I am trying to get two pistons to synch their pulses for an item sorter (nether).

In the attached pic:

  1. Observer which has a string in front of it (far side) that sees items drop down out of a cobweb, it pulses the redstone to start the pistons
  2. The primary piston (#2) that pushes the items a block over towards the secondary piston (#3)
  3. The Secondary piston (#3) that pushes the items along the ice path.

The redstone and repeaters are currently set up so that the observer pulse pushes the primary piston first, then after a short delay pushes the secondary piston.

What I am trying to do is prevent the primary piston from extending while the secondary is active. What’s happening is every now and again due to timing of items dropping past the string, the secondary piston is extended and the primary piston pulses pushing items onto the top of the extended slime block attached to the secondary piston, vs. those items dropping into the empty space while it’s withdrawn.

Any help appreciated!

  • SwaziboyOPEnglish
    3•5 months ago

    OK, so here’s the update. thanks to all the suggestions - I combined a few ideas, and came up with the following solution.

    The observer triggers as items drop, this does two things at once:

    1. Drives a pulse extender which immediately retracts the secondary piston
    2. Pulses the primary piston after a short delay to push the items into the space that the secondary piston just made

    As the clock decays fully the secondary piston fires and pushes the items.

    An added bonus here is spam protection - so if items drop consecutively more quickly than the clock decays, it simply resets the clock so you don’t get pistons firing together, or too quickly. This way nothing ever ends up on the top of the slime/honey blocks. I’ve added a front-side view for those curious as well.

    Thanks for all the help and tips!