[Project] one click hoictronic herb farm

[Brain Goo]

Hello people!

This is my first hoictronic project in terraria, I'm making a herb farm, where you don’t need to plant seeds, everything grows naturally.
It takes several in game days for the herbs to grove, between harvesting.

It consists of 3 mechanisms:
- Bird engine to measure intervals until herbs will be cuted and fall down;
- Skeleton engine to send on/off signal to a specific farm;
- Skeleton engine for herb transportation (I decided to keep it so the farm can be any place in the world).

Its in the process , I still need to:
- add a button somewhere to actuate daybloom and moonglow farms to get rid of grass (game does not place seeds with herbs to the blocks which are occupied with grass);
- think how to get rid of corrupt thorns, for the same reason. The problem is that I can destroy them only with traps, which also destroy herbs;
- add fireblossom farm with lava watering.

I'll be glad to hear your proposals!

Control unit:

Control unit wiring:

Part of the farm:

World download:
http://1drv.ms/19aQUZB

 

[DicemanX]

Great job creating an automated flower farm! Pairing the 30act/s engine with the item trawls was a key idea in delivering the flowers quickly to where the player is positioned. I'm not sure if there's a good way of dealing with grass and thorns, but given how large the grow areas are (and how much larger you can make them if you wish) I think they would be a minor inconvenience.

You can probably skip the lava for fireblossoms, since this farm eliminates the need for seeds. It would be possible to create a pump system and have the excess lava drain through holes below the hoik teeth when you actuate the surfaces, but that would slow down the collection process since you'd have to first wait for lava to flood the surfaces.

As a quick aside, I'm in the process of putting together a fairly large guide that focuses on various hoiktronics mechanisms. One of my goals is to see whether mechanisms involving hoik tracks at 90 degrees controlled by actuated hoik teeth at the junctions can be replaced with single tracks that consist of alternating top and bottom hoik teeth pairs that control the activation of pressure plates. In your set-up you need to have the first summoned skeleton activate signals via blue+green wires, and a follow-up skeleton to send a second signal along those wires and then shut off any further activation. You demonstrated that nicely with your junction-based mechanism.

Here's the single hoik track mechanism:

The initial signal from the switch toggles a pair of top + bottom hoik teeth, and the skeleton that is summoned to the track will activate a pressure plate 2 tiles to the left of the hoik teeth pair. That pressure plate sends an output signal via green and blue wires (although a single wire output might be sufficient in other applications, so the green wire is optional). The blue wire also feeds back on that hoik teeth pair to reset them, and toggles an adjacent pair of hoik teeth. The next skeleton that passes through the hoik track will activate another pressure plate 2 tiles to the left of the newly toggled hoik teeth pair, once again sending output signals via blue and green wires. That pressure plate also feeds back to the newly toggled hoik teeth pair to reset them back to their original position.

You could also try constructing a timer cascade instead of the bird timer to save tons of space (and make the farm easier to build since bird statues can be hard to come by). Timer cascades can be automatically shut off once the signal reaches the end timer in the cascade by summoning a skeleton into a separate timer shut-off track.

 

[perfectodst219]

Hello people!

This is my first hoictronic project in terraria, I'm making a herb farm, where you don’t need to plant seeds, everything grows naturally.
It takes several in game days for the herbs to grove, between harvesting.

It consists of 3 mechanisms:
- Bird engine to measure intervals until herbs will be cuted and fall down;
- Skeleton engine to send on/off signal to a specific farm;
- Skeleton engine for herb transportation (I decided to keep it so the farm can be any place in the world).

Its in the process , I still need to:
- add a button somewhere to actuate daybloom and moonglow farms to get rid of grass (game does not place seeds with herbs to the blocks which are occupied with grass);
- think how to get rid of corrupt thorns, for the same reason. The problem is that I can destroy them only with traps, which also destroy herbs;
- add fireblossom farm with lava watering.

I'll be glad to hear your proposals!

Control unit:

Control unit wiring:

Part of the farm:

World download:
http://1drv.ms/19aQUZB

To get rid of grass you can connect some actuators to a block thats not active behind the gras and possible grow locations of the thorns which will be triggered using red wires at a regular interval when the farm is active

 

[Brain Goo]

1.
I tried to improve a statue/teleporter based engine:

So,
- now it can be started and stoped with 1 button;
- does not depend on player position;
- functions properly both day and night;
- starts and stops instantly;
- smaller comparing to standard designs;
- has gemspark state indicators.

there is one minus, with this design i can't connect 3 wire colors to the left button, it will be cool if someone can change that.

2.
I will explain grass/thornes blocking herb spawn later.
I also forgot that since we don't need seeds we can cut fireblossom without lava - great news.

3.

Here's the single hoik track mechanism:

Wow, you have simplified it really much!
However, I have some problems here. It looks like i dont quite understand how does it work.
I build a small test stand to check this hoik track. I got the general rules and I see that one button can not be skipped, so it stopps us from further size reduction. But in some situations the skeleton also skipps one button (circled red). I dont understand it.

I also failed with the engine you proposed. My original idea was to send 2 signals by 2 wires, and i really can't think a way how to do it with this design. Your version doesn't work for me at all, it is not turning back to the original state. Maybe i just copied it wrong (left one is yours). Could you attach the world so I could check it?

 

[DicemanX]

1.


I also failed with the engine you proposed. My original idea was to send 2 signals by 2 wires, and i really can't think a way how to do it with this design. Your version doesn't work for me at all, it is not turning back to the original state. Maybe i just copied it wrong (left one is yours). Could you attach the world so I could check it?

From your pic you're missing one bit of wire: extend the red wire down to the rightmost pressure plate. This is needed because the blue wire connected to that pressure plate will flip the original pair of teeth (which you don't want to do a second time) so the red wire undoes that flip. Once you do that, you'll find that the first skeleton will send signals down the blue and green wires, the second will again send signals down those wires, and the third skeleton will not have any further effect - exactly what you aimed to do in your original .

Here's the tutorial world download that has the mechanism:

http://www83.zippyshare.com/v/XKDMN0z9/file.html

(Use the left teleporter and then walk all the way to the right to find this mechanism - this tutorial world has many other mechanisms in it)

1.
But in some situations the skeleton also skipps one button (circled red). I dont understand it.

This extreme compression unfortunately doesn't work as you found out. Some hoik configurations just aren't that stable, and you'll end up with unexpected results. This is why the original design (which ZeroGravitas came up with) had a space of 1 tile between pairs of actuated teeth:

http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/project-hoiktronics-reset-mechanisms.7773/#post-224001

(I need to fix the img links in that thread)

 

[DicemanX]

A

1.
I tried to improve a statue/teleporter based engine:

So,
- now it can be started and stoped with 1 button;
- does not depend on player position;
- functions properly both day and night;
- starts and stops instantly;
- smaller comparing to standard designs;
- has gemspark state indicators.

there is one minus, with this design i can't connect 3 wire colors to the left button, it will be cool if someone can change that.

I tested this out and the top pressure plate isn't being activated at all - only the one to the left gets activated (try connecting the pressure plates to different outputs and you'll see). This is unfortunate, since it would have been great to have a compact stable max activations/sec engine without using a character NPC! I tried putting the pressure plate 1 tile to the left and it was still not getting activated.

Still, it might be a good idea to check if this engine is comparable to the skeleton engine when it comes to hoiking size 1 items.

By the way here's a little trick to kill off the slime without using a middle hoik:

You can do this laterally as well with a dart trap.

EDIT: this seems to work:

1st pull starts the engine, second pull ends it (both skeletons die by getting hoiked up).

 

[Brain Goo]

Hm, looks like my engine works differently in different worlds (both plates are pressed in my one). I will test it more detailed. Works here: http://1drv.ms/1xRxnng but world is a bit messy.

I didn't wanted to use traps since they have a cooldown.

Skeletons engines look to be more stable but huge =)

 

[DicemanX]

Hm, looks like my engine works differently in different worlds (both plates are pressed in my one). I will test it more detailed. Works here: http://1drv.ms/1xRxnng but world is a bit messy.

I didn't wanted to use traps since they have a cooldown.

Skeletons engines look to be more stable but huge =)

You're right - it works in the world you uploaded. Well that is really bizarre then - I tried hopping between your world and mine and in mine the second pressure plate doesn't work . I wonder if this issue is similar to the issue with hoiking size 1 items? Since the slime is a small mob, maybe you can only get that second pressure plate to activate if the engine is in specific spots in the world.

In any case the skeleton engine should be stable everywhere and in all worlds. It might be a little bigger but you can also use the same skeleton statue to power separate mechanisms whereas the slime based engine requires a second statue.

 

[ShadowIQ]

I don't mean to bring up an old thread, but with the new update, could this farm be revamped to be able to receive strange plants for the Dye NPC?

 

[Brain Goo]

Not this one, strange plant is 3 tiles high. Plus I don't think that my farm is possible to build without t-edit (too boring). You can just make a sky-bridge from dirt or dirt stripes with 3 tile interval somewhere on surface.