Another Waikato Lightning Detector

Manukau heads obs · Thu 09/12/2010 12:44

some cloud build ups inland from me Tim...I wonder if you might get to pick up something later today..

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Thu 09/12/2010 16:06

Its inside atm will go outside on sunday but the lightning page is now using my data

http://wx-matangi.dyndns.org/Weather/wxl2kdemo.php (a url change will occur soon so dont bookmark just yet)

Please remember since this is inside things will be a bit off until it can go outside.

I plugged in a CRT monitor just to see if things would be picked up, sure enough it did, haha around 28764 noises per min!

Once I turned off the monitor down to 0 again so its all good

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Sat 11/12/2010 07:22

Surprisingly the boltek picked up a tropical CB from inside last night!
We have an aluminum roof so I was surprised it would pick up anything at all while being inside

kaimaikid · Unread post by **kaimaikid** » Sat 11/12/2010 09:23

Next time I'm passing through your area I'll create an electric fence short so that your pic can have something to show....

Manukau heads obs · Sat 11/12/2010 10:31

just got mine going again...had not had it hooked up for a while...due to electric fence noise...
that is not there at the moment

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Sat 11/12/2010 13:22

Manukau heads obs wrote:just got mine going again...had not had it hooked up for a while...due to electric fence noise...
that is not there at the moment

Thats good.

It will be good to have your boltek up and running again

Since its a ld250 you can take it with you when you chase. Turn your Honda Odyssey into a Mobile Mesonet with lightning detection, LOL

Did you fix the anemometer after the accident in September?

Manukau heads obs · Sat 11/12/2010 21:13

Did you fix the anemometer after the accident in September?

sssshhhh
that was embarrasing enough without reminding me again , LOL
Ricky has it at the moment
I do know where I can hold of another one though...

tgsnoopy · Unread post by **tgsnoopy** » Sat 11/12/2010 21:47

Details please

Anything technical in nature? Or is it mechanical?

Manukau heads obs · Sat 11/12/2010 22:11

OK, OK....
it was that gale ...mid sep....and we all jumped in the car, anenometer attached to the roof, ready to go, .....in the garage.....garage door really needed adjusting to open a bit higher....get the picture?
LOL

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Sat 11/12/2010 23:11

Go Brian, LOL

What do Boltek use for the Cat5 e couplers, because I have a inline keystone coupler here and I am wondering if it will play with the signal......

Any advise much appreciated.

tgsnoopy · Unread post by **tgsnoopy** » Sun 12/12/2010 11:52

LOL, oh dear!

So it's mechanical in nature. Bummer, so if it was an easy fix it'd be done already.

Good intentions and I can fully understand how that could have happened. I had to fix a good one involving the light bar on a police vehicle and a roller door on the back of the cells on the local courthouse once.

ricky · Unread post by **ricky** » Sun 12/12/2010 12:03

Well the cups upper bearing and rotor are fine, rest of the moulding is broken up but intact enough to fit the coil mounts and bearing piece into a new tube and mount of some sort

worth doing it's a very cool anemometer and display..

Any of those straight through cat5 couplers will be fine tim as long as they don't get wet!
Slight qualification to that, the antenna does draw quite a bit of current over one pair so the crimps and connectors do have to be good

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Mon 13/12/2010 16:22

ricky wrote: Any of those straight through cat5 couplers will be fine tim as long as they don't get wet!
Slight qualification to that, the antenna does draw quite a bit of current over one pair so the crimps and connectors do have to be good

Thanks for that Ricky, I got a email from Bev at Boltek and she said I got the coupler that has the same function as the one they sell

Well after playing with l2k and programming some more PHP, Website visitors (eg: You weather nuts reading) will be notified when a storm or multiple storms are currently being tracked in the Yellow alert range and the Red alert range.
It will pick the storm with highest severity rating and output according to that

Notifications look like this:

Screen shot 2010-12-13 at 3.48.26 PM.png

Screen shot 2010-12-13 at 3.51.01 PM.png

Hope this will help the locals etc of any impending storms and when to take precautions.......

I will tidy up the code a bit more then release it

Best Regards

Tim G

jamie · Unread post by **jamie** » Mon 13/12/2010 16:55

awesome tim!!!!

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Mon 13/12/2010 22:38

jamie.h wrote:awesome tim!!!!

Thanks Jamie,

Let me know when you are free and i will pop over to your parents place and update WD to the latest build

Brians got heaps of new nice things in the new compiler version

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Thu 23/12/2010 21:41

The Boltek is now outside thanks to Ricky

Its only a temporary mounting outside for the moment but its in a very good spot atm to picking up everything.

The final siting is in the same place but a bit higher and will be done via PVC.

The Lightning page is now launched, Storm Notification on the website atm is disabled until i see how L2k starts plotting a storm and ranging it.

Once again thanks Ricky for helping me out with this

Final URL: http://wx-matangi.dyndns.org/weather/wxl2k.php

Now Bring on the storms

Manukau heads obs · Fri 24/12/2010 08:42

looking good!

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Sat 01/01/2011 17:59

I have done some calibration to the Boltek now

Strikes that originate around the islands of Fiji get plotted out there (the benefits of a 3200km Map

)
And I have also made a 20Â° adjustment on the antenna as the tstorms in Gisbourne Today and the ones by the SI west Coast where about 20Â° off where they should be.

More info here:http://wx-matangi.dyndns.org/Weather/wxblog/?p=1167

Hopefully by doing regular calibrations on it I can get it pretty close on where the strike actually happened.

ricky · Unread post by **ricky** » Sun 02/01/2011 12:00

I suppose 20Âº wasn't too bad for a rough pointing reaching way over my head

, there is a fair bit of rotation available on the pole if you wanted to swing it around a bit up there!

Good looking results from L2k so far

tgsnoopy · Unread post by **tgsnoopy** » Sun 02/01/2011 12:12

Coincidentally, 20Â° is roughly the magnetic difference.

ricky · Unread post by **ricky** » Sun 02/01/2011 12:44

Yes ! actually if we had've pointed it using magnetic it may have been correct haha

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Wed 05/01/2011 06:46

Good, the Boltek is picking up the Northern Tasman storms well

apparently the activity rate went to 6/min overnight

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Thu 13/01/2011 14:23

I dont think I can leave things alone, LOL

Just Updated the Lightning Page to have a Gradient Background.

Link just incase: http://wx-matangi.dyndns.org/weather/wxl2k.php

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Fri 18/02/2011 11:27

Calibration Check against WWLN Live Google Overlay:
Storms to the NE.

Adjustment: 200km further out......

Tornado Tim · Unread post by **Tornado Tim** » Mon 14/03/2011 22:17

Another Calibration Check:

Pacific Lightning needs to plotted further out.
Made an adjustment and I will see how it runs overnight with the plotting

Man I love the Map going out to 3000 KM

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Another Waikato Lightning Detector

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