Talk:Redstone Torch/Archive 1

Is redstone copper?
Does anyone else think this mysterious "red powder" is similar to this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28I%29_oxide

And in its unmined form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuprite -Rossco 20:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no doubt in that, good find.--Quatroking - Garble Garble! 00:19, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It's copper...yes, that makes sense. Colordutiful 00:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think so, someone should delete the pages people have been spamming with different names for it and just call it cuprite...--Kingkai8 (what time is it? xD)


 * The thing is that redstone is the official name, so that's what we use... DreadLindwyrm 19:35, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Everyone, Redstone is not copper. It is a fictional mineral that has magnetic capabilities. Red stone is used to make power lines, red stone circuits, etc. It does not exist in the real world. Hope this helps. :D 70.181.68.226 04:41, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Why do you reply to an 2 years old topic? --Dyon 19:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * No idea. I guess its because I dont want newbies to think that redstone is copper? (No offense newbies) 70.181.68.226 12:34, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Speculative remark
"Useful for raiding parties in multiplayer..." That seems to be implying a lot of unknowns and speculation, IMO --pokemaughan

Efficiency
Since redstone drops at a rate of 4-5 per ore block mined, doesn't this actually mean that redstone torches are at least as efficient as regular torches? Consider: 1 coal block -> 4 torches, 1 redstone block -> 4 to 5 redstone torches. Harbinger0x7c0 18:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

They are fainter than regular torches though, but if you want to make a redstone circuit, you will alreagy have the torches. By the way, coal is easier to find than redstone. iamninja28

Don't forget Charcoal.

Effected Blocks
This is a problem with most redstone pages, it doesn't say exactly which blocks it will affect. So does it work with the blocks on it's four sides, or the blocks above and below it too?
 * The torch will affect the blocks around the torch except for the one that the torch is being "hooked" on. The torch will also affect the block beside a non-transparent block above a torch. The torch will only be affected if the block that the torch is "hooked" on is affected by redstone.

Power and Current
It is a misnomer to attribute "power" and/or "current" to redstone, especially torches. Torches provide a signal, not power. Power defined as work multiplied by time. Torches themselves don't do work, so they cannot provide power. They merely pass along signals to circuits or devices that work should or should not take place.

Redstone signals are not electrical, so the term current is incorrect as well. They are not even an analogy of electricity. An electrical current has a positive and negative sides to create a flow. This is completely absent in redstone devices. Signals may have a direction, but not an electrical current. There's a difference.

I'm just trying to be precise. Use of the misnomers is so wide-spread, I doubt it would do any good to update the main page. But I'm just throwing it out thre.

Inertia 17:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you're being a little overly technical here for a video game. Redstone is a fictional material - it doesn't really conform 100% to real-world thermodynamics. --Warlock 17:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Understood, but I think that saying a torch "powers" a block can lead to a poor understanding of how the material functions in the game. A torch does not power a powered track, for example.  The powered track powers itself.  The torch just provides a signal to the track to indicate that it should be powered. Inertia 01:07, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with Warlock here. I feel like you are trying to be overly precise to the point of error.  For one, how do you know that redstone torches don't provide a voltage, which creates a voltage differential and then creates redstone current?  The fact that we haven't described redstone using this language before doesn't mean that it doesn't apply.  Furthermore, you quite narrowly define power, which stems from your erroneous understanding of "work".  Work is simply any energy transfer from one system to another.  In your words, even if the torch is simply a signal generator, that signal comprises some quantity of energy due to its lower-entropy nature (which must be true because it conveys ordered information).  When it passes this signal on to the redstone wire, you have work, and it's happening over time: power.  It might be difficult to quantify this power, but that doesn't mean the term doesn't apply.  Your position that it is the devices themselves that do the work, but not the redstone, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Conservation of energy tells us that what goes out, must come in, and since these devices are unable to power themselves without redstone, it is clear that the redstone must be providing energy to the devices.
 * More broadly, look at the purpose of redstone in the game. Notch created redstone to stand in for digital circuits.  In fact (though redstone is full of its own quirks), we can create any and all digital logic gates, both combinational and sequential.  In short, redstone logic was designed to be a perfect analog of real-life digital logic.  For that reason, it is entirely reasonable to attribute language to redstone logic that we would attribute to digital logic.  These terms include power and current.  I've worked in VLSI design, and, all the time, people use phrases like "when this wire gets current, it powers this NMOS transistor" or "when current flows through this PMOS transistor, it is powered."  In redstone land, it's the block/torch pairs that are our transistors. --Nick2253 20:54, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

1.6 burnout rule change?
Since the 1.6.6 patch, I am finding that in singleplayer torches absolutely do not work anymore. If I have a redstone torch powering a wire, and put a redstone torch on a block that wire is powering, the second redstone torch will BURN OUT (not turn off, burn out). If I then remove the original redstone torch so that it should be on, it remains off indefinately, even through a save-reload of the world. I have no mods installed, so this is relevant to the article. Should we add it, and is it just me having this problem? Bobbobbob 06:16, 1 July 2011 (UTC)bobbobbob


 * same glitch here, moving the torch to a different block fixes it, the block where the burnout bug happens can't be used anymore. the bug seemed to have fixed itself over time. Newt0570 19:19, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Lighting Uses
I've found that using redstone torches are an effective alternative to using regular torches, if you're farming mushrooms. Torches give off a light level of 14 and mushrooms need 13 or less to be able to multiply, so I decided to try using redstone torches as opposed to complete darkness. I've found that it does add some lighting so you can see better, it doesn't interrupt the mushrooms, and, although mobs still spawn, they do spawn much less often so it's easier to deal with them.

If anyone has any other ideas for redstone torch lighting, let me know :P and i hope this was helpful :D

A link to a screenshot of my mushroom farm (sorry im not so great at embedding and whatnot :P)

1 tick or 2
I've seen the wiki page say 1 and 2 before. and some testing of mine points toward it being 1. But people I've met seem to "know without a doubt" that its two. Newt0570 19:29, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a change with the ticks between different versions of the game, thus creating the confusion.
 * 1 redstone tick (10 redstone ticks per second) or 2 game ticks (20 game ticks per second) which ever it is, it's 100ms. Redstone ticks seem to be the preferable usage--110.149.153.55 12:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Title
Shouldn't this article just be called "Redstone torch"? The current title makes no sense. Acdx 23:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree, it should be a separate entity rather than what it is, Redstone (Torch). Following the ingame naming system will also help remove any confusion. Frizensami 06:02, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Turntime
I was trying to build a binary emitter making each tick into a bit, but it seems that a turned-off torch can only be turned on by the absence of a signal at least three ticks long.

I also noticed that sometimes - depending on what I built - it would take four ticks to turn or perhaps the signal was shortened somehow. This may also be a bug.

I do not know, whether this information can be found in the "circut"-section, but even if, I think it should be added to the "redstone torch"-page as well.

Redstone torches on glass?
I noticed a while ago in Sethbling's video at 6:50 he has Redstone torches on glass, and I just tried it and it works just fine. When did this start working and why isn't it mentioned on the Main page? JakeVH 00:28, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Burnout time changed?
"Redstone torches will burn out when switched between the on and off states too often (8 or more off-on-cycles within 100 ticks or approximately 5 seconds). … Then it will ignore any events which would normally turn on the torch until enough time has been elapsed so that there are 7 or fewer off-on-cycles within the last 100 world ticks." —Redstone Torch

Is this still the correct rule in the code?

If I run a torch off an inverted dual edge detector run by a 5-clock (the output torch blinks on every 5 redstone ticks, thus 10 cycles in 100 game ticks) I get no burnout noise or burnout (v1.5.2). If I change it to a 4-clock (12.5 cycles in 100 game ticks), I get burnout noise after 8 cycles, but the torch continues to blink. If I change it to a 3-clock, the torch burns out after 8 cycles (24 redstone ticks) buts stops responding to pulses only for about a second before it starts to blink again (33 or 36 redstone tick cycle, I'm not sure, but definitely not a full 100 game ticks).

This makes me think the torch burnout cycle time (if that's still the mechanic it uses) is closer to 60 game ticks, not 100.

&mdash;Munin295 &middot;  &middot; 14:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * You're right; the burnout time was reduced from 100 world ticks to 60 in release 1.2 . The recent IP edit only changed a single reference to this, which made me think they were confusing redstone ticks with world ticks. -- Orthotope talk 17:47, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Glad to see I was on the right track.
 * &mdash;Munin295 &middot; Grid_Book_and_Quill.png Grid_Stone_Pickaxe.png &middot; 19:05, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Activation time changed?
I saw a youtube tutorial where a redstone torch emitted a 1 tick pulse to trigger a sticky-piston T-FF, but after rebuilding it myself the torch emits a longer pulse and the sticky piston fails to leave the block behind. In the YT comments I also read the it's been outdated since 1.5. When and how exactly did this change? I can't find anything about the minimum activation time in the article. --Youtakun (talk) 10:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * A lot of redstone behavior changed in 1.5. In particular, for sticky pistons to drop their block, they need a half-tick pulse, which AIUI torches can't manage nohow.  In fact, torches need to be tricked into even a 1-tick pulse, their normal minimum is two ticks.  I suggest exploring the designs in "Clock circuit" and "Pulse circuit" for more information on producing short pulses. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 11:22, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Burnout autoreactivation
I am currently observing burt-out redstone torches reactivating on their own without any updates in the world (except maybe sky lighting updates). The page states: "After that a new event of unpowering the blocks adjacent to the torch is necessary to turn it on again (the current state of the blocks is ignored, it requires a new on-off-edge or a general kind of block update).", does this still hold in 1.7.4? My setup is a block with a redstone torch on its side and a wire on its top, then a block above the torch. This setup will blink a few times then burn out. Roughly 60 seconds later, the blinking+burnout starts again without anything having changed in the meantime. 86.82.30.109 14:41, 15 February 2014 (UTC)


 * That could probably be phrased better. "general kind of block update" includes both block changes (block moved by piston, placed by player, updated by redstone, etc.) and block ticks (the updates that Minecraft does to a few random blocks every game tick which cause wheat to grow, ice to melt, etc.). It's those block ticks that are causing burned-out redstone torches to re-activate "randomly". The average time between block ticks for a single block is indeed a little over 68 seconds (3 random block ticks per 16x16x16 chunk section per game tick) -- but it could be 1 second, 10 minutes, or anything. This has always been the case AFAIK, not a change for 1.7. &mdash;munin &middot; Grid_Book_and_Quill.png Grid_Stone_Pickaxe.png &middot; 15:13, 15 February 2014 (UTC)