RUST Electricity Guide – Solar Panels and Small Batteries – How to Guides

rust 101: electricity guide – solar panels & small batteries

With the recent release of the electricity anniversary update, our partner malonik has released the first in a series of video guides covering electricity from rust.

In this particular video, malonik explains some basic techniques to use with the new solar panels and small batteries to help you get familiar with the new electrical system.

with that, you are here to watch his video, enjoy!

Be sure to search for malonik’s previous videos and don’t forget to subscribe to his channel to receive notifications about his latest videos.

the basics

hey guys! wrong here and today we are starting a miniseries called rust electric 101. now i will call it a miniseries because it will be a series of short and to the point videos on how to accomplish practical things with electricity in rust.

I’m not here to rust a computer or a watch. I’m here to teach you how to make things you’ll actually want to use during a cleanse. This first video, for example, will teach you how to set up a power supply that charges your battery and supplies power to your base at the same time, then automatically switches to battery power at night. Now, with that in mind, let’s start with what is possibly the most essential circuitry required in any base that uses batteries of any size.

There are a number of components in the electrical system. That said, you won’t need all of them, especially for simple projects. Getting the various components is relatively easy, most of them fall into regular square boxes, including the bp for solar panels. there are some tier 2 items that drop in military crates and you buy the windmill from the bandit camp for 500 scrap, but none of the tier 2 components are needed for this circuit. finally there is the cabling to connect everything, which is a default bp.

Now, when building with electricity, there are three essential parts to a project. the source, the components and the goal. its source will be anything that produces electricity, and for now, that’s limited to solar panels and wind turbines. your goal is obviously your endpoint, for example I want a light switch or a door control. the components needed in the medium are determined by your goals and the available source. this project will assume you only have access to level one blueprints and will explain the function of each component along the way.

the steps

First install your solar panels. It is important to note that solar panels must have clear access to sunlight. buildings and structures in the game cast shadows that will stop the solar panels from working. even partially covered panels stop working completely. they are either on or off, not in between. To make sure they get enough sun, build them away from your base, with one facing east and one facing west so that at least one panel receives charge all day. they’re easy for trolls to break, even with just a pickaxe, so raise them if you can with triangles from the side of the roof, or this raised platform the girl came up with.

now install a root combiner and run the wires from the AM and PM solar panels to it. the root combiner will combine the power sources into one line which will then power the next component. Note that root combinators do not stack at the moment, since two root combinators cannot connect to another root combinator. whether this is still the case remains to be seen. install a splitter and connect the root combiner to the splitter socket. a splitter takes power and shares it equally between the plugs that are connected, just one plug, and full power goes through, two plugs and it splits evenly, three plugs and it splits three ways.

Place your battery nearby, the maximum charging time for small batteries is one hour, but it is important to note that batteries that are oxidized at this time cannot be charged and used simultaneously. no matter how much power you pour into a battery, if any component is plugged into the outlet, it will consume power, whether it’s running low or charging at all. To remedy this, we have devised a way to block the battery power output line, as long as there is power coming from the panels. it’s a bit tricky, but keep going and it will make sense when we’re done

Above the battery, lay an electrical branch and blocker, then run a line from the splitter to the electrical branch entrance. The electronic branch has two outputs, run the main output to the right of the battery and the left branch output to the jammer pass-through port on the left side of the jammer. hold e on the branch and limit its power to two, we only need the minimum power required to signal the blocker.

This serves both to power the battery and to indicate to the jammer that electricity is coming in from the solar panels. as long as that is the case, the jammer will ignore any power coming from the battery. what is the next step.

run power from battery output to jammer input, check your battery, it should be charging now. when the sun goes down and the solar panels stop working, the branch will no longer send a signal and the jammer will switch to let battery power through.

now install a switch or near the blocker and divider. connect one plug from the splitter and one from the blocker. all the switch does is either detect whether or not the power is coming from the panels, or from the battery and jammer, then passes the appropriate load. from the switch or you can set any kind of electricity you want, pass the power directly to the lights, or to a switch and then to a door sign, or both and so on, we have also installed a meter, so we can see how much power we have to work with what changes between night and day.

At this point, the clever viewer might say, why not skip the branch and just run a third wire from the splitter to the blocker? the problem is that it would divide the power output of the dividers into thirds, instead of half as explained above. . instead, the branch allows us to control the amount of energy being emitted and serves as a divider of its own. if you’re feeling really smart, you can swap out the divider for another branch circuit and control how much power goes to the battery, but for simplicity we’re going the divider route, so rest easy.

so there you have it, this is probably the most essential circuit in any base that requires solar panels, your base receives power during the day while the battery charges, and at night the battery automatically takes over. once you understand the logic behind these systems, expanding them to include more panels or more batteries is… relatively straightforward.

also please note that this video was made using electricity as it was at the stage branch the night before it was released and as such may be subject to change, if that happens we will redo the video or we will add annotations. to let you know what’s going on.

I might take a moment to say that it is not essential to learn the electrical system to play rust. ultimately its impact on the game will be minimal and will really only bring minor changes to the game’s quality of life for those willing to master it. adds almost nothing to base defense and in some cases weakens base defense. for example, people don’t need your codes to use an existing door switch.

How the rust will change after electricity will be interesting, but likely won’t affect the raid or pvp meta in any substantial way. which isn’t to say it’s not fun, it could have some apps for cheat bases down the road. but for now don’t stress if you can’t figure it out, learn ak recoil, get some armor, and you’ll still be miles ahead of people who can build a clock in the game, or a computer, i don’t know, you already have a computer and a watch anyway.

Finally, don’t be discouraged if you’re completely lost at first with all this. we spent hours playing with it to understand it.

If you’re interested in understanding it better, check out my videos and jump over to a build server to play around with it. make sure you use meters to track what your electricity is doing as it really helps. it may seem daunting at first, but it will click and start to make sense the more you use it.

thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video!