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.