EDIT: Disregard below. I have figured it out. When the observer detects growth, it sends power to the block behind it. This in itself causes an Update QC activation, leaving the piston in a state of being activated, but it will not do so until it detects a block update. Where it receives this update is what confused me. The update is received by the redstone dust becoming powered; thus the reason the redstone dust along the whole line does not activate the whole line of pistons is because it's not actually powering anything. It's just there to provide a block update in the next available tick. You did not explain how the pistons are activating. The way the redstone is set up I can see that the entire line is getting powered - which is admittedly confusing to me. The dust is not going to send power horizontally, so this, as I recall, is the reason we used to make sugarcane farms using either repeaters to target the signal from the observer back into the piston directly under it (Not as compact but the same effect is achieved, albeit with a double piston activation which could be argued is less efficient as it does prevent a single tick update from occurring in the sugarcane block) or using a trick to get the redstone to activate all the way down the line and just throwing efficiency out the window by preventing a tick update on every single sugarcane block to harvest a single 3-growth cane. So if I'm understanding correctly, this setup...appears to send the signal into the block behind the observer, then down into the redstone dust, which then sends the signal...down into the block diagonal from the piston? Thus causing a block update detection activation of the piston? And yet somehow that does *not* cause all of the pistons to activate. Otherwise...is it sending the signal from the block, to the dust, back UP into the block again, causing a block update activation? I'm really really lost on this one, something, somehow, is preventing every piston from receiving a block update detection and I'm not really sure what.
Not sure if Im understanding your question correctly but how the redstone works is the observe receives an update and hard powers the block behind it which activates the redstone underneath. Blocks that are powered by redstone are soft powered, meaning it is limited to powering only the piston in front of it in this case. If you wanted to activate all the pistons at the same time, you would need to reroute the redstone in a way that the redstone runs directly behind each piston to soft activate each one but you would need to leave a gap between each piston. Alternatively, you can run the redstone into repeaters behind each piston which I think is the old design you are referring to.
@@akhuong-r4p So what you're saying is the observer reads the update, powers the block behind it. Fine. Then it activates the redstone under it. Fine. The hangup for me comes here: You're saying the redstone then soft powers the block under it. But ALL of the redstone is activating, so my question is why doesn't the redstone soft power ALL of the blocks? Why is it selectively targeting just the block under the observer?
Ah I see the confusion, I recommend reading the wiki on quasi connectivity for a deeper understanding of piston activation. The first piston is actually activated solely by the block behind the observer through quasi connectivity (a java feature) and the first piece of redstone dust serves as an immediate activation method. Redstone dust is limited in the sense that it has directionality so you would need to lead the line directly into the mechanical component in order to activate it, in this case, all the other pistons. However, redstone dust does have the ability to power components directly below it. If you placed pistons underneath the redstone line and update the observer, you would see that all the pistons fire.
EDIT: Disregard below. I have figured it out. When the observer detects growth, it sends power to the block behind it. This in itself causes an Update QC activation, leaving the piston in a state of being activated, but it will not do so until it detects a block update. Where it receives this update is what confused me. The update is received by the redstone dust becoming powered; thus the reason the redstone dust along the whole line does not activate the whole line of pistons is because it's not actually powering anything. It's just there to provide a block update in the next available tick.
You did not explain how the pistons are activating. The way the redstone is set up I can see that the entire line is getting powered - which is admittedly confusing to me. The dust is not going to send power horizontally, so this, as I recall, is the reason we used to make sugarcane farms using either repeaters to target the signal from the observer back into the piston directly under it (Not as compact but the same effect is achieved, albeit with a double piston activation which could be argued is less efficient as it does prevent a single tick update from occurring in the sugarcane block) or using a trick to get the redstone to activate all the way down the line and just throwing efficiency out the window by preventing a tick update on every single sugarcane block to harvest a single 3-growth cane.
So if I'm understanding correctly, this setup...appears to send the signal into the block behind the observer, then down into the redstone dust, which then sends the signal...down into the block diagonal from the piston? Thus causing a block update detection activation of the piston? And yet somehow that does *not* cause all of the pistons to activate. Otherwise...is it sending the signal from the block, to the dust, back UP into the block again, causing a block update activation? I'm really really lost on this one, something, somehow, is preventing every piston from receiving a block update detection and I'm not really sure what.
Not sure if Im understanding your question correctly but how the redstone works is the observe receives an update and hard powers the block behind it which activates the redstone underneath. Blocks that are powered by redstone are soft powered, meaning it is limited to powering only the piston in front of it in this case. If you wanted to activate all the pistons at the same time, you would need to reroute the redstone in a way that the redstone runs directly behind each piston to soft activate each one but you would need to leave a gap between each piston. Alternatively, you can run the redstone into repeaters behind each piston which I think is the old design you are referring to.
@@akhuong-r4p So what you're saying is the observer reads the update, powers the block behind it. Fine. Then it activates the redstone under it. Fine.
The hangup for me comes here: You're saying the redstone then soft powers the block under it. But ALL of the redstone is activating, so my question is why doesn't the redstone soft power ALL of the blocks? Why is it selectively targeting just the block under the observer?
Are you on bedrock or java?
@@akhuong-r4p Both.
Ah I see the confusion, I recommend reading the wiki on quasi connectivity for a deeper understanding of piston activation. The first piston is actually activated solely by the block behind the observer through quasi connectivity (a java feature) and the first piece of redstone dust serves as an immediate activation method. Redstone dust is limited in the sense that it has directionality so you would need to lead the line directly into the mechanical component in order to activate it, in this case, all the other pistons. However, redstone dust does have the ability to power components directly below it. If you placed pistons underneath the redstone line and update the observer, you would see that all the pistons fire.