Fixing up a LARGE storage area

I've built "auto-sorters" from videos on YouTube, designed my own, etc. But most of them have fallen far short of what I wanted. What I want is to be able to rush into my Base and just dump all the stuff I've collected into a chest and let it get sorted automatically. The sorting part is rather easy to do actually, you can do it with 3 hoppers, a few redstone repeaters, and a couple of redstone comparators, along with a few blocks and some hoppers. But, I've even built them without the Droppers, just put the input chest on top of a "feeder hopper" but the timing can be off sometimes so the Dropper format works better because it feeds the items into the system at a slower rate.

The real problem occurs when one of your storage chests gets full and the excess items start building up in the "filter hopper" that normally feeds that chest.  At some point the comparator on the "filter Hopper" will start sending out too strong of a signal and it will affect the other chests, causing your other "filter hoppers" to be emptied. Once you empty even ONE of the spaces in the hopper, it can accept ANY input.. so the filter is now broken. It will NEVER recover on its own. I tried to make a compact version of a storage system that was "break proof" but could not get it to work properly so I went to a version that is non-compact. After all, the world has LOTS of room to build!

I recently posted a video on YouTube showing my setup, but I will post it here in pictures too.

This first picture is the basic setup for a Dropper feed from the Input Chest to the Storage System. The double chest has upside down stairs over it to make it look better. There is a hopper under the far end on the double chest that feeds items from the chest into the bottom Dropper. The Bottom and the Middle Droppers are facing UPward and the top Dropper is facing to the right.

Here is a back view of the Droppers along with the Comparator on the Bottom Dropper which detects when an item is inside the Dropper. The redstone signal then passes into the Stone Brick block and from there to the Repeater facing right. The signal is boosted and travels through the redstone dust around and to the side of the Comparator (which gives a 2nd signal to compare) and also on top of a Stone Brick block and through another repeater into the middle Dropper.  This small bit of redstone circuitry detects the items and raises them up into the top Dropper where they are then pushed left into a feeding row of Hoppers (all facing to the left). There is a gap between the middle Dropper and the middle row of Hoppers.  This row of Hoppers is facing into upside down Stone Brick Stairs (so they basically will bring in stuff but won't feed anything out.  This middle row of Hoppers are the Filter Hoppers.  They determine what will be fed downward at that point into the hopper below and then into the storage chest for that item.

There is a Redstone Comparator facing away from each of the Filter Hoppers which will generate a signal whenever items are in the Hopper.  The strength of that signal is determined by the number of items inside the Hopper. From NO signal if it is empty to MAX signal if the hopper is full. The storage system uses 22 items in each Filter Hopper to determine what will pass through it.  Note: When another Hopper pulls an item out it will always take it from the left most slot.

These Redstone Torches, when lit, prevent the bottom row of Hoppers from pulling items from the Filter Row.

Once ONE additional item is fed into the Filter Hopper the Comparator signal will be strong enough to activate the corresponding Repeater as shown here. These repeaters face into the block where the above redstone torches are attached. The signal then turns off the torch and lets the bottom hopper draw ONE item from the Filter Hopper and place it into the storage chest. Once that one item is removed there will once again be just 22 items in the Filter Hopper and the comparator signal will not be strong enough to keep the torch turned off.

Here you can see the top row of Hoppers, flowing the items away down the line. The Filter Hoppers below them are facing to the right into the upside down Stone Brick Stairs. The Redstone Torches are lit because no items are being fed through the system. Just under the leftmost health hearts you can see the repeaters facing to the right. On top of the two Stone Brick blocks you can see the Comparator and one Redstone Dust. There is another Redstone Dust down to the left of the two Stone Brick Blocks which carries the signal down to the repeater underneath the leftmost Brick Block.

Here is another view that shows the repeaters beneath the redstone on the bricks. Notice that the Hoppers for each storage chest are right next to each other and the redstone dust connects up so it is able to interact with the comparator signals from other filter hoppers, very compact but prone to breaking when one chest over fills.  There is nothing in this configuration to control how full a chest can get other than just the space in the chest.

My solution to one of the problems was to space the chests and their associated hoppers apart so that the redstone from one chest could not interact with another's redstone. But, this was not a total solution since the hoppers all feed from the leftmost slot into the chest, if you removed items from a full chest then the filter would drop items from the left slot, then the next slot, etc.. until 22 items remained in the hopper. This would still allow ANY new items to fall into and through the filter so it was broken. Here you can see my first modification, spacing out the storage chests, and part of the second modification, adding a sensor to tell how full a chest has become. In this case the redstone lamps also provide a visual indication of how full each chest has become.

Behind the hoppers you can see that the redstone circuits are now spaced apart and cannot interfere with each other.

I then added another modification, after all, what good is it to know a chest is too full and not do anything about it? I added in a single chest below the double chest. The single chest is fed by a hopper under the other part of the double chest but controlled by a redstone torch so that it will not remove items from the double chest until it reaches a pre-determined fullness.

Looking up from beneath the chests and hoppers you can see the overflow control redstone torch, the hopper directly below the double chest, and the single chest that the hopper will feed. There are also hoppers to remove items from the single chest and store them into double chests below.

Here are the lower level of double chests. The hoppers have no filters or controls other than the previously mentioned overfill control hopper/torch.  These chests are placed side by side (easy to do with 1.13.1) and as one fills up, then the hopper above it fills up, any more will overflow down the line to the next double chest.. all the way to the end if needed.  The FIRST storage chest should be the most filled item, so it has more chests to overflow into since each succeeding chest has 2 fewer overflow chests in its downstream.  I also added redstone lamps to indicate how full my overflow chests were getting.

Here you can see the Overflow control torches and to the left of each one is a hopper that draws items from the single chest to send it downward.

The redstone lamps on top indicate how full the original storage chest has become. Beneath those lamps is this circuit that activates once the chest reaches a predetermined fullness.

This indicator row of lamps for my first item's overflow show that this chest is full also.

And, going the other direction (so redstone signals don't get crossed) are lamps to show the 2nd overflow chest's fullness for each item (remember, beyond the first 2 chests could be mixed items if the first one flows over more chests and hoppers.

Topside, the fullness indicators for the storage chests.

At the end of each row is a dip of 1 block and the redstone goes down into that dip. This redstone on the very end will trigger the return repeater with the chest is at its desired fullness.

This is the level that I have chosen to start emptying the primary storage chest. I am not sure how fast it could fill up completely and I wanted to prevent that. The incoming items start at the top left. I've taken items out of this chest so there are gaps but the number will remain the same and the chest will never get completely full.

The very last chest in the chain does not have a completed circuit so it will not be controlled but will accept anything that makes it that far (not in any of the filters).

The filter hopper for this one is empty, allowing anything to pass.

Also, the topside, 2nd Hopper is facing downward instead of into the Brick Stairs.

Below, the end chest can accept either overflow from previous chests or the "garbage" from above.

Here are hoppers that feed from the end of the chain down to the last overflow chest.

Inside the chest, these are items that I threw into the sorter but did not have a filter hopper set up to collect them into any of the previous chests, OR, just stuff I threw in there to empty out my inventory a little.

This system has SO MUCH storage that I can't see it readily overflowing and breaking. It has fullness indicators that I will see often and so I can prepare another storage or add on more overflow. It uses a LOT of hoppers, so about 50 ingots of iron are needed for each item sorted, plus more to make the hoppers at the end for the "garbage collection" chest.  I mined a LOT of iron, but I also used the "/give @p minecraft:iron_ingot 64" command a lot too.. or just gave myself hoppers.  I have a silk touch pickaxe so I get a lot of stone blocks. I also have a pickaxe with fortune of 100 so I get a lot of redstone dust and coal (though I often just mine those with my silk touch).

I hope this has given you some information that you can use.