Lightning Sensorr Module

g6ejd

Senior Member
Interesting sensor, I might get one.

On most days, my HF antenna has a potential difference to earth of sometimes 50V as measured by my DVM, even on some clear days, I suspect even higher pre-storm, but unfortunately I have not yet been able to measure that during storm conditions - risky business at the best of times (when I disconnect the antenna completely), so a chip like this might be a good indicator of what to do. My HF reciver when tuned to LF is also a similar detector and looking at the values of their tuned circuit, this is the band segment they are monitoring for the characteristic crackles evident in the RF specturm.

Thanks for the link. Now I'm wondering what the data measure is, back to read the data sheet.
 

AllyCat

Senior Member
Hi,

The MOD-1016 board is presumably using a single ferrite rod as the antenna (since there appears to be no external antenna connector), which is directional but doesn't seem ideal (or sufficient) for a general-purpose lightning detector.

You might find the links in this thread on another forum of interest. There, the "lightning radar" is using 10kHz (and large loop antennae), compared with the 500kHz (?) of the 1016/3935.

Cheers, Alan.
 

MFB

Senior Member
Thanks AllyCat for yet another example of the power of PC sound cards. The 'Lightning Radar' certainly seems to provide more information than the single-chip module that I mentioned. I wonder how long it will be before this type of PC sound card project starts to be replaced by cheap but powerful microcomputer boards, like the Arduino ARM and Raspberry pi?
 

premelec

Senior Member
Interesting device - The weather bureau used to fly big box kites on piano wire with a winch - off the Rocky Mountains 90 years ago - one time a kite got hit by lightening vaporising the iron wire leaving a slight trace of brown oxide in the air - I don't think the kite was recovered :) 50,000 ampere pulses have have been measured on commercial radio towers. I've seen St Elmo's fire and wind static coming off antennas... active planet we've got going! I've lost various electronic equipment to lightening - Back in the early IC days with the black epoxy blobs and 8 legs I got a piece of equipment back to repair that had all the epoxy blobs blown off even though the input lines were 'proected' [on a mountain weather station].
 

MFB

Senior Member
Returning to the comments about the MOD-1016 boards lack of a DF capability. These devices are so cheap and easy to add to existing weather stations, that already report via the internet, that would it not be possible to time-stamp the reception of each lightning strike and derive range and DF information from a network of MOD-1016's?
 

srnet

Senior Member
would it not be possible to time-stamp the reception of each lightning strike and derive range and DF information from a network of MOD-1016's?
I guess so, depends how far apart they are, these are RF waves I presume, so they take circa 3.3nS to travel 1M.
 

AllyCat

Senior Member
Hi,

The MOD-1016 only claims a range of "up to 40km", so you'd probably want to resolve the position to less than 10km and to "timestamp" to better than an absolute 30us accuracy. Maybe possible with a GPS or a radio timecode and lots of maths, but probably not with a PICaxe via I2C. And how do you "label" each lightning bolt?

However, a ferrite rod antenna is directional (my objection above was that some lightning might be "lost in the null"), so it may be possible to obtain some directional information from two "crossed" (at 90 degrees) MOD-1016s. It depends on the accuracy/resolution of any signal strength data that it might provide (I haven't checked its datasheet in detail). Then a "network" of receivers might be able to determine storm locations, but the 40km range appears to be rather limited compared with the 10kHz system linked aove.

Cheers, Alan.
 

John West

Senior Member
Storm tracking networks for commercial aircraft weather monitoring do use RF triangulation of lightning bolts.

My longwave receiver with antenna preamplifier regularly detects lightning bolts from hundreds of miles away, probably over a thousand, as I've heard lightning noise on my rig in Michigan when the nearest storm system was passing through Florida. Highly unfortunate for longwave communications reception, but perfect for lightning detection itself. A few cheap longwave receivers placed around your country coupled with precise time references and the web, and a triangulation program, and you'd have your own personal national lightning storm tracking system.
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Just something to keep in mind - while ferrite bar based loop antennas are indeed directional, they are only directional (relative to the horizon) when mounted horizontally. While that's obvious to most experimenters, I had one student who overlooked that important point. :)
 

boriz

Senior Member
Nice gadget. Thanks for the link.

When lighting approaches, I always switch off and disconnect my PC as a precaution. Usually I have little warning, just the thunder. So a little extra warning using a device like this would not only make me feel more comfortable, but would allow me to finish what I'm doing before switching off.
 

MFB

Senior Member
My first impression was that it was a 'nice gadget' but then got carried away by thoughts of DF'ing and networking but Boriz is right, the basic board can be useful and interesting in it's own right.
 
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