Minecraft: Redstone Basics

The beauty of redstone! It is as simple as you want to make it, or as complex as you can dream.   Rovers, you can lay down a track of red stone but it will be useless by itself.  A dull, dark red line on the ground that does nothing exciting.  Don't let your red stone dust sit dull and lifeless upon the ground!

No, for redstone to come to life you need a source of power!  There are several sources of power you can take advantage of.

The lever.  This will turn a circuit on when you flip it down, and turn it off when you flip is back up.  It is very useful when you want your circuit to run on command. 

The redstone torch.   This is always on.  Mostly.  There are tricks you can use red stone torches in different ways.  We'll get into that later.

The simply button is a little different.  When you press it, it will turn a circuit on for a few moments before turning it off.  This is useful when you want a circuit to turn on quickly.

 

Pressure plates are cool too.  The wooden one will turn on when anything walks across it or is dropped on it.  It will power a circuit as long as it is pressed down upon.

  The stone pressure plate can only be turned on by something the weight of a player or a monster.  It will turn on as long as something is standing on the pressure plate.

 

All of these inputs will only power redstone up to 15 blocks away.  here you can see 16 blocks of red stone dust.  The final block in the bottom is dark, not powered.  So sad....it deserves to shine!!

This limit can be overcome with a simple object called a redstone repeater.  A repeater will expand the signal another 15 blocks, as shown here.

Before repeaters were added to the game, we had a hack for that.  Red stone torches.  If placed on the side of a block, they change the signal.  If it is on, they turn it off.  If it is off, they turn it on.  you can see two such blocks here in a circuit.  The function  just like a repeater, but you had to at least have two of them in a row (or else it would just turn the circuit off).

If you want to be seen as a bit old school (or you are short on materials) you can do this as well.

All of these inputs are useless if you have nothing to power. You can power doors, as shown.  Be warned, it may not open the door unless you remove the power source and then put it in again.

You can also power trap doors.  There are many other items you can power such as pistons, minecart tracks.  If you run powered red stone to many items, they will turn on.  Experiment, find out what the power does, and then experiment.  It is fun!

Remember switches?  And those repeater things?  Another thing repeaters do is DELAY a signal.  If you right click a repeater, the posts will move apart.  There are 4 clicks, each representing a longer delay.  If you put repeaters in a row, you can generate a significant delay.

A significant delay.

And if you attach it to a button, you can generate a long enough delay to make it through a trap door.  Time for you to go out and begin experimenting.