ZennsWorld – Comparators: Compare, Subtract, and Container Interactions | Minecraft Redstone Engineering Tutorial

Hi and welcome to the next episode of the redstone engineering series today we’re going to go over comparators both their compare and subtract mode as well as their interaction with containers and some smaller applications with that let’s jump right in so the reason comparators can be slightly more complicated than other

Redstone components like say a repeater or a torch is the fact that it operates on signal strength rather than just a binary offer on signal so for example this output is different than this output because the signal strength on the side is different than it was before this can make comparators seem more

Elusive but i hope that i can explain it in a way that it’ll make sense so the first mode that i want to go over is the compare mode which you can tell if the top torch is off as the name suggests compare mode compares the signal strengths

And outputs something meaningful and the way it works is it first takes the largest side signal strength so for example if we input this the signal strength it would use and the computation is this one because this is the larger of the two and it checks if the signal strength in

The rear is less than the signal strength on the side if it’s not then it outputs whatever the signal strength on the rear is which at the moment is just 15 whereas if we extend this down now the rear is actually less than the sides or the largest side and the outputs off

So if the rear signal strength is less than the largest side it outputs off and if it’s greater than or equal to it will output whatever the rear signal strength is this can be useful in situations when you have say a container that’s outputting a certain signal strength and you need

To be able to compare the sides with another signal strength that’s coming from say another container and you need to be able to have an offer on signal come out of that the other mode that comparators have is subtract mode which you can activate by right clicking the comparator and you’ll

See the torque to the top turn on subtract mode is very similar to compare mode because it uses the same mechanics of the two sides in the rear except for the fact that it now subtracts the largest side signal strength from the rear signal strength and outputs whatever that number might be

So for example if we input into the rear a signal strength of 15 and then on the side we input a signal strength of 14 and if we leave this off it’s a signal strength of zero so the largest is 14 then it’ll output a signal strength of one whereas if we now

Input to the side to the other side a signal strength of 15 it’ll then output zero because 15 minus 15 is zero the signal strengths won’t ever go out of range of 0 to 15 which is what all the max functions do in the formula calculation so make sure that the side signal

Strengths are under control because if you say put a repeater or if you have a torch right next to it it will never output anything that’s not signal strength of zero because the rear could only ever be the same as the side so perhaps the most well-known use for

Comparators isn’t their compare or subtract mode but it’s their interaction with containers so the way you can make them interact with the container is by facing the comparator away from the container and either by putting it up directly against the container or by putting an opaque block in between

The container and the comparator so the comparator will output a signal strength of zero when the when the container is empty and a signal strength of 15 which is the maximum when the container is completely full and it will do a linear interpolation between 0 and 15

So for example if we have five slots here we fill up one completely it’ll do three of the 15 signal strength and if we add two slots it’ll do six of the 15 so on so forth this can be super useful for auto sorting and for just telling you that your

Containers are fold that need to be replaced there are a lot of other uses for this but those are the main common ones perhaps one of the most practical applications of comparators is making an auto sorter system a lot like this we’ll probably get into auto sorters in the future videos

But for now all you really need to know is that it uses a comparator to read the contents of a hopper that has all the slots filled with one item which is how you have it sorted and it takes signal strength and then deactivates a hopper under it so that basically when

The hopper at the beginning gets an item in it that gets it too full it temporarily powers this repeater which then turns the torch off and then enables this hopper so that it puts into the chest now perhaps not the most common use but i use the i like nonetheless

Is making memory cells out of comparators so it works exactly the same as the dual torch system that we had in the first video where you have a set button and then you have a reset button and the way you build it is by putting a comparator and subtract mode and then you

Loop it around you put it a repeater into another repeater so what happens is when you power the set button it powers the first repeater that then puts a signal strength of 15 into the subtract mode comparator and then that circles around to the repeater over here that then locks

This repeater in the on position and then when you go and press this button it puts a signal strength of 15 into the comparator which then subtracts 15 from 15 then outputs 0 which then unlocks this comparator now the reason i like this system a lot better than the dual torch memory cell

Is because we can put stuff directly above and below this without any torches interfering with the redstone components so it’s really good when it you need to have a compact circuit or we need to have a lot of them right next to each other and overall it can be very useful in

Certain situations all right guys that’ll be it for this episode if you’d like me to go over anything or if you just have any general suggestions you can let me know in the comments i hope you found something of value for this video and i’ll see you next time