Latest Project

The desire to automate things in Minecraft has never really left me. In the past I tried a project called "The Ultimate City" - twice, but both times I gave up. I also tried doing a sort of ultimate village but that was also too expansive for my liking. So now I'm going for a more simple route. I'm setting everything up bare-boned. It doesn't look pretty this time but I'm not trying to do that this time. Right now I'm doing a proof-of-concept thing. Here are a few pictures of what I've done up to now:

My end goal is to make an interconnected redstone system that has as much automation as I can get in Minecraft. This system is going to contain several different parts:

1. Mob grinder: the one I have already made will do for right now. It provides drops from zombies, skeletons, and creepers.
2. Automatic item sorter: the first and fourth picture show the sorter in its early stages. I forget who I got this design from. It was a bit irritating to get set up but now I have the pattern figured out and it works well. I'm thinking that for objects that I want to put in the same chest, I'll just add hoppers where chest would go that point to the target chest.
3. Automatic smelting system: using coal and charcoal, this will smelt items I put into the system that I want to smelt. Each furnace will be devoted to a specific item, and is controlled by a switch. Right now I'm trying to think of how to implement this. I haven't done much experimentation yet. There are two ways I have in mind. First I could have a horizontal smelting system with furnaces. My current knowledge would require everything to pass through this system, which would slow item sorting down significantly. The other option is to have the furnaces connecting along the vertical hopper-chest tube. The downside to this is how it would be harder to pick what should or should not get smelted, as well as the fact I'll eventually run out of space. I think the furnace setup is where I need to do my most investigation now.
4. Automated farms: for each type of item that can be grown and harvested, I'll try to make a farm that can be automated in some fashion. Most of this will likely be done above ground for now. This is connected to the master clock.
5. Master clock: this is a trio of hopper clocks. MrVleker came up with a clever design that allows for very long hopper clocks. I modified the system slightly for two clocks. One clock pulses at 10 minute intervals, the other at 2 hour intervals. This will be used for activating various farms.
6. Potion factory: this one is going to suck, because I'm not too well acquainted with potion mechanics. I'll probably do a stripped-down version of Etho's potion lab.
7. Iron farm: a basic iron golem farm. This will come in handy as I mostly play using iron tools. My map just doesn't provide enough diamonds for much more complex stuff.
8. Gold farm: I might not do this. Gold isn't that useful for me. I don't want to mine all that obsidian.
9. Hopper transport system: this is what will move objects around from place to place. 

Here's a picture of the hopper clock I think I'll be using: