Timberborn Automation Guide: Sensors, Logic, and Smart Colonies

Timberborn 1.0 introduced a comprehensive automation system with over 20 new components that let you build smart, self-regulating colonies. Instead of manually pausing and unpausing buildings, opening and closing floodgates, or adjusting water flow during every drought, you can now wire up sensors, logic gates, and actuators to handle these tasks automatically. This guide covers every automation component in the game, from basic Depth Sensors to advanced HTTP integrations, and walks you through practical circuit designs that will transform your colony management.

Automation Fundamentals: Signals, Connections, and Building Blocks

The automation system revolves around a simple concept: signals. A signal is either active (on) or inactive (off). Sensors generate signals based on game conditions, logic components process those signals, and actuators respond to the final signal by performing physical actions like opening a valve or engaging a clutch. Every automation setup follows this three-stage pattern: sense, process, act.

Connections between automation components are made through the building menu. You select a sensor or logic output, then choose which building or actuator should receive the signal. Multiple buildings can receive the same signal from a single source, allowing one sensor to control many actuators simultaneously. Conversely, a Relay can combine signals from multiple sensors before passing the result to an actuator.

All automation structures are categorized under the Automation tool group in the building menu. Most require Science points to unlock, with basic sensors available in the mid-game and advanced logic and API components unlocked later. Planning your automation research path is important because early access to even basic sensors can dramatically improve drought management and resource efficiency.

Depth Sensors: Monitoring Water Levels

The Depth Sensor is one of the most useful and commonly deployed automation components. It measures the water level at its location and activates its signal when the water rises above a configurable threshold. You can set this threshold to any depth value, allowing precise control over water-dependent systems. When the water level drops below the threshold, the signal deactivates.

The most common use case for Depth Sensors is automated floodgate control. Place a Depth Sensor in your reservoir and connect it to a floodgate. Set the threshold to your desired maximum water level. When the reservoir fills above that point, the signal activates and the floodgate opens, releasing excess water downstream. When the level drops below the threshold, the gate closes automatically, conserving your stored water. This eliminates the tedious manual floodgate management that previously defined drought preparation.

You can also connect Depth Sensors to Water Pumps. Place a sensor in your reservoir with a low threshold (for example, 1 tile depth). Connect it to your Water Pumps with an inverted signal so that the pumps pause when water gets critically low, preventing your reservoir from being completely drained. This is especially valuable during long droughts when every unit of stored water counts.

Advanced players use multiple Depth Sensors at different thresholds to create tiered responses. A sensor at 3 tiles might shut down non-essential irrigation. A sensor at 2 tiles might pause industrial water consumers. A sensor at 1 tile might trigger emergency water conservation mode, shutting down everything except drinking water supply. This cascading system provides graceful degradation rather than sudden colony-wide water failure.

Flow Sensors and Contamination Sensors

The Flow Sensor measures the water current at its location rather than the static depth. It activates when the flow rate exceeds a configurable threshold, measured in flow units. Flow Sensors are particularly useful for monitoring river channels and detecting when water is actually moving versus sitting stagnant. You can use a Flow Sensor to verify that your dam's spillway is releasing water before activating downstream systems, or to detect when a river has dried up during a drought.

A practical application of the Flow Sensor is Water Wheel management. Connect a Flow Sensor near your Water Wheels and link its signal to a Clutch on the power grid segment feeding non-essential buildings. When the flow drops below the threshold needed for meaningful power generation, the Clutch disengages and redirects what little power remains to critical systems. When the flow returns, the Clutch re-engages automatically.

The Contamination Sensor detects the presence and level of contaminated water (Badwater) at its location. When contamination rises above the set threshold, the signal activates. This is critical for protecting your colony from Badtide events. Connect a Contamination Sensor upstream of your water intake and link it to a Fill Valve or floodgate that seals off your clean water supply when contamination is detected. Without this automation, a Badtide event can poison your entire water supply before you notice and react manually.

Contamination Sensors should be placed strategically at the entry points of your water system. If your colony draws from a river, place sensors upstream of your intake. If you have a reservoir, place sensors at the reservoir inlet. The earlier you detect contamination, the more time your automated systems have to seal off clean water supplies and redirect contaminated flow away from your colony.

Weather Sensors and Timers

The Weather Sensor monitors in-game weather conditions and generates signals based on the current state. It can detect transitions between wet and dry seasons, wind conditions, and other environmental factors. This makes it invaluable for pre-positioning your colony before conditions change. For example, you can connect a Weather Sensor to begin filling emergency reservoirs at the first sign of drought, rather than waiting until the river visibly starts to dry up.

Timers provide time-based automation triggers, allowing you to activate and deactivate systems on a schedule. You configure a Timer with an on-duration and an off-duration, and it cycles between active and inactive states accordingly. Timers are useful for managing daytime and nighttime operations, scheduling regular water releases from dams, or creating pulsed power distribution patterns that share limited generation capacity across multiple building groups.

A powerful combination is pairing a Weather Sensor with a Timer. The Weather Sensor detects drought onset, which activates the Timer. The Timer then cycles through a water conservation schedule, periodically releasing small amounts of stored water rather than allowing continuous flow. This stretches your reserves significantly further than either component alone could achieve.

Population Counters, Resource Counters, and Science Counters

Counters are sensors that monitor abstract colony data rather than physical water conditions. The Population Counter tracks the number of beavers in your district and activates when the population exceeds or falls below a set threshold. Use it to automatically scale production: when the population grows past 50 beavers, activate additional food processing buildings; when it drops below 30, shut down excess production to conserve resources.

The Resource Counter is one of the most versatile automation tools. It sends a signal based on the stock level or storage fill rate of a specified good. You can configure it to monitor any resource in the game, from logs and planks to food items and metal blocks. When the stock of the specified resource crosses your threshold, the signal activates. This enables automatic production chains: when your Plank supply drops below 50 units, activate additional Lumber Mills; when it rises above 200 units, shut them down to save power and labor.

The Science Counter tracks your accumulated Science points and can trigger actions at specific milestones. While less commonly used than Resource or Population Counters, it has niche applications such as automatically pausing research buildings once you have accumulated enough points for a specific unlock, freeing those workers for other tasks until you need more research.

Combining multiple Resource Counters creates sophisticated production management systems. Monitor your wheat supply, flour supply, and bread supply simultaneously. If wheat is abundant but flour is low, activate the Windmill (grain processing). If flour is abundant but bread is low, activate the Bakery. If bread stock is high, shut down both to conserve resources. This kind of cascading production control was previously impossible without constant manual oversight.

Relays and Logic Operations: AND, OR, NOT, XOR

Relays are the logic processing components of the automation system. A Relay accepts multiple input signals and combines them using a configurable logic operation before outputting a single result signal. The available logic operations are NOT, AND, OR, XOR, and Passthrough. Understanding these operations is essential for building complex automation circuits.

The AND operation outputs an active signal only when all input signals are active. Use this when you need multiple conditions to be true simultaneously. For example: open a floodgate only when the reservoir is above minimum level AND the downstream channel has low water AND it is not a drought season. All three conditions must be met for the gate to open.

The OR operation outputs an active signal when any one or more input signals are active. Use this for redundancy or alternative triggers. For example: activate emergency water pumping if EITHER the drought sensor triggers OR the reservoir level drops below critical OR the contamination sensor detects Badwater. Any single crisis triggers the response.

The NOT operation inverts a single input signal. If the input is active, the output is inactive, and vice versa. This is commonly used to create "pause when" conditions. A Depth Sensor outputs active when water is above a threshold; pass it through a NOT Relay, and the result is active when water is below the threshold. Connect this to a Water Pump to pause pumping when water is low.

The XOR (exclusive or) operation outputs active when exactly one input is active but not both. While less commonly used, XOR is useful for alternating systems. For example, two water intake channels that should never both be open simultaneously: XOR ensures that if one is active, the other stays closed.

The Passthrough operation simply forwards the input signal unchanged, which is useful for signal routing when you need to branch a connection through a relay for organizational clarity without changing the logic.

Actuators: Fill Valves, Throttling Valves, Clutches, and Detonators

Actuators are the output components that perform physical actions in response to automation signals. The Fill Valve controls water flow through a pipe, opening or closing based on its input signal. Place Fill Valves at key points in your water distribution system to automatically route water where it is needed most. When a signal is active, the valve opens; when inactive, it closes.

The Throttling Valve provides variable flow control rather than simple open/close operation. Instead of being fully open or fully closed, a Throttling Valve can adjust its flow rate based on the strength of its input signal. This allows for more nuanced water management, such as gradually increasing irrigation flow as reservoir levels rise rather than switching abruptly between full flow and no flow.

The Clutch, as discussed in the power systems section, acts as a switch in your Power Shaft network. When connected to an automation signal, it engages or disengages power transmission automatically. This is the primary tool for automated power management, allowing you to shed non-essential loads during low-generation periods and reconnect them when power is abundant.

The Detonator is a specialized actuator that triggers explosive charges. It is used in conjunction with dynamite to perform automated terrain modification or dam breaching. While its applications are narrow, the Detonator enables advanced strategies like emergency flood release by blowing a temporary dam when contamination is detected upstream. Use with extreme caution, as the effects are permanent and irreversible.

In addition to these dedicated actuators, many standard buildings can be connected directly to automation signals. When connected, a building will pause or unpause based on the signal state. This means any pausable building can serve as an actuator, greatly expanding the scope of what automation can control. Water Pumps, production buildings, Power Wheels, and many other structures all accept automation inputs.

API Components: HTTP Lever and HTTP Adapter

Timberborn 1.0 includes two highly advanced automation components designed for integration with external systems: the HTTP Lever and the HTTP Adapter. These components bridge the gap between in-game automation and external software, opening up possibilities for monitoring dashboards, remote control, and even AI-driven colony management.

The HTTP Lever is an automation component that can be controlled via an external API call. Instead of receiving its signal from an in-game sensor, the HTTP Lever responds to HTTP requests sent from outside the game. This allows external programs, scripts, or web interfaces to toggle the lever on or off, which then propagates through the normal automation signal chain to connected buildings and actuators.

The HTTP Adapter works in the opposite direction: it takes an in-game automation signal and exposes it as an API endpoint. It can also send webhook calls to external URLs when the signal changes state. This means you can monitor in-game conditions from a web dashboard, receive notifications on your phone when water levels drop, or log automation events to an external database for analysis.

While most players will not use these components in normal gameplay, they represent a remarkable feature for the modding and technical community. Programmers can build sophisticated external monitoring and control systems that interact with the game in real time. Some community members have created web-based colony dashboards that display live resource levels, population data, and water status by chaining multiple HTTP Adapters to Resource Counters and Depth Sensors.

Example Circuits: Practical Automation Designs

Here are several practical automation circuits you can build immediately in your colony. The first is an automated drought response system. Place a Weather Sensor to detect drought onset. Connect it to a Relay set to AND with a Depth Sensor monitoring your main reservoir at 50% capacity. When drought begins AND the reservoir is below half full, the output signal pauses all non-essential water consumers (parks, decorative fountains, secondary irrigation) while keeping drinking water and primary crop irrigation active.

The second example is a contamination defense system. Place a Contamination Sensor upstream of your water intake. Connect it to a Fill Valve on your intake pipe and a second Fill Valve on an emergency bypass channel that routes contaminated water away from your reservoir. When contamination is detected, the intake valve closes and the bypass valve opens simultaneously, protecting your clean water supply while allowing the contaminated water to flow safely past your colony.

The third example is automated food production scaling. Set up three Resource Counters monitoring Wheat (threshold: below 100), Flour (threshold: below 50), and Bread (threshold: below 200). Connect the Wheat counter to your grain farms' irrigation valves. Connect the Flour counter to your Windmill (grain processing). Connect the Bread counter to your Bakery. Each production stage activates only when its output product is running low, creating a demand-driven supply chain that self-regulates without manual intervention.

The fourth example is power load balancing. Place Gravity Battery charge-level monitoring through an associated sensor. Connect it through a Relay to a Clutch on your secondary industrial district. When battery charge is above 50%, the Clutch engages and the secondary district receives power. When it drops below 50%, the Clutch disengages, reserving all power for primary operations. Add a Timer to create a cycling pattern that gives the secondary district periodic power windows even during low-generation periods.

Advanced Automation Patterns and Optimization Tips

As you become comfortable with basic automation, you can build increasingly sophisticated systems. Cascading relay chains allow you to create priority systems where the most critical operations are the last to be shut down. Wire your sensors through a chain of Relays, each controlling a different tier of buildings. As conditions worsen (water drops, power falls), each tier shuts down in sequence from least to most important. As conditions improve, they come back online in reverse order.

Hysteresis is an important concept for preventing rapid cycling. If a Depth Sensor is set to exactly 2 tiles and water fluctuates around that level, the connected systems will constantly toggle on and off. To prevent this, use two sensors at slightly different thresholds. One sensor at 2.5 tiles activates a system through an OR Relay, while another sensor at 1.5 tiles deactivates it through an AND condition. The system turns on when water reaches 2.5 tiles and stays on until it drops below 1.5 tiles, providing a stable operating range.

Modular design is another best practice. Rather than building one massive interconnected automation network, create self-contained modules for each function (water management, power management, food production). Each module has its own sensors, logic, and actuators. Modules can share information through shared sensors, but their logic and actuators remain independent. This makes troubleshooting much easier because a problem in one module does not cascade to others.

Finally, label your automation components carefully. In complex colonies with dozens of sensors and relays, it is easy to lose track of what controls what. Use the naming feature to give every sensor, relay, and actuator a clear, descriptive name. Names like 'Reservoir North Depth 50%' or 'Bakery Production Gate' make it possible to understand your automation network at a glance, even after weeks of not playing. Good labeling practices will save you hours of troubleshooting as your colony grows.