Controlling heaters with Digital Clocks.

[Celsus]

When players are farming in the desert biome, the temperature drops at night and rises during the day. This makes it necessary to use heaters when the sun is down, but also to make sure they are turned off when the sun is up. Cold and hot temperatures significantly impact yield, as over a two hour growth cycle, a few ingame days will pass which can negatively impact the plants several times. When the sun is down, temperatures plummet. While the sun is up, temperatures are still healthy, but if your heaters remain on, the heat becomes too intense.

One solution to this has been to have your heaters wired through a blocker and connected to solar panels aimed at sunrise and sunset.

This does work to switch off heaters during the day and on when the sun goes down. But it is not precise enough to guarantee that yields are not affected during the time the sun is up but it's still cold, or when the sun is down but it's still hot.

I came up with a better, more accurate way to ensure heaters turn on and off precisely when temperatures go out of range for healthy plant growth by using digital clocks.

Each clock is given two power, one to power the clock and one to send out when the alarm goes off. I have a switch to activate the system leading to a branch set to '2' on the left output, and the second output on the right gets the remaining '2' power of the '4' total sent through the switch.

Set one of the clocks' alarm to 21:10 (9:10 PM) This was calculated by paying close attention to when the plant's 'Temperature' reading dropped below 100%.

Set the other clock to 9:10. Be sure that the check mark is activated next to the alarm or it will not function.

Next, connect the output of the first clock (21:10) to a switch that turns on your heaters. Every switch has two connections at the right, one that reads 'Switch On' and one 'Switch Off'. Connect the 'Power Out' of the first clock to the 'Switch On' connector of the heater switch. Connect the second clock's 'Power Out' to the 'Switch Off' connector of the heater switch.

When the system is activated, the heaters will come on precisely when the temperature drops and they will turn off when the heat of the day is first felt.

Edited February 17 by Celsus
Made clock electrical setup a bit less confusing.

[Celsus]

After using this a few times, I note that the 21:10 and 9:10 alarms are something you'll need to adjust depending on which latitude you're at. The trick is to hover the mouse over one of the plants when it's beginning to get dark out and you start hearing the coyotes howling. Note the 'Temperature' reading and note the time when it drops below 100%. That will be the time you set your first (switch on) alarm. As soon as you start hearing birds chirping and it starts to get light out, mouse over the plants again and wait until the temperature reading drops below 100% again (with the heaters on all night the heat becomes too intense during the day) and set your second alarm that connects to 'switch off'.

It doesn't matter if you aren't perfectly precise with the time, it can be a few minutes off and yields won't suffer. What kills yield is being consistently too hot or cold for several minutes over and over. So if the plant reports lower than 100% at 21:15, you can set the 'switch on' alarm for 21:10 or even 21:00 and be fine.

Edited March 17 by Celsus
Missing detail at the end of one sentence.