Redstone Wire

Redstone Wire is a material used to transfer charge between objects. Charged objects can be used to open doors or activate certain items. It is the placed form of Redstone Dust, which can be found by mining Redstone Ore with an iron pickaxe or better. Unpowered wire will appear dark red, and powered wire will appear in shades bright red with animated sparkling.

How wires connect and provide power
Redstone Wire is placed by right clicking on the surface of a block while Redstone (Dust) is selected in the action bar. You can remove it by left clicking on the wire; it will spring out as Redstone Dust. Redstone Wire will connect to adjacent blocks that can provide power. These blocks are the Redstone Torch, Switches, and other wires. It does not try to form connections with things that "receive" power, like Doors. These connections need a straight run to or onto the receiving block.

You can tell if a wire is connected because its appearance will change: When placed alone or connected in all four directions, a wire looks like a cross (+). If it has one connection or two on opposite sides, it will look like a straight line (- or |) in that direction. Bends and T-junctions are also possible, when connected on the appropriate sides.

Redstone Wire will connect by running straight up and down the sides of blocks when changing levels, but there are some restrictions: The wire will only cross a 1-block difference in height. Also, the connection will be broken, if an opaque block is over the lower wire. (Visually, the block is cutting off the connection with its lower edge.)



Powered Redstone Wire will glow dimmer the farther it is from its source of power. Power will only travel through 15 blocks of wire, beyond which it stops sparkling entirely. It is possible, however, to extend this range with gates or Repeaters. The creation and use of gates are explained in Redstone circuits.



Historical notes
Redstone dust and the ability to create wires was introduced in Alpha, therefore, map areas generated before the Redstone update will not contain Redstone.

Redstone Wire used to be "destroyed" when stepped on in-game, but this was changed in an update, making "tripwires" no longer feasible.

Before Beta 1.3, powered Redstone Wire was the same red colour for its entire 15-block length, until the charge ended.

Trivia

 * When destroying redstone wire, the particles are grey. This is due to the redstone wire textures in terrain.png being white, so the game can colour them according to how far from a source they are. Before the 1.3 update (that made wire colours dynamic), destroying wire would yield the appropriately coloured particles.
 * Power through redstone wire is transmitted instantly, despite length of wire.
 * If you were to hack your inventory to give you redstone wire (not the dust, the actual wire), it will look grey in the inventory. Also, it is called "Redstone Dust" while the real redstone dust is called "Redstone".
 * After the 1.5 update, the two texture panels directly below the redstone wire textures (in terrain.png) are required to be empty. The 'empty' panels are layered on top of the normal ones in-game, potentially giving the redstone the 'grid' pattern if this requirement is not met.
 * Due to a bug, when lava hits redstone wire that is touching water, the redstone wire is transformed into obsidian.
 * Redstone wire will graphically snap to any block if a redstone torch is placed on top of the block, however it will only truly power the block if the redstone would connect into the block even when the torch is removed.

Related pages

 * Redstone
 * Redstone (Ore)
 * Redstone (Dust)
 * Redstone (Torch)
 * Redstone circuits
 * Switches
 * Mechanisms
 * Traps

Redstone (Kabel) Czerwony kamień (przewód)