Redstone Gauges and Switches

Mods
93,821 Downloads Last Updated: Jul 11, 2019 Game Version: 1.12.2

The Mod adds devices to measure or output redstone power:

 

[Note: The models will be adapted while porting to 1.14, if you like the original 1.12.2 models with higher resolution, see the resourcepack here in the repository. ]

 

  • Gauges are small devices, which can be attached to any solid block in the game, and they measure the redstone power that this blocks receives from blocks around it. Their displays are analog or digital and quantised from 0 to 15. The measurement method differs a bit from how e.g. comparators or redstone lamps react, see the details below.

  • Indicators are on-off displays attached to blocks, measuring like gauges (and are basically gauges). They are "off" if the power is zero, and "on" if the power is greater than zero. It depends on the indicator how the display looks like, some are simple LED like lights, some are blinking, etc.

  • Bi-stable switches are basically vanilla Minecraft levers with a different style. They produce  redstone power in the block they are attached to and are manually switched on and off. You can configure strong/weak power and inverted/not inverted by multi-left-clicking with your empty hand.

  • Pulse switches are like vanilla Minecraft buttons with a different style. They also produce strong redstone power in the block they are attached to, and they switch off automatically after a short time. However, pulse switches can be pushed multiple times, extending the delay (each right-click) before switching off again. Single left clicking switches off directly, multi-left-clicking with your empty hand configures weak/strong/inverted.

  • Contact mats are floor mounted switches like pressure plates. They can be pulse emitting, bi-stable, etc. It depends on the mat what it supports (multi-left-click config always, UI panel config can be entity detection and count, power strength, etc).

  • Automatic switches are devices that can change their output without someone clicking or stepping on them. E.g. time switches, weather sensors, or motion detectors are in this category. Additional to their specific UI panels they also support multi-left-click config .

  • Redstone sensitive glass is a more ore less transparent glass-metal-alloy that changes its state if it is powered. It may change color, transparency, or emit light - depending on the exact glass composition. You can also place redstone tracks on it, but because of boundary effects of the crystalline material structures you will not see the tracks from below ;).

  • Switch link pearls are Ender pearl based connections between switches, allowing to remote activate a target switch by using the pearl in the main hand, or by placing them into another switch.

 

There are different style "series" of gauges and switches, fitting in different game context:

  • Industrial series: Looks quite "Immersive" and could also be named "Engineers Switches".
  • Old fancy series: Iron-wood-gold look, more filigree. Captain Nemo deck sort of thing.
  • Old rustic series: Iron-wood look. Big levers, cranks, black metal chains, etc. Fits in castles and dungeons and so on (e.g. to mods where you have torque shafts).
  • Glass series: Transparent devices, which fit in modern buildings and star ship decks. Glass contact plates do not make click noises (no relay inside), and they can be color tinted by left clicking with dye (since v1.0.3b5 or v.0.3b4 when explicitly enabled in the mod config).

Summary screenshots

Industrial series and auto switches:

[top left: gauges, top right (blue): pulse switches, bottom left (green): bi-stable switches, bottom center (brown): indicators, pink: alarm siren, right (green): automatic switches, right floor: contact mats] 

 

Rustic bi-stable switches:

Rustic pulse switches:

Rustic gauges:

Old fancy bi-stable switches:

Old fancy pulse switches:

Blue stained redstone sensitive glass and a transparent glass contact switch in the center:

 

Glass switches

 

Sensitive glass colors and tinted glass contact plates on the floor:

 

Summary screenshot (v1.0.0)

  • Green framed: The currently implemented gauges, five analog and one digital display. Topmost row: unpowered, row 2: powered by comparators behind the wall blocks (power 12 to 7).

  • Blue framed: Indicators, bottom row: powered with redstone torches under the wall blocks, row 3, unpowered. The alarm lamp (column 4) is always blinking when powered, the small square lights have steady and blinking variants.

  • Yellow framed: Pulse switches (well, "the" pulse switch).

  • Orange framed: Bistable switches. Note that the ESTOP is inverted - it switches off when pushed (it's an emergency stop button after all ;) ).

Summary of meters and switches

Testing gameplay screenshot

Testing game with 85 other mods installed, mainly to check compatibility and recipe collisions (and it's also simply fun). The screenshot shows the front end of a (electrical) Diesel generator control. Walls and the red wiring is from Immersive Engineering, the door from Nihiltres Engineer's Doors, wall drawings from Chisels and bits by AlgorithmX2, gauges, the ESTOP button and the indicator above the door from this mod. The voltmeter style gauges are used to show the state of charge of buffering capacitors (IE), the ESTOP is to force the Diesel control off (actually an assembly language programmed Minecoprocessor by ToroCraft). The LED is used to show if the Diesel generator is currently running or not.

 

Screenshot a testing game with 85 other mods installed

Recipes and more in-game screenshots

Browse the uploaded images for more details how the devices look like. It seems to be tradition to insert a spoiler alert for the recipes: 

Generally, blocks of this mod are crafted by framing a center block/item with 8 other ingredients. The ingredient in the center decides weather you get a gauge, switch, indicator, etc. The framing ingredients decide what "styling series" you will get, e.g. industrial, rustic, fancy, etc. Put a gauge or switch into the crafting area again to get the next style that fits into the current style series.

 

 

Source code, mod pack integration, forking, back ports, bug reports

Sources: Are located on the github: https://github.com/stfwi/rsgauges/.

Packs: If your mod pack is open source as well and has no installer (e.g. adding adware, bloatware or whatever), you don't need to ask and simply integrate this mod.

Forking: It's MIT, you can fork the code under the same conditions.

Back ports: I've just started modding and like to stick with MC versions >=1.12.2. Sorry, no back ports.

Bug reports: Yes, please let me know. Drop a mail or better open an issue for the repository.

Feature details

Gauges and indicators

  • Gauges measure a bit differently as e.g. redstone lamps. The gauges do not only react to the (strong or weak) power they receive themselves, but also lookup the power that the adjacent block they face receives. This prevents the gauges from seeing indirect (weak) power from adjacent blocks, causing incorrect display values. The behaviour is:
    • If the gauge is attached to a block that can provide redstone power, such as a redstone block or a device of a mod that has a redstone output on the side, then the gauge will display the maximum of weak and strong power coming from the facing of that device. That is pretty much as most redstone inputs behave.
    • If the gauge is attached to a block that cannot produce redstone power, but can be powered (most blocks except glass, air, fluids, etc), then the gauge looks what power this block receives from all sides where blocks are that can provide redstone power. Also here: the maximum of weak and strong power is taken from each side, and then the total maximum of all sides is displayed. That means it behaves as if it would be the block behind it. This feature allows you to place a gauge e.g. on a wall and feed the "signal" you want to measure to the back side of the wall. This indirect measurement of weak power has a little catch through - the display is a bit delayed. That is normally no problem, but if you need fast display reaction, take care that the gauge is directly powered.
  • Indicators measure like gauges, except that they show only on or off, emit light, and can blink.

Switches

  • Manual switches are pretty much like vanilla buttons and levers.
  • All switches can be configured to output weak power or being inverted. To configure this, simply multi-left-click a switch with the empty hand (at least double-click). This will cycle through "strong", "weak", "weak inverted", "strong inverted".
  • You can extend the on-time (off-delay) of pulse switches by activating them multiple times, means pressing them again while they are active. The delays are in ticks: 25 (first click when off), 50, 100, 200, 400.
  • Pulse switches can be configured to have a fixed off-time. To do this, left click the switch with redstone dust in your hand. The stack size defines the switching time in 0.1s (means 2 ticks). To reset the time simply break and re-attach the switch. When a fixed timing is set, the multi-click off-time-extension mentioned above is deactivated.
  • Automatic switches (timers, clocks, environmental sensor based switches, motion detectors, etc) normally have additional configuration, represented with small up-down buttons on the device front side. This can be output power, time settings, sensor thresholds, etc. There is no GUI for them. When pressing these buttons a chat message will show what you just changed. At least the industrial series switches have diagrams printed on the front to explain how the switches work.

Switch linking

When left-clicking a switch with an Ender pearl, this Ender pearl remembers the position, type and features of the clicked switch, and becomes a Switch Link Pearl. The clicked switch is memorized as link target, and will be actuated by the pearl in your hand. You can use this pearl to remote activate the target switch or plug it into another switch, which will then remote access the target switch when it is activated. Pearls can be plugged in to almost every switch, including contact mats, auto-switches, etc.  There are some additional link configurations that you can set when needed. The complete description is in the readme file on the github.

 

Developer update videos

The functions and recipes are packed into brief description videos, we also track here how the mod evaluated, community credits, etc.

- Initial mod description video

- Dev discussion video collection.

Community references

Mods covering similar features:

Making this mod was basically a weekend project for me to check what's new in Java - I just did not expect that a weekend can be so long. To learn how mods work took a look at the following codes and resources to get started, and like to give the authors credits accordingly: lothazar (cyclic), blusunrize, vazkii, the Forge smiths, documenters and supporters (aka Lex, 7, draco, v0id, choonster ), thegrayghost (minecraft by example).

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