I bought a heating pad last week to start my plants for the garden. But I got the problem when leaving the seedlings on the mat for several days without monitoring them, they would get to hot and start to dry or burn up the seedlings. This was the perfect solution. Itc-306t controller has a probe that you stick in the soil and it feeds information to the controller to regulate the temperature of the heating mat. It also allows you to adjust the temperature a lot higher than other controllers. I am very pleased and so are my little seedlings.