Crypto's Cacti Farm - Version 2

Howdy folks, today I update my current progress on a cacti farm with a slightly more automated variant that requires no replanting.

Note that I have included images in this entry so it will take a little longer for the page to load.

While using the same basic redstone components (repeaters, dust and a lever), I have eliminated the need to replant crops after harvest with a different layout of pistons and circuitry to power it.

Appearance will be very basic but this allows you more freedom to design your final appearance while saving me time on compiling this blog entry.

Shopping list
For entire farm (regardless how you scale it later)
1 block of your choice
1 Redstone lever
Redstone dust and repeaters (min 7 dust, how much depends on if you scale it up later).

for each row
8 blocks of your choice for placement of pistons and lever
19 redstone dust (on top of the amount needed to connect each row to a lever).
1 repeater*
4 pistons (normal pistons).
8 cactus blocks
7 stacks of Sand (enough for the 21x21 area in Step 0)

* Note, if you make 2 rows with rear sides facing each other close enough you can save on repeaters.

Construction:

Step 0
Clear and level a 21x21 block area, and level it with sand; you can change some of the flooring later provided sand is available for placing the cacti blocks.

Alternatively you can use a 19x19 area; but for this tutorial I used 21x21 for a spacious demonstration and make choice of ladder or stairs for going up a simple internal addition when you finish copying the steps to make this farm. If using 19x19, make stairs or ladders externally (so overall space would be 19x20 blocks) or compact the design further with more creative Redstone circuitry placement.

Step 1
Go to one of the corners of this cleared area, then come inwards 1 block then across 4 blocks (similar to how a Knight piece moves on a chess board).

I have raised the cacti block in the first image to demonstrate the placement of this cacti block, please ignore the height of the cacti block here and make sure it matches the second picture below.

Step 2
From this cacti block; continue inwards (the direction you used for the shorter part of an L shaped move like a Knight in chess) and place cacti blocks every 2nd block.

Step 3
Divide them up into 4 pairs and in the middle of each pair leave 1 air blocks horizontally. On the 2nd block (so diagonally across from each cacti block per pair) place a solid material block of your choice. Just needs to be a block that is able to sit the piston on top without activating it.

Step 4
On top of this solid block, place a normal piston facing towards the cacti blocks. When extended, the piston will contact the cacti and cause this block and the one above to turn into an entity/item object which you can harvest while leaving the bottom one intact.

Step 5
Behind each solid block with the piston on top of it, place another solid block next to it and some redstone dust on top of this block. This will feed the redstone signal to the pistons to activate them when we place the lever soon.

Step 6
Place a row of redstone dust linking up these pistons, with a redstone repeater along this row of dust placed between the 2nd and 3rd pistons which will repeat the redstone signal through to all pistons. Leave it at default ticks.

Step 7
Finally; we will place some more redstone dust to link up with a lever. This will allow us to activate the pistons when the cacti are all fully grown for maximum harvest with minimal effort.

Place a solid block of your choice in the position illustrated below, then some more redstone dust from here over to the line of dust with the repeater just placed in step 6.

When complete, this much simpler circuit should upon flicking the lever switch extend the pistons and cause 2 cacti blocks to drop per cacti block in place, whilst leaving the bottom block intact. Wandering over to the blocks that just dropped will give you a total of 16 cactus blocks.

Scaling
This simple design is also easy to scale, outside of the simple redstone dust extending technique from the last farm. Here is a quick doubling of this design I have done by mirroring the above circuit into 2 rows of cacti.

Then I doubled the above and moved the lever  to link 4 rows of 8 cacti blocks up to 1 lever.  When fully grown this yields 64 blocks of cacti while leaving the bottom ones intact for regrowth.

The extra space I asked you to clear earlier will allow you to duplicate the above steps to make a copy of this cacti farm.

You can scale it vertically scaled as well, via a redstone signal elevator circuit. To save your scroll wheel I have not placed the images into this blog post but they are available with the 2 files below.

Attached below for convenience are links to first these screenshots (uncropped originals) for offline use and an updated copy of my cacti farm save file from my previous blog entry with both this farm and the older version.

New save game file.
Full Size Images.

Next I may tackle making this a little more compact with redstone dust placement and also designing a farm that has it's own means to harvest blocks automatically and save time running around the block.

For now, have fun with the slightly more automated cacti farm.

Happy Minin'
Crypto (Crypto4coin)