Minecraft - Minecart Sorter

In MC 1.5 (perhaps 1.5.01), we lost the ability to sort minecarts using stone pressure plates. This means that it's no longer possible to have a storage minecart sorter that would lead to something like a storage minecart depot.

Fortunately, science has the answer! This is the demo of a prototype cart sorter which successfully differentiates between a laden (manned) cart and an unladen (storage/powered/empty) minecart.

The system works by first evening out the speed of the cart with a powered track segment. Then, the cart passes over a detector rail attached to some repeaters set with a high delay. The cart travels over a short gap of plain rail, then another detector rail. The signal from the repeaters and the second detector rail hit an AND gate. If the timing of the cart is just right, the AND gate sends out a brief pulse to an RS NOR latch that flips the track to the storage minecart area. Whichever track the cart goes down, it hits another detector rail which pulses the RS NOR latch again to reset the track.

Since I made the video, I've added some powered rail after the last detector rail on each side to keep the cart moving. I've also tested it using a laden minecart from up at the castle (moving at high speed) and with storage and powered minecarts (moving at high-ish speed).

Send me your questions or comments!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• minecraft
• minecart
• powered rail
• powered minecart
• storage minecart
• storage depot
• track
• rail
• mining

[WarPigCOD]

Just curious, do you use inventory editing, or do you mine all that iron/redstone?

Cool vid though!

[bastawhiz]

@WarPigCOD I mine everything! Even on the SMP servers I play on, I don't spawn items. :) Thanks!

[IRavonI]

i just meant you only needed to reset the memory on one of the out going lines

as it only changes in one of the situations

(sorry if i wasn't clear)

[bastawhiz]

@IRavonI Ah. IIRC, I do that for powered minecarts, because sometimes they can wonk up the system and leave it pointing the track pointing the wrong direction.

[IRavonI]

shouldn't you only need the detector rail on the side that the carts with out a mob/player go

(the empty cart side)

great idea though cant believe i didn't think of it

[bastawhiz]

@IRavonI This was built back with version 1.7.3 or 1.6 (I think). That bit of physics didn't exist.

[bastawhiz]

@kargaroc386 It sure is! Not a whole lot has changed with minecart physics. @MinecraftAddict built something similar not too long ago, but IMHO, this is much simpler and uses less wiring (MA's version used an RSNOR latch and some other circuitry).

[kargaroc386]

is this possible at all in 1.8?

[Mgis90]

music owned ur voice a bit, just remember in future

I'll come back here later to try it myself (its 2am oh noes) Cool work