One of the most interesting things to do in Minecraft is to automate. Players who are loaded on resources and are well-established in their survival worlds will often build complex contraptions for automated farming, experience, or anything else they can think of, in order to ease the grind. From automatic farms comes a plethora of unique items that can be tiresome to sort through and organize. Luckily, that can be automated too.
This item sorter design uses clever hopper mechanics to effortlessly sort items into different chests. The only catch is that this will exclusively work for stackable items, so any armor or weapon drops from enemies will, unfortunately, be unsortable. This design is infinitely tileable, meaning it is just one block wide and can be built next to itself indefinitely, without the Redstone interfering with each other. This allows players to make infinitely expandable, yet densely packed storage systems.
How To Build An Item Sorter In Minecraft
For each item that players would like to sort, they will require all of the following:
- One Chest
- Two Hoppers
- Five Opaque Building Blocks
- Two Redstone Dust
- One Redstone Comparator
- One Redstone Repeater
- One Redstone Torch
Players will also require water that will be added once the full storage system is done. The amount of water will depend on the size of the player's storage. Additionally, Glow Lichen may also be needed, for players intending on sorting more than eight types of items.
To start, players should determine where they want their chests to be. Players will likely want the chests at ground level but should keep in mind that the item sorter mechanism will extend two blocks below the chest, as well as two blocks above it. For the sake of the guide, the full system will be built above ground, so that everything can be clearly seen.
To begin, place a hopper behind the chest, leading into it, and a second hopper on top. The hopper on top can be funneling any direction except for straight down (in this case, it is going left). This makes it so that the bottom hopper is actually taking the items from the top hopper, as it would if it were placed under a chest, as opposed to the top hopper funneling them directly into it.
Next, players need to build the Redstone circuit at the back of the hoppers. There should be a comparator leading out of the top hopper, into two pieces of Redstone dust that descend. Beneath the dust is a repeater facing toward the chest, into a block with a Redstone torch on the opposite side. This torch will power the bottom hopper, disallowing it from taking items from the top. When the torch receives an input, it will invert and temporarily allow items to pass through and into the chest.
Now it's time to pick what item to make it sort. For this example, we're using chorus fruit, but any stackable item will work. Exactly 22 of the item will be needed, and players must ensure that every slot of the hopper is filled. The 22 items can be broken up however the player likes, but it is imperative that there are exactly that many. If it is an item that only stacks to 16 (such as ender pearls), players should instead have exactly five in the hopper; one per slot.
The reason that these exact numbers are required is because these are the maximum amounts that will cause the comparators to output a Redstone signal strength of one. When one more item is added, the strength will increase to two, powering the repeater and thus temporarily letting items through. When a 23rd item is added, the bottom hopper will steal one item from the top and hold onto it. When it gets powered the next time, that one item will pass to the chest, as it is being replaced by another item.
That's actually all there is to the item sorter design. Now, players just need to tile it to fit the needs of their storage system. The design can be placed side-by-side as seen below, and even though the redstone dust connects across sorters, the whole system will still operate as intended. Within each top hopper will be 22 (or five) of the item that players want to be sorted. Don't forget to ensure that the top hoppers are not funneling downward.
- RELATED: Minecraft: How To Get A Goat Horn
Once enough sorters are made, it is time to add the water stream. This will flow over top of the hoppers, carrying dropped items over them. Players can either have mob/farming systems drop their items into the water stream, or players can set up the stream as a dumping point for their inventories after a deep dark cave expedition.
Water can only flow eight blocks, so for players looking to sort more than eight items, they will have to use a neat trick involving Glow Lichen. By placing some Glow Lichen at the end of a water stream, players can then place another water stream immediately afterward, and the water will not backflow. Items will glide over this waterless block into the next stream, allowing for an infinite water stream to carry items.
This water system needs to be encased, to prevent the water from destroying the Redstone, but can be cleverly hidden in the ceiling of the player's storage area if need be. The water stream can also turn around corners, allowing players to conform their item sorter system to any room shape. If players are in need of more storage space, the chests can be replaced with sideways double chests, or additional hoppers can be placed beneath them that lead to more chests.