Create Wiki · Contraptions
Portable Storage Interface
A moving contraption takes its chests with it: no way to hook a funnel onto them. The Portable Storage Interface solves that. One interface on the contraption, another fixed along its path: when they meet, they connect and the machine pauses while it empties or fills all its chests.
Quick facts
- Category
- Contraptions
- Crafting
- 1 Andesite Casing + 1 Chute (shapeless)
- Gap
- 1 or 2 empty blocks between the two interfaces
- Connection
- When they pass face to face, the contraption stops
- Access
- The fixed interface reaches every on-board chest
- Departure
- 3 s (60 ticks) after the last exchange
- Redstone
- Powered fixed interface: no connection
- Version
- Create 6.0.8 · Minecraft 1.21.1
Crafting table recipe (shapeless)
→ 1 Portable Storage Interface
Without stopping the machine
An interface fixed on a contraption gives access to its chests while it moves. Nothing to take apart: the farm, the train or the crane arm keeps going.
A second interface opposite
Place a second interface along the path, facing the first one, with one or two empty blocks between them, no more: each interface only extends by one block at most.
Connecting
When the two interfaces pass face to face, they extend towards each other and connect; the contraption comes to a halt. Our loop animates this extension the way the game does.
Filling and emptying
While connected, the fixed interface acts as all of the contraption's chests at once: a funnel or a belt puts items in, another funnel takes them out.
Departure
Once nothing has gone through for 3 seconds, the interfaces part and the contraption moves on. A steady flow of items therefore holds it until loading is done.
Cutting it with redstone
A redstone signal on the fixed interface stops it from connecting: the contraption passes without stopping. Handy with a Threshold Switch that cuts it off when storage is full.
A few uses
A freight station where every train unloads itself, a farm on a bearing that delivers its crop every turn, a piston drill that unloads its ore on the way back. For liquids, the same idea exists with the Portable Fluid Interface.
Tips
Put the fixed interface where the contraption moves slowly, and check the alignment: they must be exactly face to face. One on-board interface is enough for every chest and vault of the structure.
Common mistakes
No connection? The two interfaces do not pass exactly face to face, the gap is more than two blocks, or the fixed interface gets a redstone signal. Contraption not leaving? Items are still flowing: cut the funnel off once loading is done.
Placing the interfaces
The on-board interface is glued to the contraption like any other block, its face turned outwards. The fixed interface goes on a wall or the floor, facing the path. On a train, put the on-board interface on the side of a car and the fixed one on the platform.
Automating around it
The fixed interface hooks up like a chest: funnels, belts, chutes. A filtered funnel can take a single kind of item, and a threshold switch can stop the exchange once storage is full.
What the loops do not show
The extension of both interfaces is drawn by us from the code: each comes out by half a block for a one-block gap, and stays out while the exchange lasts. The ingots going through the funnel and the belt follow the game's physics.
What about fluids?
The same mechanism exists for tanks: the Portable Fluid Interface is placed and connects the same way, but exchanges liquids through pipes and pumps. Both can live on the same contraption.
On our server
On Create France, players' freight stations often rely on these interfaces to load whole trains.
Related pages
Sources for the numbers (Create 6.0.8 code)
- Recipe: crafting/kinetics/portable_storage_interface.json
- Gap: PortableStorageInterfaceMovement (engagement distance), PortableStorageInterfaceBlockEntity.startTransferringTo (min(2, distance))
- Delay: CLogistics.psiTimeout (60 ticks), PortableStorageInterfaceBlockEntity.tick (ANIMATION 4, transferTimer), isConnected
- Extension: getExtensionDistance (progress² × distance / 2), PortableStorageInterfaceRenderer (added by us, see engine_create/REQUESTS.md)
- Redstone: PortableStorageInterfaceBlockEntity (powered)
- Simulation: WIKI/contraption_sim.py (carried blocks, movement times, ropes and actors recomputed from Create's code)
- Scenes: MovementActorScenes.psiTransfer, psiRedstone
Original texts and animations by Create France, rendered from the mod's Ponder scenes. Create is a mod by the Create Team, not affiliated with Create France.