Create: Redstone Link Tablet

A smart-home control panel for your Create contraptions. The Link Tablet is a handheld (and placeable) touchscreen that drives Create's Redstone Links remotely — name your lights, doors, trains, and machines, give them icons, and flip them from one screen anywhere in link range.

Since 1.10.0 it's really a little OS: the tablet boots to a Home screen of apps installed from a built-in App Store, and the switch grid is just the first of them.

For Minecraft 1.21.1 on NeoForge, requires Create 6.x.

Terminology: an app is a launcher program (Signals, Clock, Gauges…); a signal is one switch inside the Signals app. Pre-1.10.0 docs called signals "apps" — that rename landed in 1.10.0.

Apps

Installed and removed per tablet from the searchable App Store:

• Signals — the control grid; every tablet starts with it.
• Clock — alarms, searchable world clock, timer, stopwatch. They ring with the tablet closed, and a placed Clock tablet is a wall clock.
• Calculator — click or type; a placed tablet shows its live tape on the wall.
• Gauges — the reverse of Signals: live dials that listen on link frequencies and show the received 0–15. Merged walls make factory dashboards.
• Monitor — an X-ray for your link network: every channel the tablet touches plus up to 8 probed ones, with live power and every member transmitting or listening (Redstone Links, placed tablets, dropped or framed tablets, even "a tablet in someone's inventory").
• Twitch Chat — live chat on the glass, emotes included. Client-side, anonymous, strictly read-only; no account, no token, nothing stored.
• Paint — a persistent pixel canvas that shows on walls; merged walls become murals.

Placed tablets render their app right on the glass — tap it to open, tap the bezel to go Home.

Signals

• Up to 32 per tablet (+32 for each tablet in a merged wall), each with a name, color, item icon, and state — grid or list view, drag to rearrange.
• Four types: Toggle, Hold (transmits only while held, so a disconnect can't leave it stuck on), Slider (0–15, with an optional min/max range), and Timer (transmits 0.1–30 s, then switches itself off).
• Scenes — one signal drives up to 8 frequencies at once.
• Signal links — signals drive each other: up to 8 targets each, set to turn ON, turn OFF, or follow. Links chain, loops are safe, and a linked signal needs no frequency of its own — pure scene-master buttons.
• Per-signal strength — strongest wins on a shared frequency, exactly like stacked Redstone Links.

Signals tune to Create's real item-pair frequencies, chosen from your inventory or a searchable all-items picker (nothing is consumed), with JEI/EMI drag support. Frequencies carry the full item including components, matching Create's own network identity. Right-click a Redstone Link while holding the tablet to open the editor pre-filled.

Hardware

• Placeable — sneak + right-click any wall, floor, or ceiling. It transmits from the block, the glass is touchable (tap to toggle, hold a Hold button, drag a slider), and sneak + right-click with an empty hand picks it back up intact.
• Merged walls — mount tablets side by side and they become one continuous display, up to 4 wide × 3 tall. A chain-link button keeps a tablet standalone or breaks a wall apart; every tablet keeps its own signals and slice of the mural.
• Swivel Mount — an iron nugget atop two brass sheets. Wrench the glass and the tablet aims at your eyes; power the mount with redstone and the screen follows the nearest player, freezing where it points when the power cuts.
• Screen lock — tap the padlock on a placed tablet and everyone can still use it, but reconfiguring or unlocking needs a Create wrench in hand. Locking a merged wall locks every member, and the pieces stay locked when split.
• HUD pin — keep a floating mini-tablet on screen while you play; press the Use Pinned Tablet key (default B) to free the mouse and work it without ever opening a GUI.
• Make it yours — 8 UI themes, 16 dyed cases (wash off in a cauldron or a fan's washing stream), a full set of UI sounds, and anvil naming.

How to use

The tablet is assembled, not crafted. Shape a Tablet Case from five brass sheets, then send it down a belt past three Deployers: the Link Logic Board, the Clockwork Cell, and the Quartz Display. The in-progress tablet visibly gains each part, and JEI/EMI shows the whole sequence. There's a Ponder scene too — hold W over the tablet item.

1. Right-click to open the tablet, tap + to create a signal.
2. Pick the frequency items (like tuning a Redstone Link), Add, Save.
3. Set your receiving Redstone Links to the same frequency.
4. Left-click toggles, right-click edits.

A tablet anywhere in your inventory transmits like Create's handheld Linked Controller — you are the transmitter, so receivers must be within Create's link range of you. Placed tablets transmit from the block, and a dropped tablet (or one sitting in an item frame) keeps transmitting from where it lies.

The full illustrated feature tour is docs/DESCRIPTION.md — that file is also the published listing text.

Compatibility

• Requires Create 6.x on NeoForge 1.21.1 (Java 21), on both server and client.
• Full multiplayer support: server-authoritative edits, per-player transmitters.
• Plays nicely with other link-network senders (Linked Controllers, other addons): receivers simply take the strongest signal, like stacked Redstone Links.
• Frequency-card mods work out of the box; JEI/EMI drag integration is optional.
• Twitch Chat is client-side only — it does nothing at all on a dedicated server.

Building from source

• Java 21 (JDK) and internet access on first Gradle sync.
• ./gradlew build → jar at build/libs/linktablet-<version>.jar.
• ./gradlew runClient launches a dev client with the mod + Create.
• Check the Create dependency versions in build.gradle against your Create version (Ponder/Flywheel/Registrate versions must match what your Create build uses).

Version-sensitive spots (if the build errors)

Each is marked with a comment in the source:

• compat/VirtualTransmitter.java — the Couple import (net.createmod.catnip.data.Couple on Create 6.x; older Create used com.simibubi.create.foundation.utility.Couple).
• build.gradle — Create/Ponder/Flywheel/Registrate versions.
• compat/TabletTransmitterHandler.java — uses Create.REDSTONE_LINK_NETWORK_HANDLER and the IRedstoneLinkable interface; method names are stable across Create 6.x.

Addon API

Other mods can register their own tablet apps — App Store row, Home tile, screen, optional HUD overlay and kiosk face. Since API v2 (mod 1.14.0) an addon also knows which tablet it is running on (TabletRef: hand, slot, or block) and can keep its own pocket of persistent data on that tablet, which survives placing, breaking, item frames, chests, and reloads.

The api/ package is a public commitment: append-only, signatures never change. Tutorial and worked example: docs/API.md.

The first addon built on it is Link Tablet: Refined Storage, which opens a real Refined Storage crafting grid on the tablet.

License

MIT — free to use in modpacks.