Sharing useful builds that get the job done

[Six]

So I thought it'd be useful to have a thread similar to 'Show us your builds', but aimed at sharing small structured designs for useful devices you've built in BTW. They don't have to be the best, fastest designs ever, nor be super complex (simple is a plus imo). Just things you've found useful that get the job done.

Things to include in your posts would be:

• Simple title / description of what it does / is useful for.
• Pictures and explanation, so that someone else could build it (or at least attempt to).
• List of the neat features, such as it being very small, inexpensive, nether compatible, etc.

As an example of what I mean, I'll start:



Small automatic melon/pumpkin farmer

Front:

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Back:

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This small design relies on one trick I discovered. Normally this kind of set-up would just continuously pulse, with the BD spitting out and sucking in the melon again and again. However, I did this:

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Inside each dispenser is one piece of redstone which it is unable to place on the planter. This means when it detects a block, it will cycle though the inventory of the BD till it reaches the redstone, then stop.

Neat features:

• Fits in a 2 wide, 3 deep area
• Can be repeated and placed right next to each other.
• Redstone 'wiring' is just 1 torch and 1 dust (+1 inside the BD).

[MoRmEnGiL]

Wow, that's a very cool design, I like it!

[embirrim]

Cool design. One small question though. Did you actually try it without the redstone? I believe a simple torch would suffice... Planters are non-opaque blocks, therefore melons can't be placed on them. If you simply invert the signal from the DB it should be enough... That's how I did mine at least.
DB off, BD on; melon grows, BD sucks it in, DB changes to off, BD tries to place melon and fails; rinse repeat.

[Elevatator]

Cool design. One small question though. Did you actually try it without the redstone? I believe a simple torch would suffice... Planters are non-opaque blocks, therefore melons can't be placed on them. If you simply invert the signal from the DB it should be enough... That's how I did mine at least.
DB off, BD on; melon grows, BD sucks it in, DB changes to off, BD tries to place melon and fails; rinse repeat.

The torch would be placed on the BD, or the DB.

[embirrim]

The torch would be placed on the BD, or the DB.

I don't know if that is a question, but the torch is placed on the detector block, under the wood, next to the block dispenser.

[Elevatator]

Oh. I think I misunderstood you. I thought you ment that you could use a normal torch instead of the dust in the BD.

[jorgebonafe]

Simple automatic kiln.
I always build this in my world as soon as I can... Its pretty cheap and mostly automatic. You just refill the BD with whatever you want to cook and it works untill its all done.

There is a first BD for a timer, fed directly from the turntable that controls the bellows (third speed, two torches on opposite sides), with one opaque and one full block, and a second BD that places the pottery/ore to cook. The input to the second BD comes from the timer and is inverted, so that normally the BD places the block, and when it pulses it will and place the next block. I put also one stone block in the BD to push the cooked pottery out, and three crucibles/cauldrons in front of the kiln will collect them.

I made a video, it should be very easy to understand just watching it. This kiln works great for temporary automation, until you can make a more complex, full auto potery.

[Itamarcu]

Well, I don't have pictures, but:

Easy Hibachi Control
When you want to have controllable hibachis (on/off), you don't have to use complex redstone, or consume a lot of space just to connect all 9 hibachis. You can put a redstone torch under each hibachi, and add a piston-controlled water gate, which (when powered) will stop the water and let the Hibachis burn, but when unpowered will make the water flow and turn off the hibachis. This is very compact, although it doesn't turn off all hibachis at once (Which some might not like).

Also, if it matters to you, it DOES work in the nether - just use lava instead of water.

[Heilkaiba]

I'm not sure how reliable this is but, if you turn off the middle hibachi (in the 9x9 grid under a cauldron/crucible), it effectively turns the whole thing off. The cooking indicator starts to rise every few seconds if the fire is stoked (I presume due to fire spreading), but it never reaches completion. Slightly hacky and not reliable enough in cases of explosive contents but it is a simple solution nonetheless.

[jorgebonafe]

I'm not sure how reliable this is but, if you turn off the middle hibachi (in the 9x9 grid under a cauldron/crucible), it effectively turns the whole thing off. The cooking indicator starts to rise every few seconds if the fire is stoked (I presume due to fire spreading), but it never reaches completion. Slightly hacky and not reliable enough in cases of explosive contents but it is a simple solution nonetheless.

A lot of people like to turn off the hibachis to kill the sound and particles from the fires to reduce lag, so that wouldn't help very much...

[Ultionis]

This here is a Nether specific Soul Urn production setup, by far the most compact I have built thus far.

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All you need in the timing Block Dispencer is a halfslab and a piece of redstone

This second bit I like particularly.

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Thats a Sticky Piston connected to a Detector Block. Whenever ground Netherrack turns to Hellfire Dust upon contact with the Soul Sand Hopper, it gets pushed into my Obsidian Pipe (But it might as well be a hopper for non-BTB users). Quite useful if you're too lazy too hook the piston up to a timer.

[Aonny]

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Oh man that little setup is really good. I think I'm going to borrow that some time.

[Six]

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That is a really clever design which I'd never considered before. Would be very handy in the nether.

Did you actually try it without the redstone?

I believe I did, and more than that while running around my base I hear this setup placing and removing blocks when there are multiple stacks in them. Maybe the dirt planter is a special case, as they can be grown on them? Or maybe it's just pumpkins I hear, if they are different.

[Six]

Waterless automatic saw:
For a long time I was doing all my sawing by hand using a saw placed vertically above me, as I couldn't think of an autosaw design I was happy with. Then I realised I could copy the (near) exact design I use for the bottom of my soul bottler and even keep the saw in the same spot. It's not the fastest saw ever, but I just keep excess in the chest below and as that gets low I put more on to chop.
Front:

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Things to chop are placed in the BD and you press the button on the side of the detector to start it. Note the redstone torch at the back you can see through the glass.

Top with wiring:

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Redstone torch from the first pic is attached to the side of the block I am standing on, under the powered wire. Repeater needs to be on the 3rd or 4th setting to make sure the torch changes. I wanted to compact the design down more, but it required the repeater before the torch or sometimes the detector block signal would be too quick and it would stall.

Features:

• Reasonably small, vertical design.
• Fully nether compatible.
• Requires no clocks or pulser, so become inactive when empty.

-EDIT-
When messing around with tweaking my soul bottler, I managed to change the wiring for this saw to make it smaller and get the BD and detector on the same side:

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[embirrim]

Waterless automatic saw:

WHY?! I always have problems with saws, always need to put to hopper because of the damn items not falling down on the same block. Why didn't I remember to put the saw on top. You are a genius sir. That is a very handy design, if I ever build some kind of tree farm in the nether that directly outputs to a saw, I'll use that. And it can be automated with BC gates to restart even after it has run out.

[Ultionis]

Waterless automatic saw:

Now that is quite brilliant. I'm having trouble placing my saw in regards to a Turntable, as I try to centralise as many builds as possible around a single timer. My Nether base is a work in progress, my saw used to be where the Soul Urn bottler I posted above is now.

I might give this a shot if my OCD does not compell me to hook it up to the timer ;)

[Six]

Automatic soul bottler:
I tweaked around with my soul bottler design in creative to remove the water and make it Nether compatible. It's still manual loading, so you have to put in the ground netherrack and keep it filled with urns, but once it is, it operates at 26 urns per minute. It also fits in a 3 x 4 x 9 high area (8 high if you use the alternate wiring).
Most of the wiring and mechanism:

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Top wiring and other side:

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Those things on top are 8 vanilla dispensers pointed inward, with a powered soulsand hopper below them. You just need to load up those dispensers with ground netherrack (make sure they are evenly loaded, it turns off when they are all empty, so uneven loading wastes dust) and the BD with urns, then press the button to start it. The soul urns collect in the bottom hopper and the hellfire dust goes into the chest. Note the siding placed above the hellfire chest hopper which I'm not sure is needed, but is there to try and stop any of the netherrack falling directly into the wrong hopper without being filtered.

You can also reduce the hight of it all by one by changing the top wiring as in the picture below, but that makes it slightly more annoying to fill the dispensers.

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Features:

• Fast bottling at around 26 urns per minute.
• Nether compatible.
• Compact size, 3 wide x 4 deep x 9 (or 8) high.

As an added bonus, while tweaking this I transferred the wiring over to the saw design, which makes that even more compact and moves the BD and detector to the same side:

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[ExpHP]

Automatic soul bottler:
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Ooh, very fast!

The bottom looks interesting. I see nothing keeping the Block Dispenser on while the urn is there. Does it simply bottle the urns so quickly that the urn is already filled by the time the pulse from the detector block turns off?

-snip-

I also like this idea of using a Buddy Block and a counter. I'm surprised I haven't thought of this; normally, I'd use some form of monostable circuit or edge detector and end up with a wire that needs to be run around in a large circle just to avoid touching anything.

I've been needing a flat design for a soul bottler to fit under an existing Soulsand hopper in my world, so I might be borrowing this.

[agentwiggles]

This thread is sweet, props to everyone who's posted so far.

[Six]

The bottom looks interesting. I see nothing keeping the Block Dispenser on while the urn is there. Does it simply bottle the urns so quickly that the urn is already filled by the time the pulse from the detector block turns off?

The way it operates is: a pulse goes out from the detector, gets inverted to the BD, which turns it off for a second and back on, placing a urn. At the same time the signal goes up to the torch by the piston, turns it on one tick later, pushing any filtered hellfire dust into the other hopper. That same signal goes up to the block above the piston torch, turning on that wire and making all the dispensers spit their ground netherrack. Finally, that netherrack gets filtered, the newly created soul urn falls past the detector, and a new pulse is sent out starting it again.

[mCharger]

So, in tribute to America and Independence Day, I built a 4 shot, long range cannon that I have dubbed "Uncle Sam."



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

It's a simple cannon that just uses a bit of redstone wiring and block dispensers to hurl 4 TNT over a vast distance at an opponent. If it were a rifle, I'd call it a semi-automatic weapon, as it completely reloads itself after every shot, (assuming you filled all the dispensers with TNT) but it should not be re-fired until it has finished firing the last shot. It's range is almost the Far Render distance, so it's not one of those super ridiculous cannons you see on Youtube, but it's not something you would laugh at if it were suddenly outside your anarchy server castle's walls. It only uses 11 priming charges each shot, so it's not a huge waste of TNT either, since it shoots 4 TNT each shot. There is also a lens on the bottom of the barrel that lights up most of it's firing range.

Here it is with the steel shell taken away.


By mcharger at 2012-07-04

Here it is shortly after a shot has been fired. This picture shows the firing pattern of it most of the time. Three of the shots normally stick together while one fires shorter than the others. Due to the way TNT falls after it's primed, the shots can go any number of distances, although there is a "sweet spot" that is usually hits.


By mcharger at 2012-07-04

If you're trying to recreate this, I'd recommend building it one "layer" of priming shots at a time. Make sure everything is getting signals before you load it with TNT, and don't put TNT into the actual shooting dispensers until you've fired it with just primers a couple time. As you can see, I used obsidian for my building material, but anything else works fine as long as you use the water at the bottom of the priming barrel. If you really want to, you can use the general idea to build one of those crazy 100 TNT space program type cannons, but honestly those aren't nearly as practical as a cannon this size. Other improvements you could potentially add would be some kind of timer that automatically sends a pulse into the firing system after the time it takes to fire a shot.

So far, I've only caused one misfire with it, and that was because the priming barrel had completely run out of TNT, so the four shots didn't ever make it out of the barrel.

[Itamarcu]

So, in tribute to America and Independence Day, I built a 4 shot, long range cannon that I have dubbed "Uncle Sam."

That's awesome.

Could you make a Mining Charge shooting version of it, for close range? It would be even more useful in certain cases.

[mCharger]

So, in tribute to America and Independence Day, I built a 4 shot, long range cannon that I have dubbed "Uncle Sam."

That's awesome.

Could you make a Mining Charge shooting version of it, for close range? It would be even more useful in certain cases.

I suppose I could, Mining Charges would have to be the priming explosives, while TNT remains the projectile. I will get on that right away.

[Itamarcu]

So, in tribute to America and Independence Day, I built a 4 shot, long range cannon that I have dubbed "Uncle Sam."

That's awesome.

Could you make a Mining Charge shooting version of it, for close range? It would be even more useful in certain cases.

I suppose I could, Mining Charges would have to be the priming explosives, while TNT remains the projectile. I will get on that right away.

Why not have Mining charges as the projectile? If they face forward, they will stick to the wall they're shot at (I think) so you won't have to build the cannon at a specific location.

EDIT: No, that isn't possible because the mining charges detonate when something explode near them. They don't fly away.

[mCharger]

Why not have Mining charges as the projectile? If they face forward, they will stick to the wall they're shot at (I think) so you won't have to build the cannon at a specific location.

EDIT: No, that isn't possible because the mining charges detonate when something explode near them. They don't fly away.

You can't have mining charges not attached to the wall, although I figured out they will go on the floor, pretending that there is an invisible wall. Still, I couldn't make as good of a cannon using JUST mining charges as a primer, so I did a bit of a balance.


By mcharger at 2012-07-05

This cannon is a bit more open, and as a result it isn't nearly as consistent when firing. It fires 5 shots, and uses 3 mining charges and 7 regular TNT as primers, so it's a 2-1 primer/shot ratio.

I'd classify it as the Medium-Long Range, It's max firing distance is about 100 blocks shorter than my other cannon, but it's still quite powerful, considering it launches 5 shots in a more "shotgun" style.


By mcharger at 2012-07-05

It's a little less reliable though, so far I've had 3 minor misfires which destroyed a dispenser, and I've had one random total misfire that destroyed everything except the obsidian. Overall my experiments have shown mining charges aren't as good of a primer for cannons as TNT, they don't seem to want to send the same levels of power that regular TNT does.