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| A simple 1-2 stair, unactivated. |
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| A multilevel 1-2 stair, activated. |
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| A simple stair of redstone, effective for going up short distances. |
Alright, I know this blog is not known by many, so I thought I would help some of you out with redstone contraptions. Redstone is one of my favorite things to use in Minecraft because of how it can be so versatile. Redstone actually also gives off a slight amount of light while activated (next to a redstone torch or activated by a mechanism). A simple way to go upwards with redstone is to use either a staircase and place the redstone on that, or to use what I call the 1-2 stairs. The 1-2 stairs is constructed in a fashion where the first piece of redstone is place, two solid blocks are placed in a row after it, one piece of redstone on the first one and a repeater on the second. This will not go very high, but you can make it go higher by placing another solid block after the restone repeater (1 level above the solid block it is resting upon), and then placing a solid block over the redstone that is elevated 1 block, and 1 above the repeater. This will allow you to build upwards into the sky with redstone and have no breaks in your line (unless you or some other player breaks a part of the line). restone will carry a charge up to 15 blocks away (this is on a flat surface). For my own personal reasons, I like to go about 8 blocks because most of the time I am not building level. to continue this circuit farther, I use a redstone repeater. Repeaters are very useful. To actually create a drawbridge, you need to have repeaters going to each sticky piston (I do not know this for drawbridges of 1 width, mine have always been 2 or more). Repeaters are also used to create a switch and a clock. To create a switch, you will need o run power into the repeater, a block in front of a repeater (on the same level) and a restone torch. The torch is placed on he side of the block and will turn off when the repeater is activated. This is how most people will create contraptions that seem to work backwards (a button will open a piston door instead of close it). A clock can be built several different ways. Some people like to create a redstone clock by using repeaters and redstone and create a circular motion. This clock will need more time to complete a cycle though. For a faster paced clock, you will need 1 solid block (not glass), a redstone torch, 3 pieces of redstone and 1 repeater. to create the clock, you must place the solid block on the ground and then place the torch on one of the blocks sides. Then you will want to place 3 pieces of redstone, one of which is adjacent to the torch (but not in the same direction as the solid block, one continuing in the same direction as the other piece of redstone, and the last one will be to the side of the previous wire on the same side as the solid block. The repeater is then placed so that it receives from the wire and its output is the solid block. This is a clock that you will not have to reset whenever you mess with something that will send back a current. You can build off of this clock by putting any type of redstone pulse carrying device on any of the pieces of redstone. The first clock I mentioned is also flawed somewhat because any current that is able to loop back will cause the clock to always be active (meaning that your contraption will never shut off). I prefer the second clock because It doesn't matter if the loop comes back because the clock will reset itself anyways and will continue to send on and off pulses regularly. If the loop in either clock is too quick for your mechanism, you can simply slow it down by right clicking on any repeater contained within the clock up to 3 times (it will go back to its default setting upon the fourth click). I hope this helps anyone with any redstone problems they are having. I would upload a few more pics containing the clocks, but I am using one of my school computers and I do not have much more time before my next class. Happy crafting everybody.
