Can robots transfer items from chests to lab or somewhere else?

[Entropy]

If so, how is it done?

[Shurenai]

They can't deliver directly TO a building, but they can deliver from chest to chest, meaning you can have them deliver to a chest with an inserter pointed at what you want it to go into.

In order to do this you need provider chests and requester chests. Anything put into a provider chest is "made available" to the network, and then in the requester chest settings you can tell it what to request and how much. If what is requested is available to the network, logistic bots will deliver it to the requester chest from the provider chest.

Edit: Of note, "Passive" provider chests will store items until the network calls for it, "Active" provider chests will actively call bots to remove the things in it to be stored in storage logistic chests.

[Roxor128]

Also regarding Passive and Active Provider chests, if you want to have bots shipping around barrels of stuff (like lubricant for making blue belts), make the empty barrel output on the barrel-emptying machine go into an Active Provider chest. If you make it a Passive one, it'll fill up with barrels and stall the machine. Passive Providers are fine for filling machines, though, as you'll probably want to keep at least a few barrels of whatever they're filling around, anyway.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

To elaborate a little further:

Science Pack Assembler outputs to a passive provider chest.
Lab Takes Science packs from a requester chest set to request science packs.

Optionally:
Science Pack Assembler outputs to a passive provider chest.
A buffer chest near the labs requests science packs.
Lab Takes Science packs from a requester chest set to request science packs with the "Request from buffer chests" option checked.

[Lunacy]

What I like to do is have a master chest that inserts into a single lab which then uses inserters to piggyback science to every other lab that I have. You just have to belt or robot them into that master chest first.

And like above said, simply belt them down or have assemblers store them in a passive provider chest.
I also like to wire my stuff so it stops producing the science when my science buffer chests are nearly full. (Because they're currently transferring on a belt and I don't want the belt to get backed up.)

[Andrew7588]

Originally posted by Roxor128:

Also regarding Passive and Active Provider chests, if you want to have bots shipping around barrels of stuff (like lubricant for making blue belts), make the empty barrel output on the barrel-emptying machine go into an Active Provider chest. If you make it a Passive one, it'll fill up with barrels and stall the machine. Passive Providers are fine for filling machines, though, as you'll probably want to keep at least a few barrels of whatever they're filling around, anyway.

The number of times I've done this is depressing. Sitting there going "WHY DON'T I HAVE ANY OF THIS!?!" then I start backtracking the missing ingredient and 99/100 its a passive chest where there should be an active one.

[astrosha]

Originally posted by Andrew7588:

Originally posted by Roxor128:

Also regarding Passive and Active Provider chests, if you want to have bots shipping around barrels of stuff (like lubricant for making blue belts), make the empty barrel output on the barrel-emptying machine go into an Active Provider chest. If you make it a Passive one, it'll fill up with barrels and stall the machine. Passive Providers are fine for filling machines, though, as you'll probably want to keep at least a few barrels of whatever they're filling around, anyway.

The number of times I've done this is depressing. Sitting there going "WHY DON'T I HAVE ANY OF THIS!?!" then I start backtracking the missing ingredient and 99/100 its a passive chest where there should be an active one.

The only time I find an Active Provider useful is when I'm working with the spent nuclear fuel cells. Otherwise, its straight up Requestor, Passive Provider, and Storage for me.

I've only bothered piping fluids, not barrelling them up, but I'd think that controlling the number of barrels you have in circulation would alleviate the clog problem. If you're getting along fine with 100 Lube barrels, there's no reason to have a mall machine cranking out more and more empty barrels for your barrelling machine to draw upon rather than the empties. At a minimum, simply refuse to put the mall barrel making machine output into a provider that can feed the fluid barreling machine.

Unless you can sum the total number of filled and empty barrels, through the circuit network, and use that as a control for the output inserter on your barrel maker ...

[Andrew7588]

Originally posted by astrosha:

Originally posted by Andrew7588:

The number of times I've done this is depressing. Sitting there going "WHY DON'T I HAVE ANY OF THIS!?!" then I start backtracking the missing ingredient and 99/100 its a passive chest where there should be an active one.

The only time I find an Active Provider useful is when I'm working with the spent nuclear fuel cells. Otherwise, its straight up Requestor, Passive Provider, and Storage for me.

I've only bothered piping fluids, not barrelling them up, but I'd think that controlling the number of barrels you have in circulation would alleviate the clog problem. If you're getting along fine with 100 Lube barrels, there's no reason to have a mall machine cranking out more and more empty barrels for your barrelling machine to draw upon rather than the empties. At a minimum, simply refuse to put the mall barrel making machine output into a provider that can feed the fluid barreling machine.

Unless you can sum the total number of filled and empty barrels, through the circuit network, and use that as a control for the output inserter on your barrel maker ...

I tend to go with an almost purely robotic factory (when I get into the endgame, the only thing that *might* have belts are my defenses running magazines around. Everything else goes by bot. So I might be refining oil on one part of the map, but need the products in five or six. So I barrel it up and have bots fly it around.

Probably also worth noting that I use Bob & Angel (among a lot of other mods), so I have a LOT of liquids and gases to manage. As to how I control barrels, I do a bit of a combi. Primarily, I rely on the priority of where things are requested from (active, then buffer, then storage, passive last. So the active stuff is either dumped into storage or into buffers, while the buildings producing the barrels go into passives, so they're the last port of call for barrel collection.

After that, I use the voidchest mod which deletes anything dumped into it (its a bit OP buit there are lot of byproducts in angel which can get out of control, and I haven't found a more balanced mod for disposing of unwanted stuff). I use a combinator and the logistics network to control a requester chest which requests whatever products I chose over a certain threshold.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by astrosha:

The only time I find an Active Provider useful is when I'm working with the spent nuclear fuel cells. Otherwise, its straight up Requestor, Passive Provider, and Storage for me.

I don't use them there, but I have two specific things that I have found them to be great for.

First:
I frequently use a train to supply bots and materials to build outposts. I reserve a few slots on the train for wood and stone and the bots fill the train as they clear trees and stray rocks. When the train gets back to HQ, these materials are put into an active provider to shunt that crap into storage and it will eventually be shipped off to be burned or turned into concrete.

Second:
Whether it's a tapped out mining outpost or an outdated manufacturing facility, sometimes you need to rip out an old outpost. I often use an empty train to collect all the stuff I deconstructed and send it back to the HQ. Everything then gets shoved into active providers so the bots will store and recycle all that crap for new facilities.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Robots cannot deliver to a building. They deliver from red chests to blue chests. yellow chests are garbage storage, they will deliver from player trash inventory to yellow chests, and will deliver from yellow chests to blue chests or player inventory. active provider chests wil be taken from before passive provider chests. I personally only use passives so that trash gets used up first.