I finished my auto-breeder so it's time for another picture collage. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. Though it's nowhere near as complex as what Battosay has been showing in his LP.
It's divided into 3 main floors with an additional half floor for the wheat farm wiring. All floors have access doors to the inner workings. I like to actually build rooms and polish 'em out. Not just stick my wiring in a hollowed out hole.
Without further adieu, my take on the breeding farm...
First, the outside. I was originally going to do the whole thing above ground, but as I was scaffolding the structure it became WAY to overbearing to the rest of my base. Now only the wheat farm is above ground.
Main entrace. The stairs leading up are to the wheat farm. The stairs leading down are to breeding and collection rooms.
The water wheel behind the building is the power plant for the whole thing. Was fun running all the mechanical lines.
First floor (and half floor below it), the wheat farm. I did a double farm to help keep up with both pigs and cows. Two DBs, one detects wheat growth, one detects water flow. Pistons control harvest water. Hoppers collect all the seeds. I opted not to put in an auto-refiller. Thing was big and complex enough already as can be seen in the wiring floor. This is the only part of the breeder that required a dedicated floor to fit the wiring.
The system detects wheat, releases the water on Turntable-BD timer, waits for the water to stop flowing, and then plants the next batch.
Second floor, the breeding chambers. These are fairly simple. A reed clock triggers a monostable circuit that causes the dispensors to eject 1 wheat. I tried doing a multi-pulse system since I have 4 cows and 4 pigs, but it was proving to complex to be worth it. Instead I detect the first growth on the reed so there's a little overlap between the breeding pairs.
The babies fall down the pit between the pairs to the maturation canal. I played around with this quite a bit. Finally found one that works "well enough". Essentially I have a maturation areas that's 2X2 with a 1 high wall.
You can't have any water touching the dividing wall and you need the dividing wall to be 2 spaces away from the water. If water touches then babies can get over (half slab or stairs on top don't work). If there's less than 2 spaces of air between the water and wall then the mobs won't jump.
I placed water 2 spaces above the dividing wall to help the animals over and into the kill stream. Two saws do their business quite effectively.
Also notice the mechanical lines leading to the saws and hoppers for the collection room.
Third floor, the collection room. The ceiling is glass for the maturation canals so I can watch what's going on and spot problems, if their are any. Other then that, hoppers feed into a collection chest with plenty of additional storage scattered about.
The door in the back leads to the mechanical maintenance room, guarded by a companion cube ofcourse :)
Oh, and there's a bed for speeding through collection with the Somnia mod.
This whole project has been, by far, the most time consuming and complex project I've taken on in BTW or Minecraft. It makes a multi-floor elevator seems simple by comparison. I'm going to be looking forward to a nice simple mill for my auto-hemp farms next.