Here is an idea I've been wanting to build for a while (I don't use mods, so I had to wait for the official pistons). It's a semi-automatic tree-farm.
[edit]Update.
I refined my newer and cleaner version and greatly improved the timing. It seems to work perfectly now.
Check my (admittedly crappy) demo video here. Apologies for the unconventional video upload location, but out of privacy considerations I refuse to register for Google services.
Download available (cleaner version). Use the lever to start/stop the clock.
[/edit]
Original post follows.
The farm will drive a sand/gravel column straight down through a tree and extracts all the logs from it. The logs are neatly packed at the side and the saplings will automatically fall. The device is capable of automatically detecting tree growth using the well known trick of placing a repeater against a sapling with a clock attached.
Let's start with some common building blocks before looking at the tree farm itself:
Block Detector:
I'm sure most people have discovered this one themselves already. Useful and simple. Allows us to build contraptions without wiring them to a clock. Since pistons are very noisy we don't want a clock to trigger them when not needed.
Block elevator:
A block detector (front) which powers a (delayed) vertical piston and a horizontal sticky piston. This will pull any block placed in front of it and push it up.
Here is a top-down view:
Ok, keep those in mind. This is the output of our tree-farm:
It will arrange logs in a horizontal plane (size: 8x12). A block detector at the end detects when a block moves into the eight position and moves the entire row to the left. Using the updated wiring of the repeaters, this is very simple to build.
This is the ground area:
The sapling is placed next to the piston. The top part (next to the sign) is a 5-clock which will pover the piston (through the tiny loop) whenever a tree has grown and pushes the bottom above the hole. The redstone wire running to/from this hole is what sets the entire machine in motion (it travels in a bigger loop upwards on the left).
Wooden blocks will be pushed over the hole, while gravel and sand will drop down instead.
The wire running upwards ends here on the left side. A torch at it's side triggers the floating piston. This piston has two purposes:
First it caps the three to whatever height you choose to utilize. Second, it holds up the sand/gravel column preventing the device from pushing down. As long as a block is above the hole, this piston will be open.
Here we look at the same level from a slightly different angle. The rightmost piston is powered by the negated signal of vertical wiring (i.e. whenever the floating piston is open, the rightmost piston will start pushing the sand column to the left. There is a downwards piston next to the column (barely visible behind the dirt block) which drives the column through the tree. Both these pistons are triggered by block detectors, though the vertical one triggers unconditionally.
This picture shows the backside of the above part. The chest is there to block the the horizontal piston from pushing the column out further to the right.
The remainder consists of the basic building blocks: block detector triggered pistons and block elevators as described above.
Looking down the hole:
At the bottom of the hole we push the column outwards:
Towards a series of block elevators, this is the bottom one:
And at the top we push the blocks over the edge, letting gravity complete our loop:
Conclusion: a series of fairly simple building blocks to create a contraption which makes harvesting trees way more complex than it needs to be. :tongue.gif: Pistons are a good addition to the game :biggrin.gif:
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
This looks pretty cool. I'm a little unclear on how the gravel-column is supposed to be driven down the trunk of the tree. Also, how do deal with trees of different height?
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Hans Lemurson's Thread of Links:http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/371610-hans-lemursons-thread-of-links/
Look here to find links to my inventions, creations, and my Youtube channel featuring Amazing Creations of Mine (Redstone engineering FTW!!!) and charming Music-Videos about clones. I also made "Minecraft in Minecraft" (2D platformer/building game). I'm currently trying to make a computer.
Sounds insanely interesting, looks insanely interesting, sounds and looks insanely complicated :ohmy.gif: Please make a video if you can! :biggrin.gif:
This looks pretty cool. I'm a little unclear on how the gravel-column is supposed to be driven down the trunk of the tree. Also, how do deal with trees of different height?
This is essentially just a vertical version of the infinite horizontal block loop that we've often seen.
The gravel column is moved above the tree and pushed down by a piston. The reason that gravel and sand are used is because of the gravity effect which allows dealing with trees of unpredictable height. I.e. depending on the tree height a different amount of sand blocks will fall on top before the downwards pushing piston will start affecting the tree.
Here is a world download so that you can give it a try and/or dissect it. [edit]Updated version with slightly better timing, gets stuck less.[/edit]. Don't forget to reset the clock (use the lever).
I'm experimenting a bit with the depth of the hole, height of the column and the timing of the repeaters to optimize the size of the device. In the linked world I tried a very shallow drop into the underground hole. I hoped the device was fast enough to handle it, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
In an earlier build (the one in the pictures) the drop was about the height of the maximum tree, this ensures that the gravel blocks can be sent into the hole at maximum speed and the device has plenty of time to circulate the blocks back upwards. The smaller drop in the newer version negatively affects the reliability and it gets stuck more often. To unstuck it, you need to find the piston which is powered but not extended (usually on the 1st plateau above the ground) and knock out a sand block.
Sounds insanely interesting, looks insanely interesting, sounds and looks insanely complicated :ohmy.gif: Please make a video if you can! :biggrin.gif:
It's not really that difficult to understand, you can check the world download above to see how it works. I'll explain the basic idea below.
Imagine a small piston loop which pushes a couple of blocks in a continuous circle (we've seen a couple of these, is an example of a small one). Since trees grow vertically, we need to have a vertical version of this. The block detector and block elevators show how to create corner pieces of the loop (i.e. to change direction of the moving blocks).
For larger versions of such loops you cannot remove any of the circulating blocks since pushing one block triggers a move of all adjacent blocks. This is a problem, since we need a gap in one of the sides (remember this is a vertical loop) to allow the tree to grow. To solve this, gravity affected blocks can be used which fall down from the top towards the bottom.
-->
+----+ (1)
| <--- sand/gravel blocks start falling here.
|
| t <--- tree grows here
+----+
Now that we have a gap, we can grow a tree (t) inside. Since the tree itself is not affected by gravity, the corner piece at position (1) needs to push the blocks downwards such that the tree is pushed into motion. However the goal is to extract the logs, so we must split the tree from other gravity blocks, which we can do by using the gravity once more:
-->
+----+
|
| t -->
| +.---
|
+-----+
<--
At the position of the dot the logs move to the side and the sand blocks drop down separating the two. The sand returns to the loop and the logs are automatically extracted which solves the intended goal.
The remaining problem is timing, spacing and having a sufficient amount of sand to always be able to push through the entire tree.
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Bump. I added a link to a demo video and a world download in the original post for those interested.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Well done! This beats my version due to its simplicity
But without the ability to convert blocks into item form, [and auto plant], it really saddens me that this concept could not be fully automated =(
Thanks, do you have a post of your version somewhere? I would love to see it.
And yes indeed, if we could automatically break and store blocks, we could fully automate this and achieve a higher form of laziness :smile.gif:
I'm hoping the following will someday happen:
Allocator mod added to minecraft to transfer blocks/items between storage and the world in item form.
Dispenser get modified to transfer between the world and its internal storage in block/active form
I.e. a triggered dispenser would place a block, use flint&steel, fill/empty a bucket, shoot an arrow, plant a seed or sapling, etc.
A means to automatically break blocks gets added. E.g. the dispenser can consume blocks into storage at its rear, a new block is introduced to do this, or a dispenser "dispensing" a tool will use that tool on the block in front of it to break it (consuming durability in the process).
But such matters are better discussed in the suggestion forum.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Thanks, do you have a post of your version somewhere? I would love to see it.
And yes indeed, if we could automatically break and store blocks, we could fully automate this and achieve a higher form of laziness :smile.gif:
[Big list]
But such matters are better discussed in the suggestion forum.
Here it is. Too big and only limited to 4wood trees. But was a "breakthrough" back then.
I don't think those will happen. Maybe, maybe not.
Pushing the game into "industrial revolution" would break the survival concept of the game. And with the upcoming survival update, it would be contradictory of where Minecraft is headed.
Great idea, i was wondering if you knew a way to put 2-3 of these in a more compact area it would be useful, 1 tree at a time semi-auto is slightly slower then doing it by hand. Now if you had three next to each other, a person can start to load up on some massive wood stacks. I've put three of your same models together but it just takes up to much room. wondering if you had any ideas how to compact it. Thanks
Great idea, i was wondering if you knew a way to put 2-3 of these in a more compact area it would be useful, 1 tree at a time semi-auto is slightly slower then doing it by hand. Now if you had three next to each other, a person can start to load up on some massive wood stacks. I've put three of your same models together but it just takes up to much room. wondering if you had any ideas how to compact it. Thanks
What exactly is your space requirement? The floor plan of the tree growing area is 5x5 to guarantee growth of all tree types. The height is required to ensure we can always drive a sand column of the maximum tree height downwards. With a bit of effort you can probably squeeze it into a floor plan of 5x10.
When building multiple of these, I would connect their outputs into a single shared output space by merging the output streams which is not so hard to do.
I'll try to trim it a bit.
[edit]Done. It's not significantly smaller, but it's a bit better. 5x8 floor area per tree-farm (not counting the output joiner). When placed side-by side leave 1 block between them. I didn't mirror them but if you do you can share the clock. For an even greater output put four of these back-to-back and use a total of three output joiners to create a single stream or use two output joiners and a single 10x24 storage area growing inwards from both sides. If merging four of these into a single output stream, you most likely need to limit the output rate of the harvester (increase the delay of the block detector attached to the clock, i.e. the piston which pushes out the stem).
These designs are best used with birch, spruce or pine as they never grow branches. For oak trees, limit the hight to prevent branches. For the other ones, taller trees will simply yield more wood as the harvesting inconvenience does not apply to these tree farms. Just raise the design accordingly in height. The device should be twice as tall as the largest tree you want it to be able to handle (with the downwards pushing machinery in the middle).
Front view:
Output joiner:
World download
Also contains original tree farm design, ice generator, some light switch circuits and misc. other stuff.
[/edit]
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
I'm trying to replicate this through watching your video over and over but I'm baffled by the underground part would it be possible to post a tutorial or set of blueprints many thanks
There are two world downloads available so you can just dissect it. One is in the original post and one in the post directly above yours. Underground is basically just a block detector attached to a piston and a block elevator on the opposite side.
I skipped over it pretty quickly, but it isn't complex at all. This is where the blocks drop into:
The block falling down completes the circuit and gets pushed outwards (you can see the hole and the dirt on which the tree grows in the ceiling).
This is the block elevator on the opposite side:
The incoming block (from the side) completes the circuit, the sticky piston retracts and pulls the block on the regular piston which pushes the block upwards.
This picture gives an overview of the entire underground area:
That's all there is to it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Here is an idea I've been wanting to build for a while (I don't use mods, so I had to wait for the official pistons). It's a semi-automatic tree-farm.
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Seems like a contradiction, doesn't it. Well, that is not really the case.
First of all, you're gravedigging a fairly old thread. At the time of writing that, it was absolutely true. Second, I support the allocator proposal (i.e. add it to the vanilla game) but I don't actually use the mod.
In fact, I don't even use my own mod, which to me is more of a proof-of-concept for something I would like to see added to the game rather than something I use in my regular worlds. Naturally, I have test worlds where I play around with it for demonstration purposes and to find it's strengths and weaknesses. These worlds are in my development version of Minecraft (i.e. the one I compiled and modified), not the one I play.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Support the Allocator! Find my inventions such as my pressure plate removal detector on the About Me page of my profile.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Well I have my next project. I am so going to build one of these. It should be a piece of cake, I've already built all the components when I made my 5x5 hopper and stacker.
Thanks for the inspiration. I built my Tile-able Tree Farm Version 2.0 Last night and today. I managed to make it big enough to take advantage of the highest birch tree while still only having 11x9 footprint and these can be placed side by side
I could save a considerable amount of space because my elevator design doubles as a block detector. I can push sand to exactly where I need it and then push it up.
[edit]Update.
I refined my newer and cleaner version and greatly improved the timing. It seems to work perfectly now.
Check my (admittedly crappy) demo video here. Apologies for the unconventional video upload location, but out of privacy considerations I refuse to register for Google services.
Download available (cleaner version). Use the lever to start/stop the clock.
[/edit]
Original post follows.
Let's start with some common building blocks before looking at the tree farm itself:
Block Detector:
I'm sure most people have discovered this one themselves already. Useful and simple. Allows us to build contraptions without wiring them to a clock. Since pistons are very noisy we don't want a clock to trigger them when not needed.
Block elevator:
Here is a top-down view:
Ok, keep those in mind. This is the output of our tree-farm:
This is the ground area:
Wooden blocks will be pushed over the hole, while gravel and sand will drop down instead.
First it caps the three to whatever height you choose to utilize. Second, it holds up the sand/gravel column preventing the device from pushing down. As long as a block is above the hole, this piston will be open.
The remainder consists of the basic building blocks: block detector triggered pistons and block elevators as described above.
Looking down the hole:
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Look here to find links to my inventions, creations, and my Youtube channel featuring Amazing Creations of Mine (Redstone engineering FTW!!!) and charming Music-Videos about clones. I also made "Minecraft in Minecraft" (2D platformer/building game). I'm currently trying to make a computer.
This is essentially just a vertical version of the infinite horizontal block loop that we've often seen.
The gravel column is moved above the tree and pushed down by a piston. The reason that gravel and sand are used is because of the gravity effect which allows dealing with trees of unpredictable height. I.e. depending on the tree height a different amount of sand blocks will fall on top before the downwards pushing piston will start affecting the tree.
Here is a world
downloadso that you can give it a try and/or dissect it. [edit]Updated version with slightly better timing, gets stuck less.[/edit]. Don't forget to reset the clock (use the lever).I'm experimenting a bit with the depth of the hole, height of the column and the timing of the repeaters to optimize the size of the device. In the linked world I tried a very shallow drop into the underground hole. I hoped the device was fast enough to handle it, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
In an earlier build (the one in the pictures) the drop was about the height of the maximum tree, this ensures that the gravel blocks can be sent into the hole at maximum speed and the device has plenty of time to circulate the blocks back upwards. The smaller drop in the newer version negatively affects the reliability and it gets stuck more often. To unstuck it, you need to find the piston which is powered but not extended (usually on the 1st plateau above the ground) and knock out a sand block.
The world download should clarify it quite a bit.
It's not really that difficult to understand, you can check the world download above to see how it works. I'll explain the basic idea below.
Imagine a small piston loop which pushes a couple of blocks in a continuous circle (we've seen a couple of these, is an example of a small one). Since trees grow vertically, we need to have a vertical version of this. The block detector and block elevators show how to create corner pieces of the loop (i.e. to change direction of the moving blocks).
For larger versions of such loops you cannot remove any of the circulating blocks since pushing one block triggers a move of all adjacent blocks. This is a problem, since we need a gap in one of the sides (remember this is a vertical loop) to allow the tree to grow. To solve this, gravity affected blocks can be used which fall down from the top towards the bottom.
Now that we have a gap, we can grow a tree (t) inside. Since the tree itself is not affected by gravity, the corner piece at position (1) needs to push the blocks downwards such that the tree is pushed into motion. However the goal is to extract the logs, so we must split the tree from other gravity blocks, which we can do by using the gravity once more:
At the position of the dot the logs move to the side and the sand blocks drop down separating the two. The sand returns to the loop and the logs are automatically extracted which solves the intended goal.
The remaining problem is timing, spacing and having a sufficient amount of sand to always be able to push through the entire tree.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
But without the ability to convert blocks into item form, [and auto plant], it really saddens me that this concept could not be fully automated =(
The piston trigger is clever too, great minds...
Thanks, do you have a post of your version somewhere? I would love to see it.
And yes indeed, if we could automatically break and store blocks, we could fully automate this and achieve a higher form of laziness :smile.gif:
I'm hoping the following will someday happen:
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Here it is. Too big and only limited to 4wood trees. But was a "breakthrough" back then.
I don't think those will happen. Maybe, maybe not.
Pushing the game into "industrial revolution" would break the survival concept of the game. And with the upcoming survival update, it would be contradictory of where Minecraft is headed.
What exactly is your space requirement? The floor plan of the tree growing area is 5x5 to guarantee growth of all tree types. The height is required to ensure we can always drive a sand column of the maximum tree height downwards. With a bit of effort you can probably squeeze it into a floor plan of 5x10.
When building multiple of these, I would connect their outputs into a single shared output space by merging the output streams which is not so hard to do.
I'll try to trim it a bit.
[edit]Done. It's not significantly smaller, but it's a bit better. 5x8 floor area per tree-farm (not counting the output joiner). When placed side-by side leave 1 block between them. I didn't mirror them but if you do you can share the clock. For an even greater output put four of these back-to-back and use a total of three output joiners to create a single stream or use two output joiners and a single 10x24 storage area growing inwards from both sides. If merging four of these into a single output stream, you most likely need to limit the output rate of the harvester (increase the delay of the block detector attached to the clock, i.e. the piston which pushes out the stem).
These designs are best used with birch, spruce or pine as they never grow branches. For oak trees, limit the hight to prevent branches. For the other ones, taller trees will simply yield more wood as the harvesting inconvenience does not apply to these tree farms. Just raise the design accordingly in height. The device should be twice as tall as the largest tree you want it to be able to handle (with the downwards pushing machinery in the middle).
Front view:
Output joiner:
World download
Also contains original tree farm design, ice generator, some light switch circuits and misc. other stuff.
[/edit]
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
There are two world downloads available so you can just dissect it. One is in the original post and one in the post directly above yours. Underground is basically just a block detector attached to a piston and a block elevator on the opposite side.
I skipped over it pretty quickly, but it isn't complex at all. This is where the blocks drop into:
The block falling down completes the circuit and gets pushed outwards (you can see the hole and the dirt on which the tree grows in the ceiling).
This is the block elevator on the opposite side:
The incoming block (from the side) completes the circuit, the sticky piston retracts and pulls the block on the regular piston which pushes the block upwards.
This picture gives an overview of the entire underground area:
That's all there is to it.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
..wat
Seems like a contradiction, doesn't it. Well, that is not really the case.
First of all, you're gravedigging a fairly old thread. At the time of writing that, it was absolutely true. Second, I support the allocator proposal (i.e. add it to the vanilla game) but I don't actually use the mod.
In fact, I don't even use my own mod, which to me is more of a proof-of-concept for something I would like to see added to the game rather than something I use in my regular worlds. Naturally, I have test worlds where I play around with it for demonstration purposes and to find it's strengths and weaknesses. These worlds are in my development version of Minecraft (i.e. the one I compiled and modified), not the one I play.
I'm still looking for more feedback on my configurable Redstone Gate mod. All gates and common circuits (such as e.g. clocks, edge detectors, latches and Flip-Flops) in a single block.
Playing Minecraft since [Friday, March 19, 2010, 9:20:21 PM] (First indev world save)
I could save a considerable amount of space because my elevator design doubles as a block detector. I can push sand to exactly where I need it and then push it up.
Seen here:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/843150-11x9-tile-able-semi-automatic-tree-farm/
Playing Minecraft since [Friday, March 19, 2010, 9:20:21 PM] (First indev world save)