During the construction of my community farm, I came across an issue. I needed to detect the presence of a player, but pressure plates, tripwires, and in fact most detectable redstone components are disabled on claims for everyone that isn’t added to the claim. But for community farms, games, or other interactable public claims, adding everyone just isn’t an option. So, I have played around with redstone and found a solution that I would like to present to you.
I doubt many of you will make use of this, but I want to inspire some impressive, useful, and fun community claims. So if you do find a use for the redstone presented below, share in the comments what you have used it for! Maybe you can even use this in an interactable build competition entry!
Disclaimer: I do not know if anyone has made similar discoveries in the past, I am just trying to share my findings.
The base design
This design works just like a pressure plate. The white line represents a string (for visibility). The observer is facing (detecting) the string. This is what it looks like when a player stands on the string.
Instead of a redstone lamp, you can take a redstone output for any redstone contraption you like. The redstone output can be taken as follows:
Note that players can break your redstone if they purposefully walk in and out of the string very quickly. The game will not be able to react quickly enough. You can counteract this by locking them in place with pistons that come up around the string (as I did in my community farm).
Only detect 2 block high entities
Any entity (including players, any mob, and dropped items) can trigger this ‘pressure plate’, similar to a real pressure plate. A simple change in the design can make sure that only 2 block high entities are detected:
These base designs can be used to activate basically anything. If you come up with a cool design that is linked up to these ‘pressure plates’, show us your creation!
The piston does not need to face downwards, you can also take a redstone output elsewhere by facing the piston horizontally. However, the device will not work if your piston faces upwards as it will get stuck.
Resetting the device
I suggest adding a simple reset button in case someone accidentally (or purposefully) breaks your redstone as the design is somewhat fragile. A simple observer facing into a lever will do the trick. Flick the lever to reset the device. As you know, only claim members can interact with this lever!
Simple piston door
You can use this trick with any block (not just redstone blocks), allowing for a very small piston door design without any complicated redstone:
This design is tileable so you can make the door as wide as you wish (but only two blocks high). Don’t forget to place two strings and as always, the observers need to face the strings.
As expected, the piston door opens when used by a player, and closes behind them.
‘Levers’
If you want players to be able to activate a toggle instead of an output that fades when they leave the ‘pressure plate’, you can resort to the following design. Walking into the string toggles the redstone output on/off. And leaving the string does not change that.
Off:
On:
The arrows represent which way the dropper faces (i.e. where they drop their items). Put a single item into the top right dropper and read the redstone output with a comparator on the bottom dropper. The hopper faces to the right.
