Every Redstone Component in Minecraft 1.20 Explained – Redstone Guide

Redstone is an awesome part of minecraft but it’s something that most players don’t know too much about so in this video i’m to explain how every redstone component works and how to use them to make amazing machines in this minecraft redstone guide let’s check it out redstone is different in java and

Bedrock editions of minecraft and everything explained in this video is for java edition parts of this video will certainly apply to bedrock edition but this information is most accurate for java edition so i’m going to go over every single redstone component here and then after i’ve explained how it works

I’ll show you how to use it in a build we’re going to start with redstone dust this basically transfers a redstone signal we can place it out just like this placing one piece down and right clicking on it will change between the wires going in or just staying as kind

Of a single lump if we go like this then we can kind of connect it to other pieces but overall doing it like this is only about if it’s a piece of redstone by itself because it’ll automatically link as it needs to if there’s other pieces around it next we’re gonna go on

To the redstone torch we put down the redstone torch right here you’ll notice it connects up to our redstone here but as we place more redstone dust down you’ll notice the signal gets weaker and weaker from the brightest point here to the dimmest it goes 15 blocks so let’s

Say we had an item here we were activating like right here that would still work but one block further and it would just be completely off and we couldn’t activate an item that’s right there so that’s basically the distance that a redstone torch can travel redstone now

Let’s make a small build out of a redstone torch we can make a very simple clock although this will kind of phase itself out a clock is something that turns on and off basically we’re going to do is we’re gonna have a torch here we’re gonna have that connect up to a

Piece of dust that then goes into this block here it’ll have a torch here then the signal from the torch will go here over to here to a block here we’re gonna place a redstone torch right there and a piece of dust here and it’ll basically

Make this turn on and off just like this well this kind of clock isn’t very useful as redstone torches have an interesting functionality of burning out so what it means when a redstone torch burns out is that if it’s turned on and off too many times it’ll just stay

Permanently in the off mode although it does seem the specific clock is not making these burn out so there’s our simple build with the redstone torch now on to the block of redstone the block of redstone provides a constant power supply not actually unlike the torch but

It’s basically the torch in a block form and it can’t be turned off so if we place redstone around here that touches it just like that you can see that turns on and the thing about a redstone block is that it’s often used with other blocks and redstone kind of travels

Through blocks so this block right here every single block that touches it will also be powered now it won’t be visibly powered of course this grass block isn’t going to turn on and go do something for us but what it does mean is let’s say we’re these grass blocks where we had

Something that could be powered like a redstone lamp and i’ll describe that in more detail later it will turn on on any of the blocks that are surrounding it but like not here for instance so that’s kind of what the redstone block does and

We can kind of use it in a simple little contraption so if you have the block here what we could do is we could have a little system where this redstone block can stop the signal of this so we could put this right here and that’ll permanently power that on and now this

Isn’t going now of course there’s way more uses for this but overall that is a block that’ll just always power anything next to it this is often used with pistons next we have the repeater now the repeater will extend a signal that’s most useful with something like this if

You see here the torch goes to this and right over here when the power runs out if we put it here won’t do anything but if we put it right here it actually turns on and goes back up to full signal strength 15 as this was the lowest

Signal strength of one this just turns the signal strength back to 15. we can make this go over here and once it runs out again all the way over here then we can place another one of these down to make a very long redstone line but as well as extending the signal this

Repeater adds delay it adds what’s known as one tick of delay you’ve probably heard people talk about ticks and minecraft before you may know what they are but if you don’t here’s the brief explanation a tick is basically something that happens 20 times every single second in minecraft and it does

Different things like let’s say having different items go on and off it’s just kind of a way of having time be measured in the game but with redstone there’s things called redstone ticks and there’s 10 of those in every second or for every two in-game ticks but for all you have

To know is that every single tick is a tenth of a second and what these repeaters do is it adds a bit of delay so the repeater being like this it adds one tick of delay if we right click on it once then it adds two ticks three

Ticks and four ticks so let’s say we had three of these in a row just like that that would add 1.2 seconds of delay which means let’s say we powered it on here before it got to over there it would be 1.2 seconds so just like that

You can see that was about 1.2 seconds and of course if your computer is lagging like crazy it might not be exactly 1.2 seconds but that is what the game is trying to calculate it as and so of course this is super useful because

What we can do is we can do that to delay a signal let’s say you want to explode a piece of tnt and you didn’t want it to kill you all you’d have to do is place down a piece of tnt play some repeaters just like this and then power

Off the last one with let’s say a torch and you have time to run away before it explodes and it won’t hurt you at all and those repeaters added that extra time to let you run away now of course that’s a very simple demonstration of how these work you can also use them

Somewhat like how we use the torches here to make a clock so we can do for instance is we can have two repeaters just like this make them go into each other like that and they face the way that you’re looking so this would face this way this would face this way and

It’s facing way this triangle kind of points to there then we could put redstone like that power it on and then get rid of the torch and we had to be very quick with this i’ll just get rid of this and break this and replace it

Just like that and you can see it’s turning on and off just like this that’s a simple way that you can use repeaters in the game to add delay and kind of make a little system like that as it doesn’t actually take any time for redstone to travel through dust like

This it does take time for it to go through the repeater so you can do that to add delay to what you’re doing next we have a very complicated redstone item which is the comparator the comparator does a lot of different things plug over its three main uses it can compare and

Subtract signal strength as well as measure different properties of certain items for instance let’s get ourselves a composter and some cake just to turn into bone meal here and we’re going to find out how this thing works the first use is the comparison use and all it asks is are

Any of these side inputs not this front one but just this one or this one are they more powerful than the back inputs let’s put one in right here you’ll notice the signal strength is a little bit lower because this torch is further away you can see it’s on because this is

Stronger than that so if this wire is stronger than this wire then the signal goes through if we put this here and the signal strength is higher because it’s closer then this will turn off so you can use this if you want this to compare two signals and determine if this is

Going to be on and off depending on how strong those signals are and this works the same from either side we’ll show it here too let’s say we have this before redstone pieces away because again the signal strength goes down by one every block it is away from our power source

And let’s put it right over here if we put the torch here this will still stay on because this is less powerful than that now the second use is subtract mode which is actually a very advanced use for such a simple item you can literally use subtraction so what you basically do

Is you subtract whatever the power level is from here this is certainly an advanced use for the comparator but you can do it all you have to do to use this is just right click on it and it has this little torch at the front go on

That means it’s in subtract mode so we’ll try this out right here with some easy numbers now this if we put this torch right here three blocks away this means this would be at power level 13 when it reaches here because that’s 15 14 13. now here we’re going to do a

Little bit less than that so that’s right there we’re going to have this be a bit of a lower number so we’re going to have this be let’s see three four five blocks away so that would be 15 14 13 12 11 and 13 minus 11 is two and if you

Actually look there that is two blocks of redstone that are activated and you can see just those two are powered there and this one isn’t if we move this one further away so subtracting one less then you can see that’s now going three forward this is a very advanced use of

The comparator but that is how it works it basically says whatever the signal strength is of this minus this signal strength equals the output and that can work from either side here with the back being the first number that we’re subtracting also a little interesting use of the comparator is that you can’t

Really use it like a repeater but you can use it slightly like a repeater so we place some redstone in front of it and behind it just like this and there’s no side outputs basically whatever the signal strength behind it is is the same

That it is in front of it so that means if we put these kind of alternating between the comparators and the redstone dust just like that the signal strength would never go down so you could technically use that sort of like a repeater to extend that but let’s say

The signal strength did go down we put that right here then it’ll only copy over the current signal strength that was behind it and finally for the comparator almost every single item in the game that can have different levels to it like let’s say a composter or a

Cake something like this or even like a chest that can have certain levels of filling it has output determined by the comparator so if we have a comparator up against it like that and we right click on this you can see the signal strength goes down as we eat the cake the signal

Strength there is going lower and lower and once we’ve ate all the cake then it’s gone with this the more that’s in here the more power we get out of it so there’s one two three four five six you can just kind of see it getting higher

And higher there up to the highest level it can be and we harvest that you can see it just pops off like that what’s really interesting about the comparator is it can actually read this with all these different blocks like for instance a chest how full that is how full the

Composter is things like that even through a block so if we place the composter there next to the block here with this here and this only works sideways not like up and down like we couldn’t put the comparator here or something and we basically start filling this that

Will still recognize the fill that’s in there and have the power level go according to that so that’s a really cool thing too because for instance is for really simple application that i’ll show you with the comparator here let’s get ourselves a piece of tnt again because you can never have too many

Traps and we’re gonna just make this be empty like that all you’d have to do to make a really simple trap place your tnt there have this be like a wall that you know people can’t see through let’s say a friend of yours has their composter here they’re gonna go compost and things

And they’re just like i’m gonna go compost here but little do they know there’s the comparator there and their entire thing is gonna blow up just like that and of course there’s more advanced uses of this as well as the comparator is probably the most complicated item of

Redstone in minecraft next we have the observer now the observer is an incredibly useful item as you can see if an item changes its state now that is actually pretty simple because so let’s say this block here that’s a piece of grass it’s being observed by the observer if anything changes on that

Block anything at all this observer will detect it and have a redstone signal come out of it so if we break this you can see that lantern lit up there just like that what this is really useful for is like let’s say we had a sugar cane farm

This is one of the most useful things you can do with this is for farms things like that let’s say we had it just like this then when the sugar cane grows at a certain height that powers on and we could use that to for instance break the

Sugar cane but also you can use this to have an observer chain there’s an observer chain right here we simply have these going like this and the arrow again is which way it’s going when you’re placing this down it’ll go with the redstone facing you and the face

Facing away from you so let’s say we wanted to have this observer look at the block we’d right click here it would stir this block here and we just kind of place away from us just like that we can have the observer observing the observer

In a chain like this and what that’ll do is it’ll make it so if we have something happen here that segment will go all the way through and we’ll see that appear right there and that’s a really cool thing you can do with this just make

Sure when you’re doing it you can’t see any of the faces because if you do see any of the faces on the corner there that means the signal will not go through this is incredibly useful because you could use this in let’s say water or something like that you could

Just have tons of signals being uh happening to this and you wouldn’t have to worry about let’s say some redstone breaking so to show a simple little demonstration of this we’ll break this block here and that redstone lantern should light up and we kind of have a working redstone underwater just like

That which is very very useful if you want to have a signal go underwater so that’s for the main group of redstone onto the pistons now pistons can push things if they’re powered they can push almost any block except for they cannot push terra cotta bedrock obsidian

Furnaces things like that if it is powered on it’ll go like this it will have the piston go out like that pushing a block so we can have this push a block really easily and the counterpart of this is the sticky piston right here and the sticky piston can also push a block

And if the sticky piston does push a block what’ll happen is if it’s unpowered like let’s say we take this here we’ll have this be powering just like that if we power it on it’ll push it but if we unpower it’ll actually retract as the other one does it’ll pull the block with

It just like this so you can have this block moving back and forth like that super easily that’s kind of how you use pistons and you can use this to like let’s say make a little door it does have two sticky pistons like this two blocks like that let’s say that’s a wall

In our house just like this let’s say we want to have a lever right here all you literally have to do is make a little system like this so we have our power source here connected to the redstone that powers both these because this one powers this but then this powers this

Block which powers this what will happen is if we switch it on it opens like that and like this it will open like that so it’ll open and close just like this really easily of course if these were nicer blocks than grass we would go like this and make a really

Simple little automatic door and you can kind of see how we could make this bigger and make an even larger door and with the standard piston this could be really good for let’s say breaking a block you want to break so we could put this here then power it and it will

Break that block of course there’s a lot of other uses for that as well those are some of the things you can do with pistons next we have slime blocks and honey blocks now start with the slime block slime blocks have a lot of different properties but the one we’re

Going to talk about today is its stickiness so let’s have ourselves a sticky piston just like this and we’re going to attach to it instead of another block that’s normal we’re going to have a slime block next to it and of course we can very normally power this on and

Off just like this again this is powering this block which is powering this block it’s powering kind of all the blocks that are diagonal to it just like that or not diagonal but straight in front of it just like that so we’re going to flick it on and off just like

This because this is a slime block which is quite sticky we can place blocks just like this like adjacent to that one and if we flick it on and off it’ll actually move those with it just like that now of course this could get a little out of

Hand if you had a lot of sticky pistons sticking to themselves and tons of different blocks so there is a limit to how much one piston can push unfortunately and what it basically is is it is 12 blocks you can see there we have one two three four then five six

Seven eight nine ten you can see that one push is there if we put in one more that should push as well that should be 11 blocks and 12 blocks like this just doesn’t push because 12 blocks is too many for that one piston but that’s basically how a slime block works you

Can even use slime block to sort of bounce yourself different places there’s some really cool mechanics with that where they kind of shoot you in a different direction which is really cool like that one did right there now the honey block has some additional uses it does stick to other blocks just like

That you can see it moves them but it will not stick to slime block so if we go like this we kind of just have that there so we can move it it will not stick to that slime block there they do not stick to each other that’s incredibly useful sometimes

What it can actually do is it can move items along with it just like this but if you want to know a lot more about what the honey block can do then i have a video that i made all about them and also about how to farm bees and there’s

An icard on the screen right now if you click on that you can watch that video and learn even more about this awesome item next we have some items that are activated by redstone now these all are in this list because they can only be activated by redstone first we have the

Dispenser now the dispenser can well dispense an item that can be a lot of different things that can let’s say just have an item be shot out of it so we could just put that there we’ll just simply power it on just like this putting let’s say a torch just below it

That’ll power it on it shoots it out but certain items have additional uses so let’s say we have an arrow this is a really cool use of this we put the arrows in there and then we power it on and off it will shoot the arrows out of

The front just like this and the possibilities are almost endless with this there’s a lot of different items this thing can interact with unfortunately it cannot just straight out place blocks so that would be very overpowered and cool but there are certain things it can do like for

Instance if you have a shulker box you can have it spit that out just like this that shulker box will be placed they can also do things like placing down water buckets and lava or even shoot fireworks place boats or throw a potion at you and that’s kind of how the dispenser works

And the dropper is a little bit different remember with the first item we put in the dispenser how it just shot out the item it didn’t do anything with it well the dropper does that with every item so if we put the arrows in here and

We power on the dropper we can basically have that just shoot out items just like this it’ll never have any actual interactions with the items whereas the dispenser if it can it will have an interaction with the items this is really useful if you want to have a

System that just deals with items in the game and doesn’t actually use them like let’s say an item sorter something like that so you can have this just have items go into it and have it spit them out without having any issue of these being used so for instance with this

Dispenser here you could use it as a trap we could place down a block here and we could just have this let’s say shoot arrows at intruder and have that hurt them or with this you could have this be like i said earlier with an item

Sorter that could be really cool use of the dropper onto the redstone lamp i kind of showed this previously but this is more or less what you think it is a lamp or a light that is only able to be powered and lit up by redstone this is super useful

Because we powered on just like this not only will it power adjacent blocks which can sometimes be annoying but is also quite useful but it also can be used for a lot of other cool things like for instance you could make a seven segment display with this just like this or you

Could use it with something very simple like a lighthouse we could even make a very very simple build with this with these repeaters here let’s say we had some blocks around them just like that and over here what you can see is that these can be powered on and off by that

You could have a super cool machine that has these be powered on and off to let’s say make it look like a lighthouse next we have the iron trapdoor which is very very simple it’s simply a trapdoor that needs to be powered on by redstone it’s

As simple as that next we have the iron door and it’s exactly the same thing this needs to be powered by redstone but again like let’s say something like a lever that would count as a source of redstone to power that on so you could have that as something to open up your

Door or you could just use a torch just like that and iron trap doors and iron doors are also a bit stronger than your normal wooden doors so both these items could be good to use and let’s say a fortified fortress but something really

Fun i like to do with these is to put them all in a circle around a pressure plate and what you can do with that is you can make a fun little trap where you have a pressure plate down you surround these in the doors just like this you

Have to kind of have the doors be in the right way i believe they have to be something like this just so you have the back of the door be facing it just like that if you go into it then you are trapped actually this one i did wrong

But let’s see if we can get that to go down uh correctly something like uh something like this i think if we go down here just like that we’re then trapped in this little iron door machine which is kind of a fun little thing there and of course with the iron

Trapdoors you could also use them to let’s say have water go out of it or something like let’s say we had some blocks go around here just like this and we had some water that was trapped in here and we’ll get ourselves a torch to power this on just like

This right here should work if we put some water in there just like that we could have a waterlogged trapdoor there and if we just get rid of this torch it’ll open up and the water will flow out so there’s for instance a use you could have with the iron trap

Door next we have a group of items which are basically advanced redstone inputs something similar to let’s say the redstone torch first we have the daylight detector this will well detect if it’s daylight that’s pretty simple but what it can do is it can also detect if it’s daytime or night time we’re

Gonna have two daylight detectors set up just like this this one is detecting day this one is two if we right click on it it’ll kind of turn blue and now it’s detecting night so if it’s not nighttime it will not power something now the really cool use of this is something

Like let’s say maybe a firework that always launches off in the day we could do that really simply with getting ourselves a dispenser putting that below a daylight detector just like this of course you can also have it to the side of this just like that if you want

Then we can get some fireworks something really simple of course these won’t have really anything on them but that’s okay if we put that on there and of course when it would turn day let’s say when you first wake up then that will fire off a firework just like that and you

Could have yourself a little system with that or you could maybe even have a certain function in your base that only happens when it turns to daytime or tonight time so you could turn this into a street lamp for instance by turning it on to night mode putting on top of a

Redstone lamp and when it turns to nighttime this would light up but it turns to daytime they’ll turn off again as of course you don’t need street lights in the day next we have the tripwire hook which has to be used with blocks and also string the tripwire hook

Is a really interesting little item that can be used as well a tripwire hook but there’s also some other uses for it as well so to set one up you have to have a tripwire hook on a block with string between it and a second drip wire hook

Something like let’s say this you can see now it’s connected now that it’s gone down like that if it wasn’t connected it wouldn’t look like that so you can see it’s up like that and it’s connected and it’s down that actually set it off and have redstone go over it

We have to walk over this and it is now activated just like that this is really cool because string is almost invisible so you can have some really cool traps with this where you can have this be useful for let’s say a mob farm for instance there’s like the switch farm

Where which is spawn on these and when they are turned on then they’re flushed down an area because they’re activated by this what we could do is we’d get ourselves a little lamp to show that off we’ll put a lamp right here we walk over this you can see that turns on quite

Easily and of course if these aren’t connected to a trap they can be quite useful for anything you want to do where you sense a player or a mob through a piece of string next we have the trapped chest which is a very fun item this is

Literally a trap chest if you don’t actually know how to craft it you can craft it with a tripwire hook and a normal chest in your crafting grid and it basically is very very simple doesn’t even need a comparator all you have to do is just open it up and a

Redstone signal is outputted from it so for instance we could use this in a trap i mean it is called the trap chest after all so let’s get ourselves a piece of tnt and we could let’s say put it right below the trap chest put it just like

This and we can open it up and we open it up the tnt has lit off but to make a bit of a better trap simply place a piece of tnt one block below it like just like this there’s a block bloat and then block underneath that’s the tnt

When you open it up it’ll power this block which will power the tnt and will still give you a really cool trap so that’s a really awesome item especially since it looks so similar to normal chests you could have maybe a player storage system and simply throw in one

Trapped double chest or single chest and they would never know the difference next we have the target block and this will power redstone if it is hit by any projectiles let’s say a trident just like that or let’s say we have even something like a snowball it doesn’t

Actually have to stick on there could also of course be an arrow or something like that and the way this works is it’ll output a stronger signal strength be closer to the bull’s eye of the target your projectile hit it on so let’s try that out right now we’re going

To hit this on the edge there just like that you can see a very small signal strength was outputted just like that let’s say we get very close to the center like this there’s a very strong signal strength and this block is of course amazing for things like carnival

Games but also for just improving your aim in general as you can have a really cool item that directly tells you if you fit these four metal pixels or any of these other layers of blocks on the outside with telling user success with the amount of redstone strength and of

Course you can use this easily with like let’s say a redstone lamp we’re only after 15 strength it would actually light up so let’s try that right now so just like this if we can actually hit this on the bullseye just like that we can hit it right on the bull’s eye just

Like this and that redstone lamp will turn on but if it’s not on the bull’s-eye it’s really really close but not right on the bullseye then it will not turn on next we have the lectern this can be used with a comparator or not with a comparator but what happens

Is if there is a book in it and of course it has to be a book and quill that’s been written in so we’ll just try something here right now we’ll just say you know of course a completely uh random message uh you know just something that you know no one will ever

Guess just um something just like this something really easy and nice and basically we’ll just sign that just like that have it be done and we’ll just go down just like that you don’t have to actually sign it we’ll place it on the left turn here and we

Flip the page here it will just simply have a bit of redstone output come out a lectern right here and you can see right here when we flip the page here that redstone lantern will turn on for a very brief amount of time you could use this

Let’s say an amazing build or in like a meeting hall and you have this podium at the front then secretly when you flip to the last page and you can have this be page sensitive if you have a comparator connected up to it but anyway you’ll be

Doing a thing where you’re like let’s say reading a story and then when you flip to last page maybe fireworks will go off and everyone can see that you’re done reading next we have the lightning rod and if the lightning rod is actually struck by lightning it simply outputs a

Redstone signal much like the lectern wood right here and you could use this for let’s say a lightning detector when your lightning rod is struck then you get a little alert by maybe a redstone lamp or something like that or you could also use it for let’s say maybe if you

Have a farm that has mobs be converted into other mobs by the lightning for instance a creeper into a charged creeper you could have it so that the creeper is struck by lightning because the lightning rod is next to it and because of the redstone signal you have

That creeper now drop down into a specific hatch because it has now been struck by the lightning and last we have the basic redstone inputs we have the lever here which is very very simple so a lever works by directly powering a block much like let’s say this block was

Powered like this all the blocks around it would also be powered because this primary block can have power go around it just like this so that can be super useful for activating anything really and because it can be always on or always off just like this it’s incredibly useful for triggering

Redstone devices of every single type or maybe even just something simple like turning your lights on and off you could for instance use this for something like that maybe some lights in your house and you have a simple light switch where if you turn it on then your lights will be

On if you turn it off your lights will be off and i’d also suggest something like this for like let’s say the redstone door we showed over here because only you could use a button with something like this you can control if it’s always open or always closed

But on to the buttons there’s two different types here there are wood buttons and stone buttons the wood buttons can be black stone or normal stone it doesn’t matter and the wood buttons can also be any type but the reason why we show both of these is

Because the stone and the wood buttons have different durations that they activate a block for let’s place down a stone button and click it just like this you can see it’s on for that much time let’s try the wood button you can see that the wood button is on for visibly

Longer because of the greater duration that the wood button has so we press both of these at once just like that this one actually turns off first this could be useful for something where you have to activate at one time like let’s say maybe a water dispenser let’s say

You wanted to have maybe a little shower in your house that would have the water be turned on and off whenever you want it to be on or off a button works really well for something like a dispenser i’ll show you right now let’s put the water

In here let’s put a lever on one side we flick the lever yes the water comes out but then we have to turn the power off and then on again to get the water back put into the bucket there with let’s say a button if we press the button here

Then the water will be dispensed and we press it a second time the water will be taken up again that’s because the button activates then deactivates whereas with the lever it activates and stays activated until you turn it off again that’s why the button could be useful

For things like that next we have the pressure plate which is almost the exact same as the button and for these the stone and the wood ones actually have the exact same duration that they’re pressed down for what this could be amazingly useful for is something like

Let’s say an automatic door just go to the front doors of your house that pressure plates on the inside and outside let’s say this is your lovely grass dirt wall here you just go through here just like this so it automatically opens it up for you and closes it behind

You just like that this is super useful because like let’s see if we had a lever here we could open it go through here but it stays open it’s not that useful you could kind of try and look through here then turn it off then again it

Doesn’t really work that well it’s not a very good system with some pressure plates like this you could simply open them and close them and you can also do this for normal doors it doesn’t have to just be iron doors and finally on to kind of the weirdest redstone item which

Is the heavy weighted and lightweighted pressure plates these only activate if they’re either walked over or if a certain number of items is next to them i’ll show you that right now these pressure plates basically sense how many items are on top of them which i’ve

Never really found to be very useful but you could it just senses that by how much of a power output it gives and you can do this with the light weighted or the heavy weighted pressure plates which have different numbers of items that you put on it for it to activate i suppose

You could use this for something where like let’s see of a mob farm and it just notices that you have a lot of items sitting there and then maybe you could have an action happen because you have all those items there and that is every single redstone component in minecraft

Explained i’ll see you in the next video You