Can combinators detect if container is almost full without me doing all the math?

[Thom Blair III]

I would like to have my combinators send a signal if a container is almost full, but so far, it seems "empty space" is not an available parameter to choose from.

Since each container has a different number of spaces in it, and every material has a different stack size, it would be great if I could just have the combinator send it's signal if empty space is less than a certain number without me having to count how many items can fit in the container.

Me counting becomes even more difficult to calculate if different materials are coming in at different/random times, because each material has different stack sizes, thereby making it impossible (?) to set a combinator based on contents rather than empty space.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this? If there is a mod that solves this, that would be great too.

[!?!]

What exactly are you trying to do with that empty space value?

[AlexMBrennan]

Theoretically speaking you can do it if you have enough combinators (2x per chest per resource type, and another 1x per resource type to calculate the weights), but I suspect that this is too impractical. I don't see any vanilla way to do it any faster (e.g. red wire multiplied by green wire would replace all the arithmetic combinators...)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869207309

[Thom Blair III]

Originally posted by chris:

What exactly are you trying to do with that empty space value?

I'm using a decider combinator to see something like "if empty space < 500 then output 1 red".

[!?!]

Originally posted by Thom Blair III:

Originally posted by chris:

What exactly are you trying to do with that empty space value?

I'm using a decider combinator to see something like "if empty space < 500 then output 1 red".

But why does it have to be empty space and can't be if item > value of your choice then output red?

[AlexMBrennan]

But why does it have to be empty space and can't be if item > value of your choice then output red?

Because stack sizes differ (e.g. a steel chest with 480 rocket fuel is full whilst a steel chest with 480 coal is empty so if you want to mix them you can't use any single constant cutoff)

[!?!]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

But why does it have to be empty space and can't be if item > value of your choice then output red?

Because stack sizes differ (e.g. a steel chest with 480 rocket fuel is full whilst a steel chest with 480 coal is empty so if you want to mix them you can't use any single constant cutoff)

Well, mixed chest content without strict restrictions is not a good idea.
You put belts and inserters into a chest and keep taking out belts, eventually you have a chest full of inserters with no more room for belts.

[AlexMBrennan]

Well, I never said it was a good idea - I was just answering the question OP posed (work out the number of empty slots in a mixed chest using combinators).