Server Guide
Server Guide

Daylight Detectors

Daylight Detectors

Learn how to make daylight detectors with Redstone

Overview

Daylight Detectors are special blocks that produce redstone power based on the time of day and weather in your Minecraft world. These sensors allow you to create "smart" lights and other helpful circuits with relative ease. Let's dig into what these detectors are capable of.

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What Can You Do With Daylight Detectors?

There are a ton of great ways to use these blocks to enhance your builds, such as…

Simple automatic street lamps

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These super-simple lights are just a redstone lamp with a daylight detector on top. By standing on top of it and right-clicking on the detector, you can invert it to emit a redstone signal when it gets dark out, and then your lights will turn on and off at night without you needing to lift a finger!

Make a hopper-fed furnace that powers on every morning

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Fill the side chest with a fuel source of your choice, and then dump anything you want to smelt or cook into the top chest. In the morning the machine will power on and start processing everything for you! The secret is the daylight detector, which disables the main hopper while it's dark out.

Piston-powered security doors

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You'll never have to worry about locking your doors at night ever again! The door is operated by two sets of stacked sticky pistons which each have an inverted daylight detector on them. When night approaches, the doors will automatically close and keep your base safe from roaming monsters.

How To Use a Daylight Detector

  1. Place your daylight detector in a spot where it can receive the right amount of light. Putting it under a tree will reduce the amount of redstone power it puts out.
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  1. Use redstone dust to draw a path away from the daylight detector. Any adjacent redstone dust will automatically connect to it.
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  1. At the end of the path place any redstone mechanism, like an iron door or a piston. Make sure that your redstone dust path points to the block you want to transfer power to.
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  1. Right-click the daylight detector to toggle it between daylight mode and inverted mode.
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Things To Know

Here are some basic rules to know when using daylight detectors.

1️⃣
Daylight detectors produce redstone signals based on how much daylight they receive. Under the maximum amount of sunlight, this sensor produces a strong redstone signal. The strength of that signal will be reduced based on the time of day, the weather, and the amount of shade that the sensor is under.
2️⃣
Daylight detectors are not affected by light from torches or other blocks. Light that comes from non-daylight sources won't change the sensor's behavior.
3️⃣
Daylight detectors can be inverted to detect a lack of daylight instead. If you right-click on a daylight detector, the dots on top will change from yellow to blue and the signal it generates will now be based on how little sunlight it receives. This is called an "inverted daylight detector." You can right-click on the sensor again to revert it back to normal.

Keep these simple bits on information in mind when working with these sensors and you'll be able to make all sorts of amazing circuits with these simple blocks!