I'm inclined to doubt the veracity of doing a triple piston extender.
Our own tests revealed that the sticky piston can only retract one block.
So 3 sticky pistons stacked vertically, once the bottom one fires, it can only retract the middle sticky. Leaving the top sticky piston floating in mid-air.
if its possible to stack more than 3 pistons and make them extend/retract, I'd like to see it.
I'm inclined to doubt the veracity of doing a triple piston extender.
Our own tests revealed that the sticky piston can only retract one block.
So 3 sticky pistons stacked vertically, once the bottom one fires, it can only retract the middle sticky. Leaving the top sticky piston floating in mid-air.
if its possible to stack more than 3 pistons and make them extend/retract, I'd like to see it.
Yes there is. Just you tube it..
The first retracts the second the second retracts the third.. Only trick is that a piston can't be pushed or pulled while it's powered.. It's a matter of timing. I've done it, many others have.. easiest is horizontal... vertical a bit more tricky, but doable.
Yes there is. Just you tube it..
The first retracts the second the second retracts the third.. Only trick is that a piston can't be pushed or pulled while it's powered.. It's a matter of timing. I've done it, many others have.. easiest is horizontal... vertical a bit more tricky, but doable.
[media][media][/media[/media]]
I'll have to retest it then. We're both talking on MC360 right? Some MC-PC folks have a habit of answering questions from the MC-PC perspective and not realize we're talking xbox.
As a general rule, I don't use youtube. And usually, this stuff is figureoutable.
In our tests (now many months ago), we'd deduced that pistons don't retract powered pistons, as that was inhibiting getting 2 pistons from working.
It's possible we lost sight of that when we went to the third piston.
We actually made models of every combination we tried, just to keep track of what does/doesn't work.
At one point, I had wired up switches to every level of the stack, just to see if we could manually manipulate them into working. Figuring that from there, we could get redstone timing dealt with.
I'll have to retest it then. We're both talking on MC360 right? Some MC-PC folks have a habit of answering questions from the MC-PC perspective and not realize we're talking xbox.
As a general rule, I don't use youtube. And usually, this stuff is figureoutable.
In our tests (now many months ago), we'd deduced that pistons don't retract powered pistons, as that was inhibiting getting 2 pistons from working.
It's possible we lost sight of that when we went to the third piston.
We actually made models of every combination we tried, just to keep track of what does/doesn't work.
At one point, I had wired up switches to every level of the stack, just to see if we could manually manipulate them into working. Figuring that from there, we could get redstone timing dealt with.
Yup MC 360, and sorry to say sir but your "testing" was flawed... No reason to "re-test" it does work. So your "findings" will be meaningless. Just know it works and since you're not big on YouTube run with the knowledge that it DOES work and make it work for you. Good Luck!
Yup MC 360, and sorry to say sir but your "testing" was flawed... No reason to "re-test" it does work. So your "findings" will be meaningless. Just know it works and since you're not big on YouTube run with the knowledge that it DOES work and make it work for you. Good Luck!
that's actually what i said. Re-testing means making new models unlike our old models.
The testing wasn't flawed. it merely didn't demonstrate a combination that works. We found 100 ways to NOT make a 3-stack elevator.
Knowing that it works (meaning somebody else did it on 360) and that powered pistons can't be pulled by other sticky pistons is the key. It means there is a combination that does work, we simply didn't iterate on enough of the design permutations to find it.
The way we will "make it work" is by running new test models with different designs.
It would bear noting. I'm an engineer. I spent a good time in QA. I know how to design things and run tests.
One of the tests we ran, was to build models for all the ways to apply (or fail to apply) power to a Piston. that is to say, that based on the position of the piston how the redstone is placed adjacent to the piston (on same plane, or one block below, etc) determines whether the piston is powered.
That was useful to know in relation to the elevator project, as where you put the redstone, relative to the piston affected whether it was powered. it turns out, there are some "dead" spots that look like it should work to a layman, but do not. And other spots that one might assume wouldn't be powered, but do.
So, when I say we ran some tests, I mean that we tried a lot of design variations side by side, so we could deduce what was going wrong.
We weren't successful at finding the solution, but that doesn't mean we weren't thorough, merely that we missed something. in point of fact, our collection of failed machines will better advise the working model, as we have direct examples of what doesn't work, to dekink our next test model that should work.
Our best working model was able to correctly extend all 3 pistons. Retracting was leaving the top most piston. Where we determined that it was a limit on how much the bottom sticky could pull (we ran a different test for that), we'll need to check to see if it was in fact receiving power when it shouldn't.
Our seperate test was a stack of pistons next to blocks with switches. We wanted to eliminate timing issues, and directly control what piston is powered when by hand. From that machine, we couldn't get it to fully retract. Perhaps we didn't get the power-off sequence right (which was the point of the test).
The expectation is that you power on the bottom, then the middle, then the top to fully extend. Then you power off the top, middle, bottom to fully retract. I can't see how we missed that, but that would need to be working for a 3-stack piston to work.
Once we get a working manual process 3-stack piston, we can then work out how to get the redstone to send the correct timing signal.
part of the point of the exercise, is to figure it out, not to copy a YouTube video. By the time I get a 3-stack piston working, I will understand redstone and pistons better than most people who watch that video.
that's actually what i said. Re-testing means making new models unlike our old models.
The testing wasn't flawed. it merely didn't demonstrate a combination that works. We found 100 ways to NOT make a 3-stack elevator.
Knowing that it works (meaning somebody else did it on 360) and that powered pistons can't be pulled by other sticky pistons is the key. It means there is a combination that does work, we simply didn't iterate on enough of the design permutations to find it.
The way we will "make it work" is by running new test models with different designs.
It would bear noting. I'm an engineer. I spent a good time in QA. I know how to design things and run tests.
One of the tests we ran, was to build models for all the ways to apply (or fail to apply) power to a Piston. that is to say, that based on the position of the piston how the redstone is placed adjacent to the piston (on same plane, or one block below, etc) determines whether the piston is powered.
That was useful to know in relation to the elevator project, as where you put the redstone, relative to the piston affected whether it was powered. it turns out, there are some "dead" spots that look like it should work to a layman, but do not. And other spots that one might assume wouldn't be powered, but do.
So, when I say we ran some tests, I mean that we tried a lot of design variations side by side, so we could deduce what was going wrong.
We weren't successful at finding the solution, but that doesn't mean we weren't thorough, merely that we missed something. in point of fact, our collection of failed machines will better advise the working model, as we have direct examples of what doesn't work, to dekink our next test model that should work.
Our best working model was able to correctly extend all 3 pistons. Retracting was leaving the top most piston. Where we determined that it was a limit on how much the bottom sticky could pull (we ran a different test for that), we'll need to check to see if it was in fact receiving power when it shouldn't.
Our seperate test was a stack of pistons next to blocks with switches. We wanted to eliminate timing issues, and directly control what piston is powered when by hand. From that machine, we couldn't get it to fully retract. Perhaps we didn't get the power-off sequence right (which was the point of the test).
The expectation is that you power on the bottom, then the middle, then the top to fully extend. Then you power off the top, middle, bottom to fully retract. I can't see how we missed that, but that would need to be working for a 3-stack piston to work.
Once we get a working manual process 3-stack piston, we can then work out how to get the redstone to send the correct timing signal.
part of the point of the exercise, is to figure it out, not to copy a YouTube video. By the time I get a 3-stack piston working, I will understand redstone and pistons better than most people who watch that video.
Personally I figured it out on my own, though my design much larger than the design shown in the video... involving way more repeaters...again good luck.
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Personally I figured it out on my own, though my design much larger than the design shown in the video... involving way more repeaters...again good luck.
Knowing now that we stopped too soon when we deduced that the top block couldn't be pulled back, I suspect we'll get it figured out as well.
When we hit that point, it was pretty late, and we'd tried a lot of different models. It looked pretty obvious from 2 people experimenting at the same time (seperate models) and we both reached the same conclusion.
What I worked on, as my friend was less scientific, was maintaining seperate models as I tried variations. in this way, I could examine each failure, and compare to the other models, to determine if the failure reason was the same. Basically, was I actually designing the same machine in a different format, or had I discovered a new reason why it didn't work.
The pic in the video certainly looks compact, so it's good to know that it can be done, and done tightly.
Knowing now that we stopped too soon when we deduced that the top block couldn't be pulled back, I suspect we'll get it figured out as well.
When we hit that point, it was pretty late, and we'd tried a lot of different models. It looked pretty obvious from 2 people experimenting at the same time (seperate models) and we both reached the same conclusion.
What I worked on, as my friend was less scientific, was maintaining seperate models as I tried variations. in this way, I could examine each failure, and compare to the other models, to determine if the failure reason was the same. Basically, was I actually designing the same machine in a different format, or had I discovered a new reason why it didn't work.
The pic in the video certainly looks compact, so it's good to know that it can be done, and done tightly.
Of course it can be done. There are even quite a few designs that are infinitely expandable. You can build a 100-piston extender if you want. It might take about 2 hours to retract, but it will work.
I think you're looking at this as some sort of failure.
As my first post on here indicated, I didn't think it was even possible. Luckily, that's clarified.
Before my tests, we had no elevators. We knew that MC360 had redstone differences such that some PC concepts may not work. We wanted to see if it could be done, without any external information.
We discovered that powered pistons can't be retracted (the 2nd piston).
We then ran experiments that to us indicated that a sticky block can only pull one block.
Barring peer review or external information, that last was pretty conclusive.
And the final outcome for us was that we still didn't have elevators, but knew a lot more about powering pistons.
Given that until my first post in this thread, nobody actually posted a proof that it was possible, the value of my posting "incorrect" information was that somebody got off their ass and found proof, rather than telling the OP "keep trying" as if that was at all helpful.
Someone explaining why my tests failed (that a piston must be unpowered for it to be retracted by another piston) is what gives someone the information to figure out how to make it work. The pistons must be unpowered in sequence from the top most to the bottom in order to retract.
None of that happened, until I started posting about my test results.
The scientific method is never a failure as even disproven hypothesis further the base of knowledge.
Personally I askd the OP questions, so that my answer would be specific...
Also attempting to do something and not succeeding equals failure.. Yes, you'll learn from the mistakes.... but for that moment when a solution to a problem couldn't be found, you failed....
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Basically you use repeaters. You need 4 repeaters for 3 pistons.
Anybody else should easily manage more.
Anyone know why?
Our own tests revealed that the sticky piston can only retract one block.
So 3 sticky pistons stacked vertically, once the bottom one fires, it can only retract the middle sticky. Leaving the top sticky piston floating in mid-air.
if its possible to stack more than 3 pistons and make them extend/retract, I'd like to see it.
Yes there is. Just you tube it..
The first retracts the second the second retracts the third.. Only trick is that a piston can't be pushed or pulled while it's powered.. It's a matter of timing. I've done it, many others have.. easiest is horizontal... vertical a bit more tricky, but doable.
I'll have to retest it then. We're both talking on MC360 right? Some MC-PC folks have a habit of answering questions from the MC-PC perspective and not realize we're talking xbox.
As a general rule, I don't use youtube. And usually, this stuff is figureoutable.
In our tests (now many months ago), we'd deduced that pistons don't retract powered pistons, as that was inhibiting getting 2 pistons from working.
It's possible we lost sight of that when we went to the third piston.
We actually made models of every combination we tried, just to keep track of what does/doesn't work.
At one point, I had wired up switches to every level of the stack, just to see if we could manually manipulate them into working. Figuring that from there, we could get redstone timing dealt with.
that's actually what i said. Re-testing means making new models unlike our old models.
The testing wasn't flawed. it merely didn't demonstrate a combination that works. We found 100 ways to NOT make a 3-stack elevator.
Knowing that it works (meaning somebody else did it on 360) and that powered pistons can't be pulled by other sticky pistons is the key. It means there is a combination that does work, we simply didn't iterate on enough of the design permutations to find it.
The way we will "make it work" is by running new test models with different designs.
It would bear noting. I'm an engineer. I spent a good time in QA. I know how to design things and run tests.
One of the tests we ran, was to build models for all the ways to apply (or fail to apply) power to a Piston. that is to say, that based on the position of the piston how the redstone is placed adjacent to the piston (on same plane, or one block below, etc) determines whether the piston is powered.
That was useful to know in relation to the elevator project, as where you put the redstone, relative to the piston affected whether it was powered. it turns out, there are some "dead" spots that look like it should work to a layman, but do not. And other spots that one might assume wouldn't be powered, but do.
So, when I say we ran some tests, I mean that we tried a lot of design variations side by side, so we could deduce what was going wrong.
We weren't successful at finding the solution, but that doesn't mean we weren't thorough, merely that we missed something. in point of fact, our collection of failed machines will better advise the working model, as we have direct examples of what doesn't work, to dekink our next test model that should work.
Our best working model was able to correctly extend all 3 pistons. Retracting was leaving the top most piston. Where we determined that it was a limit on how much the bottom sticky could pull (we ran a different test for that), we'll need to check to see if it was in fact receiving power when it shouldn't.
Our seperate test was a stack of pistons next to blocks with switches. We wanted to eliminate timing issues, and directly control what piston is powered when by hand. From that machine, we couldn't get it to fully retract. Perhaps we didn't get the power-off sequence right (which was the point of the test).
The expectation is that you power on the bottom, then the middle, then the top to fully extend. Then you power off the top, middle, bottom to fully retract. I can't see how we missed that, but that would need to be working for a 3-stack piston to work.
Once we get a working manual process 3-stack piston, we can then work out how to get the redstone to send the correct timing signal.
part of the point of the exercise, is to figure it out, not to copy a YouTube video. By the time I get a 3-stack piston working, I will understand redstone and pistons better than most people who watch that video.
Personally I figured it out on my own, though my design much larger than the design shown in the video... involving way more repeaters...again good luck.
Knowing now that we stopped too soon when we deduced that the top block couldn't be pulled back, I suspect we'll get it figured out as well.
When we hit that point, it was pretty late, and we'd tried a lot of different models. It looked pretty obvious from 2 people experimenting at the same time (seperate models) and we both reached the same conclusion.
What I worked on, as my friend was less scientific, was maintaining seperate models as I tried variations. in this way, I could examine each failure, and compare to the other models, to determine if the failure reason was the same. Basically, was I actually designing the same machine in a different format, or had I discovered a new reason why it didn't work.
The pic in the video certainly looks compact, so it's good to know that it can be done, and done tightly.
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Retired StaffOf course it can be done. There are even quite a few designs that are infinitely expandable. You can build a 100-piston extender if you want. It might take about 2 hours to retract, but it will work.
I think you're looking at this as some sort of failure.
As my first post on here indicated, I didn't think it was even possible. Luckily, that's clarified.
Before my tests, we had no elevators. We knew that MC360 had redstone differences such that some PC concepts may not work. We wanted to see if it could be done, without any external information.
We discovered that powered pistons can't be retracted (the 2nd piston).
We then ran experiments that to us indicated that a sticky block can only pull one block.
Barring peer review or external information, that last was pretty conclusive.
And the final outcome for us was that we still didn't have elevators, but knew a lot more about powering pistons.
Given that until my first post in this thread, nobody actually posted a proof that it was possible, the value of my posting "incorrect" information was that somebody got off their ass and found proof, rather than telling the OP "keep trying" as if that was at all helpful.
Someone explaining why my tests failed (that a piston must be unpowered for it to be retracted by another piston) is what gives someone the information to figure out how to make it work. The pistons must be unpowered in sequence from the top most to the bottom in order to retract.
None of that happened, until I started posting about my test results.
The scientific method is never a failure as even disproven hypothesis further the base of knowledge.
Also attempting to do something and not succeeding equals failure.. Yes, you'll learn from the mistakes.... but for that moment when a solution to a problem couldn't be found, you failed....