Minecraft has many ways to automate your builds and make gameplay easier. Redstone is a big component in automating almost anything in Minecraft.
The easiest thing to automate are doors and trap doors. Having them open and close for you, without clicking on them, can save you time, but also save you from hostile Mobs.
So, if you’re tired of constantly clicking to open and close your doors its good to know how to make an automatic door for your base. We will cover both the easy way and a schematic to make a basic piston door using redstone.
Simple Automatic Doors
The best thing about all doors in Minecraft is that they all react to redstone and their related components.
A regular door, iron door, and all types of trap doors will react when near nearby buttons, pressure plates, and levers are activated.
The easiest way to build an automatic door is to place a pressure plate on either side of the Door. As soon as you or anyone else steps on the pressure plate the door will automatically open and close after a few seconds once you’re off the plate.
However, sometimes this can be a problem.
All Mobs can activate pressure plates by stepping on them, as well. This means your pets, but also hostile Mobs like creepers can easily enter through your door.
Another way would be to use levers or buttons which cannot be used by Mobs.
Placing a button next to a door will open it for a few seconds whenever it is pressed. A lever will keep a door open or closed as long as it’s pulled down.
Either a lever, button, or pressure plate is a necessity if you are using iron doors or iron trap doors. They cannot be opened any other way.
Unlike wooden doors and trap doors, iron ones cannot be opened without using redstone-based machinery. So when using them in a build make sure you have your buttons and levers ready, or a way to get out if you do not.
Minecraft Piston Recipe
- 3 Wooden Planks (any wood)
- 4 Cobblestone Blocks
- 1 Redstone Dust
- 1 Iron Ingot
Pistons are used in many redstone builds and circuits. They push blocks forward when activated by a Redston pulse.
However, they can be upgraded to be even more useful.
Minecraft Sticky Piston Recipe
- 1 Slimeball
- 1 Piston
Sticky Pistons will be the most important component in more complex recipes. These are used to both push and pull blocks adjacent to them.
These are easy enough to make once you have a regular Piston ready.
Building an Automatic Door in Minecraft Using Pistons
Regular in game doors are easy to manipulate, but did you know you can build your own doors from scratch?
If you like playing around with redstone technology and making custom doors, then these might be the perfect thing for you.
Pick a material of your choosing. I will be using regular crimson planks, but you can use virtually any solid block. You will also need redstone dust and sticky pistons.
I put down 4 sticky pistons, 2 on one side and 2 on the other, 4 blocks apart and facing each other. I put my crimson planks against the pistons. These will be your doors and the sticky pistons will be the ones opening and closing the door.
Unlike regular pistons, sticky pistons will make any solid block stick to them. So rather than just pushing, they can pull blocks as well.
Now dig a hole that is 3 blocks long, 2 blocks wide, and 2 blocks deep so that your doors are in the center. View the image below for example.
Inside this hole place down redstone dust. From the center blocks, right under your door make a small tunnel, 3 blocks long. Make the 3rd block taller by 1 and place down a redstone torch and repeat this on the other side.
Use the picture above as a reference for the grid.
These redstone torches should be a single block below and a single block behind your bottom pistons. If you did everything right, the Torches will activate the two lower sticky pistons and close the doors.
To get the top pistons to work all you need to do is place a solid block above the redstone torch and place down redstone dust to activate it.
Now your door is closed. How do you open it back up?
Firstly cover up the hole you dug. Since it’s 2 blocks deep all you have to is cover the very top so the redstone dust isn’t removed. We still have the redstone dust grid activated below the door.
On each side of your door place down a pressure Plate, 4 in total.
Now whenever you walk over the pressure plates they will deactivate the grid system below, opening your door for a few seconds before it closes again when the pressure plate comes back up.
Mind you this has its flaws. Like before, any other Mob can walk over the Plates and open the door and enter the area. Feel free to play around with torches and buttons and redstone to figure out what works for you.
You can even replace some of the redstone with sculk blocks down the line as an alternative.
Of course, it’s also worth keeping in mind that builds like this have components that may be constantly activated.
Keep this mind if you wish to make bigger and more complex doors, as they may mess around with your Tick speed and computer performance.
Where to Find Redstone Dust in Minecraft
For anything more complex than a regular door and a lever you will need redstone and its technological components, such as repeators, redstone torches, redstone blocks, and the like.
For this, and also depending on the size of your overall door and build, you might need a pretty big quantity of redstone dust.
As an ore redstone spawns underground between Y levels of -63 to 15 and often appears in larger veins compared to some other ores. The best way to mine redstone is having a good understanding of how Ore levels work in Minecraft.
To mine it as an ore all you will need is an iron pickaxe or something stronger.
You can also find redstone dust above ground in places such as Jungle Temples where you also find some redstone traps, but also from killing witches where they drop it as loot.