I have built my automatic mob spawner. It will automatically generate it's own monster essence as needed. I used a xycraft tank with the level emitters to generate a redstone signal at different tank levels. At the lowest level, it will only generate slimes to replenish the monster essence. At the middle level, it will generate both slimes and the mob of your choice. At the high fill level, it will only spawn the mobs and disable the slime spawning. I will end up feeding my cow, chicken and pigs into the kill room, so those will generate monster essence while away, so I should likely only need to spawn slimes if I run the mob spawner for an extended length of time.
MFR machines go into a permanent sleep state when supplied a redstone signal. I use this feature to turn the spawners on and off. Most importantly, everything is handled by one switch. Everything else is automatic. (Except placing in the safari nets. That is manual.)
View from control center.
Here is a closeup of the MFR auto-spawners. Underneath the covers on the left side are the buildcraft pipes with monster essence feeding both machines, and on the right are redstone jacketed wire connecting to each machine. There are covers in between to separate the redstone signals.
Redstone signal from the control switch comes in from the left. At the top of the image, a signal comes from the xycraft tank level emitter. This is the high level indicator. It runs through a not gate as I need to inverse the signal. The left center is the XOR gate. This makes it so the that turning on the lever will turn on the machine provided the high level indicator is not triggered. As soon as the high level indicator is triggered, the machine will turn off (provided the control lever is on).
When the control lever is turned on, the level emitter works properly. However with the nature of a XOR gate, the moment the control lever is turned off, the spawner will turn back on, which is not what we want. To address this issue, I had to split the control signal and feed two different gates.
The NOT gate on the right is there to make sure the machine is turned off when the lever is switched off. The two repeaters are there to act as a diode and prevent the redstone signal from backtracking. The red alloy wire at the bottom of the screen is actually connected, but is just out of frame.
Along the left side you can see the red alloy wire running from the lever as well as the NOT gate in the previous picture. This image shows the NAND gate along with the middle level emitter. The NAND gate inverses the output of an AND gate, so two gates in one. This turns off the signal allowing the second spawner to run when both the lever is turned on and the level indicator is triggered showing at least a little monster essence is present. When the monster essence drops, the second spawner is disabled and allows only slimes to spawn to create more essence. The redstone wire along the right runs up to the second spawner.
MFR machines go into a permanent sleep state when supplied a redstone signal. I use this feature to turn the spawners on and off. Most importantly, everything is handled by one switch. Everything else is automatic. (Except placing in the safari nets. That is manual.)
View from control center.
Here is a closeup of the MFR auto-spawners. Underneath the covers on the left side are the buildcraft pipes with monster essence feeding both machines, and on the right are redstone jacketed wire connecting to each machine. There are covers in between to separate the redstone signals.
Redstone signal from the control switch comes in from the left. At the top of the image, a signal comes from the xycraft tank level emitter. This is the high level indicator. It runs through a not gate as I need to inverse the signal. The left center is the XOR gate. This makes it so the that turning on the lever will turn on the machine provided the high level indicator is not triggered. As soon as the high level indicator is triggered, the machine will turn off (provided the control lever is on).
When the control lever is turned on, the level emitter works properly. However with the nature of a XOR gate, the moment the control lever is turned off, the spawner will turn back on, which is not what we want. To address this issue, I had to split the control signal and feed two different gates.
The NOT gate on the right is there to make sure the machine is turned off when the lever is switched off. The two repeaters are there to act as a diode and prevent the redstone signal from backtracking. The red alloy wire at the bottom of the screen is actually connected, but is just out of frame.
Along the left side you can see the red alloy wire running from the lever as well as the NOT gate in the previous picture. This image shows the NAND gate along with the middle level emitter. The NAND gate inverses the output of an AND gate, so two gates in one. This turns off the signal allowing the second spawner to run when both the lever is turned on and the level indicator is triggered showing at least a little monster essence is present. When the monster essence drops, the second spawner is disabled and allows only slimes to spawn to create more essence. The redstone wire along the right runs up to the second spawner.