Expanded Industry supplies several broadly useful hopper-like blocks and a specialized detector rail. This is to fill out gaps in the vanilla toolset to make things a little easier so that ten thousand iron isn't required to do otherwise basic tasks for the budding industrialist.
Expanded Industry does not require HardLib.
See the Crafting page for recipes.
Wooden Hopper[]
It's a regular hopper, made out of wood. Operates at the same speed, but has 1/4 of the internal capacity and can only transport items below itself. This makes it the cheap alternative for situations where inserting items from above is required, but you otherwise don't have the 5 iron to spare, such as the sluice or millstone, or just as a filler block between a regular hopper and the desired destination.
Distributor[]
The distributor acts like a hopper, but outputs to all four adjacent blocks (but not downward) and evenly divides its inventory between the four destinations. It operates twice as fast as a regular hopper, dispensing one item to an adjacent block every 4 ticks, then switches to the next block (so each destination receives items half as quickly). Invalid locations are skipped, but do consume the 4 ticks.
Filtering Hopper[]
The Filtering Hopper acts like a hopper, but will only accept items into its inventory that can be inserted into the specified inventories from a given direction (see its page for more details). In this way it can filter item transport based on intended destination without clogging (although whatever is supplying its input will need a secondary output) and without using complicated redstone setups which are bulky with limited flexibility, often filtering for one or two specific items. The Filtering Hopper instead operates on a "does this machine accept this input?" basis.
Minecart Loader/Unloader[]
The minecart loader will "catch" a rolling minecart and proceed to load (or unload) it until either the source inventory is empty or the destination inventory is full, then it will give the minecart a push in the same direction it had been traveling, allowing the cart to continue on its way. This block makes it easier to fully load or unload a cart without the need for complicated redstone setups with the vanilla hopper, detector rail, comparator, and a secondary "bumper" cart.
Minecart-Type Detector Rail[]
This rail block is configurable to detect a given type of minecart: empty, TNT, furnace, chest, and so on, and output the desired redstone signal via a comparator. Without a comparator, the rail acts exactly like a detector rail: any cart produces a 15 strength signal.
Foundry[]
The foundry is an automated crafting machine with a restricted set of recipes it can operate on. By supplying the foundry with a template, materials, and have an active furnace nearby, it will slowly craft tools and other similar items. See the foundry's article for more detailed information on how to use it.
Comparator Changes (1.7)[]
With HardLib included, Expanded Industry enables the Comparator to detect the rotation of items stored in Item Frames, consistent with Vanilla 1.8.