Long distance status display using combinator circuits

[Cylindric]

I've seen some interesting "LED Displays" built using combinators, and I'd like to have a central status board using lights to indicate problems at outlying outposts. I can't work out how to get the signals back to the main base though. Do I have to plop chests or something every 'n' tiles and wire them up in a long looping chain?

I could just not bother, and assume that if my main-base supplies run low, then that means the outpost has died/expired, but it would be nice to know what's going on at an outpost.

[DaveMcW]

The standard method is to run a colored wire along your power poles. If they are the same distance apart you can blueprint two poles and connect them for free.

Things get more interesting when you try to monitor two outposts producing the same resource. The easy way is to rename the signal by running it through an arithmetic combinator. Then there is the hard way ...

[Cylindric]

Ah, okay that's fairly simple. Does the coloured wire replace the copper power wire, or is it a second wire on the pole? I never thought of using the existing power poles to hang the signal wires from

thanks.

[ratchetfreak]

it's a second wire, so power distribution is not affected