BTW: Design Experiment - Automated Hemp Farm Guide

[Adjudicator79]

So I decided to take a break from thinking deep thoughts about Better Than Wolves and try my hand at actually utilizing some of the principles BTW encourages in Minecraft players.

Below is my attempt at a tutorial/exposition on a piston-driven, turntable-timed (because 2.70 came out as I was working on the bio clock!) automated hemp farm. It is by no means the most compact, clean, or efficient build. I am sure there are many things that could be changed to make it better. And I’d actually welcome those suggestions. But, after watching Battosay’s videos and playing some with pistons in the 1.7 update, I wanted to give this a try.

I intended this to function as my only needed supply source of hemp fiber. Given that, I designed it to be expandable should I discover that I needed more production.

Space requirements
For each course, you will need at least a ten by fifteen stretch of ground. Above ground or underground doesn’t matter, though I found it much easier to install the mechanical elements with dirt to move around instead of stone. If you put multiple courses side by side, it only takes an additional nine blocks in width, as you can double up one row of blocks in between each course. You will also need to dig out a goodly amount of space (at least 8-10 blocks down) at the front of the farm for the collection apparatus.

There are three distinct construction elements:

• 1. The Farm
  2. The Collection Apparatus
  3. The Automation

1. The Farm
Your first step is to frame out your farm’s footprint. There are four row types you’ll need to build. Rows 2-4 are all built on either side of the water channels, so you build each twice, just on opposite sides.

• 1. Central water channels
  2. Growth rows
  3. Piston support rows
  4. Restone rows

The first two rows are your central channel for water to carry the harvested hemp down the length of the farm. This needs to be two wide, as the pistons can occasionally break the top layer of the plant so forcefully that it shoots over to the other side’s growth row if the water channel is only one block wide. If you are willing to live with not getting every piece of hemp at each harvesting, and if you are hurting for space, you can save a row of blocks by making the water channel only one block wide. The water channels should start at the back of your farm (the end furthest away from the collection point) and should be six blocks long before dropping down one block and then continue for another eight blocks.

On either side of the water channels are your growth rows. These are, obviously, one up from the channels and need to be made out of dirt. They should also start of the back of the farm and run six blocks before dropping down one block to run another seven. There needs to be an eighth block as well to cap the growth row and funnel the water into the drop to the collection point, but it doesn’t have to be dirt. I used cobble just to make a clear contrast signaling the end of the growth row.

The next row is the piston support row. This row of blocks should be one higher than your growth rows. Your pistons will be placed on top of these blocks, making them two above your growth row and ensuring that you only knock off the level two growth on your hemp plant. It’s a personal preference, but I like to put my pistons down on cobble, rather than dirt - it has no functional difference.

The final row is the redstone row. This should be at the same level as the piston support row and can be any substance that redstone can be placed on.

When you are finished, it should look something like this:

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I included the water just so you would have a good picture of the layout, but I’d suggest not placing it until close to the end. It’s much easier to work without fighting the current.

Your next step is to line each side of your farm with normal pistons. This design will take 13 pistons per side, for a total of 26 (that’s 78 wood, 104 cobblestone, 26 redstone, and 26 iron). When you’ve got them constructed, just walk along the growth row, facing away from the channel, and place the pistons on the piston support row. If you’ve done it correctly, the piston pads should all be facing in, towards the water channel.

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Your next step is to string each of the pistons together in a series. That’s going to require an equal number of redstone repeaters. It works out to 78 redstone (52 for the torches and 26 for the repeaters), 52 sticks, and 78 stone. You’ll also need a stack of redstone for wiring in addition to that needed for the repeaters.

String the repeaters along behind the pistons, setting up a series that will trigger each piston on both rows at the same time. When you’re finished, each row should look something like this.

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Especially nice is that if you decide to set up a second course for your farm, you can link in the repeaters from the next set of pistons to the same redstone wire supply without worrying about crossed signals.

Obviously, you need to light your hemp to maximize growth speed (or to substitute for sunlight, if you are underground). I chose to run two simple cobblestone rows down the center of the farm that simply mirrored the contour of the water channel, just two blocks higher. This gives you the perfect framework to hang your 26 light blocks on (78 glass, 26 glow dust, 26 redstone). You want to make sure that when you place the light blocks, they effectively close off the growth rows from the outside. If they are too high, not only does it waste space, but the hemp won’t grow as quickly, if at all.

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You can also use the cobblestone courses to run the redstone wire for powering your light blocks. You will also need to add an extra block of some kind (anything that can hold a torch) to the back of the lightblock support course to place the redstone torch for power. You should also cap the open space at the back of the farm to prevent hemp broken off by the pistons from popping out the back, rather than dropping into the water channel.

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Once you have the light blocks placed, the only real element left for the interior of the farm is to hoe your dirt, plant your hemp, and then put the water into the central channel. I personally prefer to put the water in first and let the dirt hydrate, even if it means fighting the current. I’d suggest doing this now, before moving on to the rest of the construction, to give your hemp time to grow. The first block is notoriously slow to get started.

2. The Collection Apparatus
You will need several elements for your collection apparatus. Obviously, you will need a waterwheel (or windmill, if that is your choice, a millstone, two hoppers (add another hoppper for each additional farm you add), and plenty of axles and gearboxes.

I had a handy cliffside near my farm, so I actually stuck my waterwheel on the outside of the cliff wall and ran the axles into the side of the mountain, just for the pure aesthetic pleasure of it. But you can obviously place your waterwheel wherever you’d like, so long as you are willing to run power to your collection location. If you are planning on placing more than one farm, I’d recommend placing your collection apparatus equidistant between your farms. It makes no real difference, it just means you won’t have to wait for water to carry your hemp the entire length of your farms.

Your first step is to dig out your collection channel. This is the path that your hemp will flow down towards your first hopper and your millstone. To do this, you are going to want to start your channel at the corner on the opposite side of where you want your collection apparatus. And you want to start the channel on the second block past the end of the growth row. So there should be a dirt block extending past the growth row, and then you start digging your channel. This creates a natural stopping point for the water carrying your hemp from the plants themselves and allows the hemp to simply drift off into the collection channel. When you are ready to start collecting your hemp, you’ll place water in the corner of the collection channel, bringing it to the hopper. It should look something like this:

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Choose the spot you’d like to place your hopper and place it one block below the surface of the collection channel, ensuring that your water flow will drop items into it. Thankfully a hopper will collect items from water flows from opposite directions, even if the water would normally flow past the mouth of the hopper. This lets you place your hopper at the center of two farms and have water flows coming from either side and dropping off into it.

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Once you’ve placed your collection hopper, you now know where you need to run your first axles to. Don’t forget that you can place more than three axles without a gearbox. Note that if you are going to do this, you have to plan your axle/gearbox placement around this. You cannot have your collection water channel running overtop the axles, as items will fall down alongside them. If you follow the placement I’ve used, simply drop your collection hopper one box lower, thus lowering the row that your axles will come in on. As you can see from the photo below, the right hand side has the normal track, the left hand side has the axles and gearboxes row, with a row of dirt for the collection channel above it, and the hopper is one block below the collection channel row.

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You are going to want to clear out plenty of space in front of your farm (or wherever you want your final collection chest to be), so that you have plenty of room to set up your mechanical power transfers.

Your first power receiver should be the collection hopper. This will allow the hopper to transfer its items into the mill stone we will place beneath it. It gets a bit tricky here, as millstones have to be powered from above or below. So I ran a spur off of the closed gear box to allow me to come up from beneath the mill stone and input power there. Make sure you do not have any gearboxes or axles directly next to the millstone. You need to leave these blocks clear so that it can spit out its ground product. This takes up more space than you realize, though if anyone sees a way to save some space, I’m open to the suggestion. Mine came out looking like this:

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Now, our next step is to force the millstone to send its output along to our preselected path and ultimately toward our collection chest. You might be tempted to put glass here (I was) or to simply create only a single block that is open for the mill stone to eject into, but I found that glass and solid block both can actually have hemp fibers pushed into them by the mill stone. My solution, while probably not the most elegant, is instead to create a water channel that allows the mill stone to eject its finished product in any direction and still have our hemp fibers be sent to the chest hopper. To do this, you will want to place water behind the millstone, opposite from the direction you want the hemp fibers to flow.

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Our final collection apparatus step before we place our chests is the chest hopper. This needs to be powered if you want to connect it to a double chest, so will have to decide how you choose to get power input to it. I chose to simply drop the hopper one block lower than it could be to pick up from our mill stone water channel, which does require you to place a glass block (or any other kind) in front of the open space to ensure the water flows only into the hopper. That saved me from either using complicated gearbox reworking or using a new power source. As Flower has explicitly rejected a “T” axle for the Age of Wood, here’s hoping that we can get something like it in the next age!

3. The Automation

Once you have your collection apparatus set, don’t fill the space in around it! You’ll need to place one more set of mechanical power transfer blocks for your timer. With 2.70, Flower has given us the gift of timing! The turntable is you friend and can be used very simply to create automatic timing. No more detector blocks, block dispensers, and unreliable bio clocks. Now you can truly automate your hemp harvesting.

Before you place your turntable, you will need to figure out where it should be. To do this, extend the wire from the very first redstone row block for every row of pistons you have. This should give you a single redstone wire on the “ground level” in front of the redstone row. Because of the length of the piston row, you need a redstone repeater here to amplify the signal. So plop one of those down for each piston row you have.

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Once you have that done, connect each of the piston rows to a central location. I have two farms side by side, so I used the center aisle for my timer placement.

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Once you’ve done that, simply dig down at least one block on the block in front of your connecting redstone wire. This is where you will place your turntable. You’ll need to connect mechanical power to the bottom of the turntable. This is why you should have left your mechanical lines open, so that it should be easy to run a spur out to your turntable. Don’t forget that you will want to keep your turntable accessible so that you can adjust the timing as you wish. This means that your entrance/exit to your chest should pass by your turntable (I put mine at the bend of a stairway up to the surface from my chest). Once you’ve connected your turntable, head back to the surface and place a block on the turntable itself, which will hold the redstone torch to trigger your pistons. You’ll see on my photo that I have my turntable lower. I did this for two reasons. First, it let me avoid placing another gearbox to run power to the bottom of the turntable. Second, it let me have the turntable on the first landing of my stairwell down to my collection chest.

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And that’s it. You control the speed of the turntable, which controls how long before the torch powers the redstone to the pistons, triggering them to extend and knock off the top of the hemp plants. Too fast and you run the risk of not giving the hemp enough time to grow. Of course, with the pistons extended, the hemp cannot grow into the second block. That means that the slowest setting creates a time period when no hemp will grow.

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Hopefully this makes sense and will help you create your own fully automated, timed hemp farm!

Known problems:

- Seeds clogging up the millstone. It’s not a common problem, especially with three grinding slots on the millstone, but I left access to my mill stone underground so that I could clean it out.

- Ducks getting into the collection space and turning hoed land into dry ground. You can fix this by fully enclosing it, but even then, I think there’s a chance for spawning just because of the water in the growth channels.

- Piston extension blocking hemp growth. There might be a pulse trigger option for redstone that I simply don’t know how to do which could fix this problem. Somehow it might trigger the pistons only long enough to cause them to extend, but not keeping them extended during the torch’s rotation on the redstone wire.

[Triskelli]

Fantasic construction, Adjucator!

As far as the piston problem goes, isn't it possible to make a small pulse? I think a latch connected to a delay to reset itself should do nicely... I'm not a redstone wizard though, hope someone can come by and make that a little easier to understand.

[KriiEiter]

I would actually attach the line in front of the turntable clock to a monostable circuit so that you could have rs-torches on every side of the turntable-clock so it would send a quick pulse every so often to the pistons, after which they immediately deactivate, allowing for the hemp to grow at whatever rate.

Just set it to whatever time you can tolerate the piston sound going off to.

[Adjudicator79]

So I let this run overnight and discovered a few interesting things.

First, this produces way more seed than I expected. There were three full stacks clogging the mill stone that I had to clear out, and two more full stacks and a partial in the hopper above it.

Second, it produces a lot of hemp! Even with the mill stone being clogged for an unknown amount of time, there were 12 full stacks and a partial of hemp fibers in the actual chest and the hopper was literally full with unmilled hemp (except for the two and a partial stacks of seeds).

Finally, it also seems to do a passable job at eggs. I had 1 egg shy of three full stacks of eggs in the chest. I guess they get pushed through the mill stone?

I know rollers don't let hemp plants through. I'm going to fiddle with this tomorrow and see if they do let seeds through. If so, I can set up my collection apparatus further down the line and have the first hopper collect seeds and pass hemp down to the actual mill stone hopper. If it does work, it'll require basically ripping the guts out of the current mechanical power set up, but it'll be worth it if it means that the mill stone doesn't get clogged.

[Urian]

So I let this run overnight and discovered a few interesting things.

First, this produces way more seed than I expected. There were three full stacks clogging the mill stone that I had to clear out, and two more full stacks and a partial in the hopper above it.

Second, it produces a lot of hemp! Even with the mill stone being clogged for an unknown amount of time, there were 12 full stacks and a partial of hemp fibers in the actual chest and the hopper was literally full with unmilled hemp (except for the two and a partial stacks of seeds).

Finally, it also seems to do a passable job at eggs. I had 1 egg shy of three full stacks of eggs in the chest. I guess they get pushed through the mill stone?

I know rollers don't let hemp plants through. I'm going to fiddle with this tomorrow and see if they do let seeds through. If so, I can set up my collection apparatus further down the line and have the first hopper collect seeds and pass hemp down to the actual mill stone hopper. If it does work, it'll require basically ripping the guts out of the current mechanical power set up, but it'll be worth it if it means that the mill stone doesn't get clogged.

Wickers and rollers will let seeds through but not the plants.

I'm currently rendering a video about my version of an automated hemp/reed farm that's expandable in a vertical direction (tutorial on how to build it). Having some trouble with hard drive space though since it's over 14 Gb in raw footage but I should have it up in a few hours.

[Fracture]

Known problems:

- Seeds clogging up the millstone. It’s not a common problem, especially with three grinding slots on the millstone, but I left access to my mill stone underground so that I could clean it out.

- Ducks getting into the collection space and turning hoed land into dry ground. You can fix this by fully enclosing it, but even then, I think there’s a chance for spawning just because of the water in the growth channels.

- Piston extension blocking hemp growth. There might be a pulse trigger option for redstone that I simply don’t know how to do which could fix this problem. Somehow it might trigger the pistons only long enough to cause them to extend, but not keeping them extended during the torch’s rotation on the redstone wire.

-I think that could be remedied with filters, no?

-Build deeper underground, perhaps, and leave a large open cave outside/around it so that mobs will spawn and fill up more spawned creature slots?

-There are a few ways to make pulses, by various means-- mostly piston or block dispenser.

[Battosay]

Nice design :)
I still prefer the BD version, but this is way easier to make, and use far less ressources ;)

In your piston wiring, you can save a lots of delayers, you just need to use alternate (redstone-delayer-redstone-delayer) for every pistons. Signal won't be synch, but whatever.

For your problems :

- Seeds clogging up the millstone. It’s not a common problem, especially with three grinding slots on the millstone, but I left access to my mill stone underground so that I could clean it out.

Use another hopper placed before the one above the mill stone. use a wicker or a grate as filter. The seeds will fall into the 1st hopper, and the hemp will keep floating towards the second.

- Ducks getting into the collection space and turning hoed land into dry ground. You can fix this by fully enclosing it, but even then, I think there’s a chance for spawning just because of the water in the growth channels.

Make your water channel 1 block deeper, and they won't be able to reach the plants.

- Piston extension blocking hemp growth. There might be a pulse trigger option for redstone that I simply don’t know how to do which could fix this problem. Somehow it might trigger the pistons only long enough to cause them to extend, but not keeping them extended during the torch’s rotation on the redstone wire.

Yep, that's called a Monostable circuit :
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redst ... le_Circuit
I'll make you a pic of one using a piston if you want :)

[Urian]

Here's my version (with an included tutorial):

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It uses a reed clock so it still needs a BD and a DB but otherwise it's pretty cheap (you can enclose it in other material than glass if you want to hide it or just save glass for other projects).

[Adjudicator79]

So I took Urian's advice and threw two hoppers with rollers into the channel before I went to bed last night and let the farm run for 6.5 hours. When I came back, the hoppers had collected all of the seeds (6 full stacks and some partials) and the chest was full of hemp fibers with 7 more full stacks in the hopper!

I'm going to update to the new BTW, fix my turntable, which I know needs to be done, and then maybe work on the monostable circuit Urian pointed out.

I'm thrilled with how it turned out. I've already got a chest full of fibers in my warehouse, a chest well on the way to full of rope, and I'll start a chest for fabric after that. Given that I don't get to spend as much time in game as some others seem to, this is going to be more than enough for my hemp needs.

I think my next project is going to be the automated tree farm!

Thanks for all the advice, everyone.

[BigShinyToys]

Nice design :)
I still prefer the BD version, but this is way easier to make, and use far less ressources ;)

In your piston wiring, you can save a lots of delayers, you just need to use alternate (redstone-delayer-redstone-delayer) for every pistons. Signal won't be synch, but whatever.

--snip--

You were looking for tips here is one a piston will take power form a Block being powered Above it like a light Block will. ( to explain Better if you placed a line of Dirt on the top of you're pistons then redstone on the dirt. the Dirt is powered and will power the Piston. Simple ha ) this would save you all those repeaters and is the system i use. I have A set up Like to yours . But where you're system has one Stream Connected to a Mill my Has one central stream And several channel Feeding into it. ( I still have problems with the 80% collection rate i get on a good day to much of the hemp / seeds Never get collected.

And for a Timer i use a Detector block Connected to a AND gate and a Turntable or redstone clock on the other side so when the detector detects the sugar cane i use for timing it puts out a signal ( why the clock then Y not just connect it to the piston as is.) this is because it also detects the Piston and it would stay on . By making the Clock Activate every 16 second so it douse not jam.

Well thought out tutorial

Here's my version (with an included tutorial):

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It uses a reed clock so it still needs a BD and a DB but otherwise it's pretty cheap (you can enclose it in other material than glass if you want to hide it or just save glass for other projects).

Nice farm I guess the sugar is In place of hemp right. that is very compact ( for a high output farm ) I kinda make mine up as i go so they are not as Neat . I might make one of them Near my Main rail station .

[Adjudicator79]

So I was fiddling with things following updating to 2.71 and found out something interesting.

If you place a redstone repeater directly on top of a turntable and then have redstone dust running off at a 90 degree angle (didn't check this at the 180) and have that redstone dust block powered by a redstone torch, when the turntable spins after the repeater is powered by the torch, it carries a charge just long enough to trigger the pistons. They immediately retract again, since the repeater doesn't have a constant power input. Basically, it creates a pulse generator without having to go into a monostable circuit!

Here's the power input to the redstone repeater on the turntable:

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When that block turns, it sends a carries a charge just long enough to trigger the pistons. I can't catch it in a screenshot. Maybe I'll download FRAPS and give it a shot there.

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All of this came about because I wanted to make the delay in triggering longer. With 2.71, I feel like the turntable goes too quickly to really allow for second block hemp growth. So I'm going to stick another turntable in, on a one setting difference, that will add another delay cycle into the piston trigger.

[BigShinyToys]

I didnt Know a turn table could do that WoW that would have saved me some time. Nice find there.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=249

I have made part of what will be a Wall clock ( it makes more seance With the the pics / map file. )

Any way you want a longer Time till pulse maby use a Simple Counter. there is counters at the heart of my clock For a long pulse i would make the first Count to 4 then Add one to the second. This gives you a time of . 4 (seconds) X 4 (rotations) x 4 (rotations on the second turntable) Making a 64 second clock .

[Ivan G.]

I made a hemp farm that uses the hemp plants themselves to time the auto-harvest. Maybe I'll post pictures later.

A little simpler than yours I guess.

[Deepsniper]

Thanks for the great idea, I build an auto mushroom farm before but it wasnt able to collect it by itself or harvest perfectly but this jsut might work :)