Automation & Redstone
The Gear System
ReInDev replaces vanilla redstone with a mechanical gear network. The core wiring block is the Gear (block ID 97), built on the CIRCUITS material, while every active component (gates, motor, conveyor, relay, wait) uses the MOVABLE_CIRCUIT material. Gears are the cheap, plentiful starting point: a ring of 6 Iron Ingots (the classic "doughnut" pattern) yields 16 Gears, and crafting them for the first time unlocks the Industrial Revolution achievement ("Craft gears using iron").
How signals propagate
The Gear block behaves like redstone dust. It carries a current strength of 0–15 stored in its metadata. A directly or indirectly powered source sets a gear to strength 15; that strength then propagates outward through connected gears, decrementing by 1 each block, so a single source reaches at most 15 gears before dying out. Gears climb the sides of solid blocks and conduct up/down faces (metadata-0 = unpowered, anything >0 = powered). A powered gear counts as an input to any adjacent component, exactly as a wire would.
Components detect power one of two ways, checked in their isProvidingPowerPossible logic: either an adjacent block is indirectly providing power (a motor, button, pressure plate, lever, etc.), or an adjacent Gear has metadata > 0. Gates and diodes have two visual states — an idle block ID and an active block ID — and they swap between them on a scheduled block update rather than instantly.
Power Sources: The Motor Block
The Motor Block (ID 137, hardness 3.5, the toughest automation block) is a permanent, toggleable power source — the gear-era equivalent of a redstone block or always-on lever. Craft it from a Gear surrounded by 8 Cobblestone. Right-click to toggle it on or off; when active it powers all six neighbours, emits smoke particles and plays a switch sound. Because it never decays, a motor is the standard "always-on" feed for clocks and conveyor loops.
Logic Gates
All gates share hardness 0.8, drop their idle form, and are oriented by the direction you face when placing. AND/OR/XOR are two-input gates reading the two sides perpendicular to their facing; NOT is a single-input inverter. A Wrench (crafted from gold, iron and a gear) rotates a placed gate — doing so the first time earns A Wrench in The Works.
| Gate | Logic (inputs A, B) | Recipe (X = Gear, # = Cobblestone) |
|---|---|---|
| NOT | output = NOT A (powered when input is OFF; one back input, one front output) | ### / X#X / ### |
| AND | A AND B | #X# / ### / #X# |
| OR | A OR B | X## / ### / ##X |
| XOR | A XOR B (on only when inputs differ) | X#X / ### / X#X |
The XOR Gate also has six shapeless "mix" recipes: combine any two of NOT + NOT, NOT + AND, NOT + OR, AND + AND, AND + OR, or OR + OR to produce one XOR gate — handy for converting spare gates.
Diodes: Relay and Wait
The Relay Block and Wait Block extend the diode base: they take one input on the back face and emit from the front, only ever flowing one direction (a repeater-style isolator).
- Relay Block — a directional pass-through / signal isolator. Recipe: a Gear flanked by 4 Netherrack (### / X#X / ###).
- Wait Block — an adjustable delay. Its delay table is
{1, 2, 3, 4}, and the code doubles it, so the four settings are 2, 4, 6 and 8 game ticks (0.1–0.4 s). Right-click to cycle the delay; the wrench rotates orientation. Recipe: 2 Gears over a frame of 6 Stone (X#X / X#X / XXX). Chain wait blocks to build clocks and pulse timers.
Conveyor Belts
The Conveyor Belt (ID 198, half-height block) is a movement device, not a logic device. Crafting yields 6 belts from a row of 3 Leather over Stone–Gear–Stone (LLL / X#X). When powered (by a gear or any neighbour signal) it nudges any entity standing on it at 0.2 motion per tick in its facing direction; rotate with the wrench to set direction. It runs on a 3-tick rate and stops when power is removed. Use belts to feed mob grinders, move dropped items toward a collection point, or build moving walkways.
Example Builds
- Clock: Loop a Motor into a chain of Wait Blocks back onto a gear line; the 2–8-tick delays set the pulse period. Feed the output to a lamp, music block or piston for a repeating signal.
- Latch / toggle: Cross two NOT gates feeding each other's inputs to hold a state, or use an AND gate as an enable so a conveyor only runs while a motor and a pressure plate are both active.
- Item sorter line: Power a row of conveyor belts from a motor; drop items at one end and they ride to a chest hopper or collection drawer at the other. Toggle the motor to pause the line.
- Pulse on change: An XOR gate fed by a signal and a delayed copy of itself (via a Wait Block) emits a short pulse whenever the input flips — an edge detector for doors or piston gates.
Note that pistons in ReInDev are also gear-driven: the Piston recipe uses a Gear as its mechanism (planks, cobblestone, iron and a gear), so gate logic can drive moving-block contraptions just as redstone would in vanilla.