Minecraft daily - Redstone Pt.1

Redstone Circuits

Redstone circuits are structures that can be built to activate or control mechanisms.

Circuits can be designed to act in response to player activation, or to operate autonomously -- either on a loop, or in response to non-player activity such as mob movement, item drops, plant growth, etc. The mechanisms that can be controlled by redstone circuits range from simple devices such as automatic doors and light switches, to complex devices such as elevators, automatic farms, or even in-game computers.

Understanding how to build and use redstone circuits and the mechanisms they can control will greatly increase the range of things that can be accomplished in Minecraft.

Basic concepts

Before describing the blocks used to build redstone circuits, or the types of circuits which can be built, an understanding of some basic concepts is required.

Redstone components

A redstone component is a block that provides some purpose to a redstone circuit.

• A power component provides power to all or part of a circuit.
• A transmission component passes power from one part of the circuit to another.
• A mechanism component affects the environment (by moving, producing light, etc.).

Power

Some blocks may be powered or unpowered. Think of a "powered block" as a block that is electrified (but safe to touch). Some blocks will show their powered state visibly (for example, redstone wire lights up, a piston extends, etc.), but other blocks may give no visual indication of their powered state other than their effect on other redstone components.

Opaque blocks can be strongly-powered or weakly-powered (a different concept than power level, see below). The only difference is that a weakly-powered block will not power adjacent redstone wire.

Power level

Power level can vary from 0 to 15. Most power components provide power level 15, but a few provide a variable amount of power depending on how they are set up.

Redstone wire transmits power to adjacent redstone wire, but its strength decreases by 1 for each block traveled. Redstone wire can thus transmit power up to 15 blocks before needing to be re-strengthened (either with a redstone repeater, or by controlling a power source to create a new signal).

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