Minecraft/A Guide to Redstone

There are many things you can do with redstone. You could make traps, contraptions, clocks, a computer, games, elivators, farms, lag machines, and the list goes on and on.

The basics

Redstone dust

When placed, it lies flat on the ground. When unpowered, it is dark red in color. When it is powered, the redstone will glow bright red and emit the redstone charge to adjacent blocks, including other redstone dust. Redstone power can travel a maximum of 15 blocks by deafult, but this can be increased or decreased in several ways. The strength of redstone depends on the distance to the original power source. 0 is unpowered, 15 is the strongest.

Redstone ticks

Redstone ticks are the name of every time redstone is processed. There are ten per second, which is half of normal ticks.

Power sources

There are many ways to power redstone, anything from shooting at a target block, to standing on a pressure plate.

Manual activators

These are best suited for the opening of iron doors, redstone doors, farm switches, ect. They require you to forcefully activate them yourself.

Button - can be pressed for a temporary redstone charge
Lever - can be pressed for a toggleable redstone charge
Target Block - can be shot at for a temporary redstone charge, with power level based on how close you were to hiting the bullseye

Trap activators

These are used for traps that can deter or even kill other players or mobs, great for protecting your base. Although that is not their only use.

Pressure Plate - activated when stepped on
Weighted Pressure Plate - activated when a certain amount of items or mobs are on top
Tripwire - can be placed on walls and connected with string. When someone or something steps on the string, a redstone charge is emitted
Trapped Chest - when opened, emits a redstone charge based on how many people have opened it at once