aurora]

Oh shoot, I hadn't thought about the possibility of oreproc subnet filling up. Yeah, this is a good change to accommodate for that then, especially since when that happens the circuit will automatically block next meteors from being sent until its subnet empties. I'll update the guide above and bring it up

[iron lodge]

How does this deal with filler meteors + MBMs

[silver aurora]

Filler meteors in what way? The way the logic works, you can take however long you want to start inputting items into the output subnet, it just has to be continuous afterwards

[iron lodge]

Meteors that contain non-ores. MBMs do not mine these, so subsequent meteors will stack vertically

[silver aurora]

Ah. Well, it doesn't deal with them. This is just an automation mechanism, it leaves mining up to the user

[vocal arch]

Hi there ! Just posting in case people want a simpler setup to automate the meteor ...
From left to right :
-> Output - Blue = Dynamism Tablet pulse signal to start ritual
-> Output - Red = Dropper pulse signal to drop catalyst item
-> Input - Yellow = Comparator signal from dropper (checks if items are in queue)
-> Repeater = Set to 16 ticks, delay between blue and red outputs
-> AND gate (2>1) into Pulse Former
-> RS Latch = Reset on top / Set on bottom / Output on left, must be initialized to 1
-> Top State Cell = Clock start on top / Clock end on bottom / Running output on right, Landing Time
-> Bottom State Cell = Clock start on top / Clock end on bottom / Running output on right, Mining Time
-> NOT gate (1>1) = From top state cell to AND gate below
-> AND gate (2>1) = From bottom state cell and NOT gate above to the right output
-> Output to the right = Mining signal to your arcane bores (recommended) or MBMs
-> Output to the bottom = Craft completion pulse signal

This setup deals with the meteor procedure and you are free to trigger them as you want, I personally
prefer on-demand with an interface on the dropper, using patterns set to output named books
corresponding to each meteor I use.

This has several advantages over the one used by IX in his video :

• Proper independent timings for landing and mining (timings in his video are actually wrong)
• State-full approach which does not let any timer run when not necessary
• Starts immediately when a meteor is requested rather than waiting an arbitrary time from a
  clock running in the background
• Prevents spamming the ritual activation when nothing is in the dropper which drains your LP
• Fully compatible with either on-demand or level-maintaining AE2 implementations
• Much simpler and compact implementation

[runic cobalt]

This is amazing, btw. I just finished getting this setup and it works great. Making use of the custom projectred circuits is super cool.