There isn't much automation technology in Stardew Valley. Marnie sells an Auto-Grabber once you reach Farming 10, but you still have to visit each barn and coop to collect their produce. You can also get an Auto-Petter if you side with Joja, but manual petting is still better.
The 1.5 update of Stardew Valley added a new item for automation: the Hopper. You need to play through most of the update to get one, and it doesn't fully automate the machine you attach it to, but a Hopper can still make life easier if you know how and when to use it.
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How to Unlock the Hopper
Once you find 100 of the 130 Golden Walnuts on Ginger Island, you can access Qi's Walnut Room. Inside it you'll find a challenge board, the Perfection Tracker, and an item shop where you spend Qi Gems to get unique items and crafting recipes.
Both the Hopper and its recipe are in the shop. A Hopper costs 10 gems, and the recipe costs 50. You should definitely get the recipe even if you don't need six or more Hoppers because building one "craft every item" requirement on the Perfection Tracker.
Once you have the recipe, you can build a Hopper with 10 hardwood, 1 iridium bar, and 1 radioactive bar. To get a radioactive bar, you'll need to mine radioactive nodes in the dangerous version of the Mines and the Skull Cavern. You can access these by accepting the "Danger in the Deep" or "Skull Cavern Invasion" quests on Qi's Special Orders board.
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How to Use the Hopper
The Hopper's description is pretty clear on how to use it. Simply place a Hopper in the square behind a machine, and it'll feed anything you place inside into the machine in front of it. If you place several types of items in the Hopper, it'll start with the top-left item and work its way across and then down. If you add items to the Hopper that the machine doesn't accept, they'll stay inside the Hopper and never feed into the machine.
The big downside of the Hopper is that it only feeds items into an empty machine. If the machine has finished its work, you'll need to grab the item it produced before the Hopper will add the next item inside it. Currently, there are no objects that collect finished products from machines automatically.
The other problem is that you need to set your machines in a horizontal line because Hoppers don't work sideways.
On the bright side, Hoppers have plenty of inventory space and can hold all the animal and plant produce you'd like to process even though you'd rather spend your day off the farm. This means you don't need a Mayonnaise Machine for every chicken and duck, but you can still process all their eggs into mayonnaise by stopping by the farm two or three times during the day. Meanwhile, your inventory is free for foraging, fishing, and dungeon exploration.
Ultimately, Hoppers aren't a must-have item, but creative players can make good use of them and keep their farm machines running even while they're out.
