So I haven't played minecraft properly in about 6-7 years, and I've been keen to come back and try out the new updates, and I've also been trying to learn a lot more about redstone. A big goal of mine in this world is that I don't want anything running if it doesn't need to be, things like clocks, minecarts, and so on. They should only turn on if they have a job to do, and not run forever.
I've made what feels like a pretty crude yet functional build that has worked so far, but as you can see its a bit of a monstrosity. I wanted to actually see if I could solve the problem myself first by figuring it out before asking for help so I actually learned something and didn't just copy an answer.
As you can see in the first photo the furnaces are right next to each other and the front side is visible from outside (cosmetic) so cant be accessed. I decided then to pull a signal from the hopper being fed by the minecart, which are in turn feeding the furnaces
Each line from the comparator is 15 dust long, so they only reach the observer when the hopper is fully loaded (this became a necessity in the end with this build otherwise lines would cross contaminate, and one full hopper would trigger multiple observers).
You can see in the 2nd and 3rd photo that once the signal reaches an observer it lights a bulb (great addition, though I miss old T flip flop builds), and the bulb/observer combo also ensures that if the hopper empties and the line loses power the bulb turns off.
I pull a comparator signal from the lit bulb and feed them into a series of AND gates (I think, or whatever the name for a gate is that needs all inputs to be turned on to give an output, and any 1 being unpowered stops the output), which progressively condense the signal down into one line, that only activates when the system detects every hopper is full. This then unlocks a minecart loading station (not pictured) which frees the minecart to continue dropping fuel off to the furnaces.
It works, but its huge and was a nightmare to work out. I feel like theres another answer here that involves comparators in compare mode with a constant signal being pushed into the side of them so the only pass the signal down the line if every hopper is full, but I spent a few hours last night trying to work it out and I was getting nowhere. Everything I built meant that the loading station would lock if only 1 hopper was full, not all of them. I also feel like pulling signals out of alternating sides of the bulbs is messy, but again I could manage to get a 5 input AND gate to work on one side without a single bulb/comparator triggering all the inputs by itself.
So, how would you do it differently? I feel like there has to be a much cleaner way to do this. Thanks in advance!
by starfieldblue