Non-stackable item sorter with hopper minecart

Question

I was building an item sorter for my gold farm. Since the drop rates were high, a normal hopper line was not fast enough to move and sort all the items. I built a bunch of tracks to allow a few hopper minecarts to transport all the drops.
However, when it came to the swords (non-stackable), I was having issues. I looked at the mumbo jumbo video Mumbo Jumbo video. That idea worked, but I tried to tweak it to my settings. I used a detector rail to check for the item type in the minecart. The detection works fine, but the activation of the rail when the minecart goes over it locks the hopper below, and the swords do not get sorted.
Is there any way to fix this setup?

SF. · Accepted Answer

The problem of detector rail locking the hopper is an age-old problem of using it in minecart unloaders. There are two general approaches:

Use another hopper minecart partially embedded in a transparent block under the detector rail to pull the items; use an activator rail to lock/unlock it. It's important the block is transparent so that the detector rail doesn't power it up (activating the activator rail, locking a normal hopper underneath the minecart, and other headaches). To embed the cart like this, first use a fence/wall to stop it after rolling it partially off the activator rail, then zero-tick the transparent block into it (push it with a piston activated by a button attached to its side; the button pops off in the same tick the piston is activated, as result the block doesn't nudge the minecart).

Stop the minecart partially on the detector rail, partially on a rail on top of a hopper. Make sure the block under the detector rail is transparent.

Non-stackable item sorter with hopper minecart

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