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I'm fairly new to using redstone, and I'm wondering what's the largest size of "door" that can be opened with a single switch?

I have a huge arena, and I'd ideally like to be able to hit one switch and open a large door to release the monsters. When I say "door", it doesn't necessarily need to be a door. For example, I once had a 2x3 door that opened via sliding blocks and sticky pistons.

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    Is it accurate to say the only true answer is "as large as you can get without it getting too complex for your skill/ability level" or is there actual limitations on this that the player could be expected to reach? – user106385 Aug 8 '15 at 2:55
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You could make a 5x5 piston door using stick pistons - but if you're new to Redstone this may not be for you.

There is also an option of making a "gravel door" (I am unsure if this works in the latest version of Minecraft).

A slightly easier piston door may be a 3x3 version.

Finally, you could use the design in my question here, the 2 high x 3 wide door, but make the door a lot longer - say 2 x 30 by wangling pistons and repeaters. If you wanted to "release" Endermen you'll need a bigger door, however.

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    The "Gravel Door" should work in 1.2 - though you'd have no way of closing it again, unless you had a stockpile of gravel ready to drop back into place. – Unionhawk Mar 29 '12 at 15:50
  • Your 5x5 door setup is scaring me a bit, so I think I will stick with a 2x3 door that you have linked at the bottom, and perhaps try a 3x3 door if I feel adventurous :) Thank you for the many suggestions and options though – Rachel Mar 29 '12 at 19:35
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In theory, there is no limit on the size of a door. You could expand practically any redstone design to control a larger door. Just add more pistons.

In practice, you are limited by the number of 16x16x256 block chunks the game loads into memory at one time. Redstone circuitry will not work in unloaded chunks.

In multiplayer mode, a grid with a default radius of 10 (for a total of 21x21 or 441 chunks) is loaded around each player and sent to the player by default, although this radius can be configured to be between 3 and 15, usually only lowered with a poor connection home server. These chunks may have activity (mobs spawning, trees growing, water flowing, dropped items disappearing etc.), while the other world chunks are inactive, stored on your hard drive.

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3

Without going to extreme levels of complexity:

24

A piston can only move a stack of 12 blocks at a time, therefore any mechanism that successively pops blocks onto/off of a stack to open/close a door will have a limit of 12 blocks. Since you can have two doors parting in the middle for your entrance, 24 is a feasible number for a door that isn't too complex.

For completeness, assume that these doors are vertical, and run all the way from level 0 to the world height. This makes your door size:

24 x 256

on an appropriately configured server.

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  • Depends on your requirements for a door... – user9983 Mar 29 '12 at 13:41
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    Given the fact that (Vanilla) sticky pistons can only pull one block at a time, I'm not certain how feasible a 24 wide door would be. – Unionhawk Mar 29 '12 at 15:45
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    @Unionhawk Oh, you want it to open? – fredley Mar 29 '12 at 16:41
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    @fredly the OP did say "...I'd ideally like to be able to hit one switch and open a large door to release the monsters.", which tells me that the specifications are for it to both open and close, or, at the very least, open. – Unionhawk Mar 29 '12 at 19:42
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    I would be under the impression that a door that did not open would not be a door and would be, in fact, a wall. – tombull89 Mar 30 '12 at 9:59
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it is very hard for a person new to redstone to make a door larger then at least a 4x4 because of the dimensions. anything bigger then a 2x2 would get very complex and would take a lot of time. unless you have a lot of time. note that it will get frustrating because the redstone would have to be extended past the point it can reach so you will need a lot of repeaters. technically a door could be any size but may have limited uses because of using sand or gravel to fill it in.

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You could always have a bunch of command blocks placing the door using setblock, then opening it using setblock, just your setting air. I couldn't think of a way to do it all with redstone, but the command blocks will take some redstone.

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Biggest I've heard of was 256x256, but that takes about 4 days (not minecraft days, iRL days) to open.

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