The story of pumpkin farm.
One day i decided to build pumpkin. I have no need of pumpkins, but pumpkin farm is 'must have' option on every server.
So we need a big room to dig up. And my working EFF-V UNBR-III SilkTouck pick says: 'Is that a good idea? Why you are collecting creepers drop though?'. We (my pick and I) looked up my storage and found 40 gunpowder for 8 TNTs.
Then TNTs say: 'Only idiots ignite single block at a time. Use chain explosion'. And we had very funny explosion and a huge room as the result, bigger than expected.
And the room says: 'True miners dig caves, not fill them with stone.' So we decide to deal with bigger room.
And we got this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11090572/mine/pumpkinfarm/2014-09-23_17.43.39.png
Do you see the mistake?
I planted pumpkins, waited them to grow, manualy pushed the lever, pistons done their job, water flowed to hopper, but pumpkin left hanging. And then pumpkin says: 'We are not cacti or reeds, we are not likely to fall down. You failed building the simplest thing ever. haha!'.
And then I decided to push them down. Also added new feature: 11 sec delay to item flow into hopper, and then resetting.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11090572/mine/pumpkinfarm/2014-09-24_00.22.57.png
It was total failure. Efficiency was extremely low, noise was extremely high, server load, and ugliest room ever seen. I had no idea what to do with the look of the room, but I could handle more complex redstone logic.
First try was to add new timer with longer period. AND gate of them would give 120 sec old mode and 120 sec waiting to grow mode. Implementation shows it was no so good idea. Then I tried to add some RAM. RS latch was good, but result was the same. If longer period timer activates S input, shorter period timer can't disable it by R input. So I have added pulse former.
Result: 4 hoppers, 5 pistons, lots of repeaters and monstrous wiring. My pick almost doubled the room. The design with pressure plate and the rails is much simple, compact, etc. The advantage of new desing is complete autonomy, low losing rate and flexibility in calibrating proper timing.
New room look:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11090572/mine/pumpkinfarm/2014-09-25_22.52.52.png
Harvesting (there was aproximately 5 pumpkins grown):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11090572/mine/pumpkinfarm/2014-09-25_23.44.58.png
Result:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11090572/mine/pumpkinfarm/2014-09-25_23.45.11.png
This farm needs proper timing, because if pumpkin doesn't have 11 sec to flow down it will be dropped. Phase shift of delay timers cause such bugs, but now T1 = 8*T0. T0 = 17*0.7 and approximately 1.5 sec phase shift.
To be continued. Give me some feedback if you able to. You're welcome to collect pumpkins. I have no need of them.
I will disable it later.
My coords are -1000 70 -5600. There you see staircase down. First branch corridor - strorage room, next - sheep farm (you can shear them) and pumpkin farm.
PS. If you are that one who destroyed my anvil, return me new one. I liked that anvil very much.