Seeking suggestions on how to dispense an exact amount.

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

I'm working on a soul urn machine going from clay and ground netherrack to soul urns as my first big project now that I FINALLY got to soul forged steel and block dispensers etc.

At this stage I'm looking for ideas / suggestions on how to dispense from a single dispenser (block or vanilla) a set number of items, and then stop until a signal is sent again. Any ideas?

[Elevatator]

I would have nearly posted a pic of my setup, but then I thought: "meh. I would just spoiler maybe some other aspects"
So I will just give a hint: Block Dispenser combined with halfslabs and a full block.

[Itamarcu]

What about a clock that stops when you power it?

Another option would be putting 8 dispensers and powering them all together, to bottle urns.

[embirrim]

I'm working on a soul urn machine going from clay and ground netherrack to soul urns as my first big project now that I FINALLY got to soul forged steel and block dispensers etc.

At this stage I'm looking for ideas / suggestions on how to dispense from a single dispenser (block or vanilla) a set number of items, and then stop until a signal is sent again. Any ideas?

Try a buddy block under a block dispenser. Have the BD spit out full say, 8 full blocks and 1 non-opaque. Feed the output back into the Block dispenser, inverted. When it reaches the last block, it will not repower the BD and it will stop.

I've got a video with it, skip the first 11 minutes or so.

Spoiler

Show

Alternatively, have 8 dispensers, or 4 and make a double pulse.

[SterlingRed]

I'm not able to post a picture right now, so I'll try to describe it. A bd, containing whole blocks equal to the number of items you want to dispense and a single half block can generate the number of pulses you need to dispense the right number of items. Whole blocks transmit Redstone signals through them but half blocks do not. Have the bd full of blocks like I described receive the signal pulse. It will place and remove the first block. Make a Redstone circuit so that when the block is placed, it feeds the completed signal back into the bd. When the block isn't placed or a half slab is placed, the circuit is incomplete and not sending a signal back to the bd. What this does is it basically makes the bd become a toggleable pulse generator limited by the number of blocks you have in it.

Edit: ninjad by embrim. You can do it without his buddy block though if you use the signal generated by the circuit to also pulse your dispenser for the items.

[jorgebonafe]

↑ What he said.

Video example:

http://youtu.be/9uAKH7F3UOY?t=49s

[embirrim]

Edit: ninjad by embrim. You can do it without his buddy block though if you use the signal generated by the circuit to also pulse your dispenser for the items.

True that. My way also uses that system, but I'm still from the time where redstone loops were buggy so I tend to not use feedbacks and stuff, instead relying on the buddy block. But you're totally right! Just tweak away at the delays and it should work perfectly.

[Poppycocks]

I'm usually building my urn bottler with a buddy block which detect urn placement. The signal from the buddy block goes trough a repeater set to two, inverted and goes into a block dispenser with a half + full block. From there it forks into a inverted monostable which powers the urn placing dispenser and also powers off a 4 tick clock which powers the ground netherrack spitting dispenser.

This way netherrack is only dispensed if there's an urn present, the device will continue working until you're out of urns. You can then restart it by either placing a new urn manually, pulsing the buddy block or pulsing the inverter torch behind the buddy block.

The nice thing is, that it won't break if you're out of netherrack. The clock will simply continue pulsing until there's more supplied.

[milkmandan]

I'd probably do an AND gate with one input the detector and the other to a turntable. Output goes to dispenser. The dispenser then only gets the pulse when there's a urn present, it will continue after being resupplied without needing reset.

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

Wow! Great suggestions guys, thank you very much. I actually had started to think about things along those lines myself. I ended up using a block dispenser with one solid and like 7 or 8 (I forget off hand) non-solid blocks. I used an rs-nor latch to handle an on or off state for the set-up. When the latch was "on" a simple 1 torch 1 repeater pulsing set up ran both the block dispenser and the vanilla dispenser firing the nether rack. When the block dispenser got back to the solid block it sent the signal to the rs-nor latch to switch to "off" state. The off state had its power signal back to the torch/repeater pulser halting it.

This way the set up is "off" unless I sent a signal to it to start up and dispense only those 8 ground netherrack then shut off again, with each "turn on" signal being sent by a detector block which is placed to "see" the previous urn drop once its full...hmmm... just now though I can see how that setup could waste 8 netherrack after the lack urn drops.... D: X:

Is the buddy block placed diagonally below where the urn would go, or next to it. I suppose the buddy block could send the signal back to the rs-nor latch as it would be detecting when an urn is placed rather than when an urn is done?

Though...I suppose I'd want a detector block in there too to signal a dropping urn to tell the block dispenser to put in another urn if it has one available...

[darahalian]

Is the buddy block placed diagonally below where the urn would go, or next to it. I suppose the buddy block could send the signal back to the rs-nor latch as it would be detecting when an urn is placed rather than when an urn is done?

Though...I suppose I'd want a detector block in there too to signal a dropping urn to tell the block dispenser to put in another urn if it has one available...

My favorite method for a soul urn bottler uses both a detector block and a block dispenser looking at the urn. The signal from the detector is inverted and then sent through a monostable circuit to the block dispenser. When the DB can no longer see an urn (when it has turned into a soul urn and dropped into a hopper or water flow) the block dispenser gets a pulse and places another urn. Simple, compact, and relatively cheap.

edit: fixed quote

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

Hm..I'll try that. I've never really understood mono-stable circuts well so doing so will be a nice learning experience.

Currently I'm...raging...with regards to this due to problems trying to manage water flow issues. I'll probably have to just totally tear it down and rebuild again...*sigh*...

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

Well I seem to have gotten the water flow and all that working well, but I seem to be not very good with the mono-stable circuit : / It keeps pulsing instead of doing what I want it to do D:

[Poppycocks]

Well, a screenshot would come in handy there.

Are you using this one?


Or this one?


Or something else entirely which so happens to be a clock instead? :D

[tom_savage]

Might I suggest this thread? Lots of good builds in there. It should be easy to pull what you need and combine them to make your auto pottery/kiln/bottler. Condensing it might be another issue.

[Rawny]

I made a 4 part video series on how I made my automated soul urn making contraption. I've made it more efficient in an other world but I used all the same strategies in its rebuilding.

The way I do it, and I don't think it was mentioned, is with a detector block. Since the urn 'goes away' once it is filled... as long as there is an urn in front of the detector, I dispense a ground netherrack. The obvious drawback here is that you have to make certain your dispensing pulse is slow enough to give the urn enough time to 'go away'. The benefit of using this system... if you run out of ground netherrack at any point, the system does NOT 'break', it will just wait for more an continue on from there. What happens if there were only 5 ground netherrack in the systems where they arrange to pulse 8 times or systems with 8 dispensers?

First of four part series

Spoiler

Show

Actual bottling video

Spoiler

Show

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

Thanks everyone! I actually stumbled across how to fix the circuit and later watched one of those battosay vids and saw a different way to do it. But your screen shots were even more helpful / interesting, as I was just going by what I saw in the redstone section of minepedia.

Oh, and poppycocks I was using the first screenshot...I didn't even think about the second screen shot there...

Also thanks for the vid links, I'll check them out! :D

One of my real aggravations though was having to have the two hoppers adjacent to each other and then trying to keep the hellfire dust left overs from getting into the urn collection hopper that dumps them into the block dispenser. I find myself having alot of trouble controlled where items go as they often just want to spill everywhere or drop and end up caught on the lip of some other block rather than falling all the way into the water flow. :X

[Poppycocks]

You can isolate the hoppers by placing siding above one of the two. I usually put it above the urn hopper. The urns will still fall in.

Then again that indicates that your whole pottery system is dedicated to making urns and I find that too be too much work for too little gain. Putting the urns in manually works just as well - mostly because you have to put the rack/sdust in manually as well. No reason to dedicate an auto-pottery and auto-kiln to a machine that has to be fed on one end manually anyway.

Ah, but I'm getting into technicalities. Pardon me.

[Iakovosian]

This might be a bit late for your use (if you've already built the relevant mechanisms) but this is how I dispense 1-8 items at once:



EDIT: For the upcoming button length changes (in the new snapshots), you just need to send a minimum 8-tick pulse to the top block.

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

At Poppycocks:

Hm. I'll keep that in mind about the siding. Does that still work given the new water physics changes in release 4.14?

Also I get what your saying about work vs. return with a device like that. I'm an Role-play minding player though and having a machine that trapped souls for usage just fit for me in character. :D

At Iakovosian:

Hm. That's interesting. But I'm not even sure I get why that works?! Specifically the 2nd item bit (the button and the rest I think I get). *feels like I fail at redstone D: *


In general:

Also none of this is too late, I ended up starting a new world. It's kinda strange this run in that I've had the good fortune to get together plenty of hemp and have everything ready for the windmill stage, except I haven't been able to find any redstone yet D: The caves in this map in the area my mines are are hyper twisted in on themselves with really large chambers that have lots of open over hanging cave openings. :( That means despite wanting to go deeper sooner, I gotta be careful and clear out upper caves first lest I end up with creepers/zombies/ etc jumping down on my head or coming at me on my way back from a deeper mine. :/

[Iakovosian]

[...] Specifically the 2nd item bit [...]

When the torch behind the dispenser is on, it is 'half-powering' the dispenser. This makes it detect redstone updates in the surrounding blocks (a bit like the piston BUD switches) and dispenses an item each time this happens. So for the 2-item output, it detects a change when the button goes on and when it goes off again! :)

Another redstone mechanism at play with the higher number item dispensers is the way a torch will flicker on and off if a block is above it and redstone is on the torch's block (if you get what I mean). Hence the 'torch burnout' subtitle of the video.

[Poppycocks]

At Poppycocks:

Hm. I'll keep that in mind about the siding. Does that still work given the new water physics changes in release 4.14?

It should as there's no water above the urn hopper - there's a siding.

[STrRedWolf]

From what I've seen so far... nobody's done the obvious. Hopper into a regular dispenser and fire it off every tick. If it's arrows, though, you'll need to filter them out, or else they will be fired.