Hi-Res TOA Lightning Detection Network

[Tornado Tim]

The BPO lightning detectors are back on line, at long last.

Fantastic, well done

[tgsnoopy]

Another detector, Brisbane this time (might be an upgrade to Red?).

[gerardpalk]

Hi all. I guess that detector in Brisbane is me. (Now identified as Dutton Park, Brisbane). This is a red system I bought last year. The Christmas break was the first opportunity I had to put it together. Very impressed with the quality of the kit. My antenna is 2 x 900mm shielded loops. I made them out of two 3m pieces of PVC stip (39mm x 6mm) from Bunnings and two 25m rolls of hook up wire from Jaycar. All wrapped in some foil tape left over from a plumbing job at home. The antenna is currently sitting on the window sill in my study! Plan to mount it under the roof of the car port. It seems to be performing very well where it is now, I am a bit worried about how it will go in its final position.

I am very impressed with the organization demonstrated by the NZ weather watching community setting up your network of detectors. Well done.

[tgsnoopy]

Thanks Gerard (bit of assumption here).

Welcome to the forum, thanks for contributing to the network.

Regards,

Neill.

[tgsnoopy]

Two more detectors have joined the network:

Tamworth, NSW, Au

Bandung, West Java.

[Manukau heads obs]

all these detectors have created an electromagnetic shield over the upper NI, supressing all thunderstorms

[tgsnoopy]

all these detectors have created an electromagnetic shield over the upper NI, supressing all thunderstorms

I don't think you are joking

[tgsnoopy]

And another, second detector at Bandung, West Java

[tgsnoopy]

And yet another, third detector at Bandung, West Java, now on test

[tgsnoopy]

I have this morning, reluctantly reduced the gain of my station in one channel as it has been suffering from an unidentified source of interference (still there when I turn Mains off in the house). Currently the loops are inside the ceiling cavity, I'm going to look at relocating them to above the roof.

By now everyone should be aware that System blue will soon be released. System Red will still be ok, but our older system Greens will essentially start being phased out. This is very disappointing news. All in all, I think they need to hand their design to an international kit manufacturer/distributor. I've had poor responses that don't answer my questions effectively when I've tried to get info or to upgrade my station. I tried several avenues to get a System red, none got me one.

Hearing that post an upgrade I'll be unable to put my old Green station to use elsewhere has now really put me off.

[bpo]

Hearing that post an upgrade I'll be unable to put my old Green station to use elsewhere has now really put me off.

Yep, I've flagged away any more efforts with the TOA/Blitzortung system and will stick to the Bolteks from now on.

[ShimmerNZ]

not knowing much about the Greens, are the amplifiers the same as on the Reds? I have a spare red board which I hosed up the solder job on the gps module and destroyed some of the tracks trying to remove it. I received a replacement board that I'm currently running, but was able to resurrect the original with a few leads back to alternate contact points rather than surface mounted. It's ugly but still works. If the amps are the same someone is welcome to the spare.

[iomkiwi]

I'm a bit disappointed that the green systems will be obsolete soon too, I was planning on sending it north, but no point now.
Also a bit disappointed that more info on the blue system was not made available sooner. I didn't have the expertise to make my red system (Ricky kindly did it) and don't have the knowledge to set all the gains etc to get the best out of it - it has basically been running in auto since I got it.
The one thing I do have for NZ is a good location for the triangulation, if the blue system is plug and play (or close to it) it would have been a better buy for me.

[Tornado Tim]

OK time for me to Chime in:
If you knew the nuts and bolts of the RED vs GREEN, its like Night and Day.

If Blitzortung wants to get more accurate location of strikes(Lat,Long) and adding in Strike Height ect the Hardware needed to be upgraded. Greens dont detect the pre strike EMF , where as Reds do.

Its extremely unfortunate that we got the last lot of Greens before a majour overhaul was done by System Red. System Greens have gone all the way back 2003, and each version iteration has been compatable with each other untill now.

I too have a Green system, and dont have a system RED. The System RED was a trial too see if that data that could be captured by the Hardware would be usefull to the network. I never got a system RED for the fact that something big was coming down the pipeline, I couldnt share it with anyone as the system was still in development and I didnt know how big of a shakeup this would cause. (I have said this on the forum several times and to people that wanted a RED that it was transitional platform and I hoped people wouldnt jump on it straight away due to the fact that they would be buying outdated hardware soon and would be paying twice if they wanted current Hardware).

Systems Blue's will be pre-manufactured and distributed from a central location, and will be a plugin play style like Alan says. Some Versions will come with a touch colour screen and others will not.

Personally, If I was running Blitzortung, I would keep both. And have 2 Data ingestions, and still at least keep the Greens going under a "Legacy Network" and the Reds and Blues under the new network.
However due to Blitzortung being a non-profit, we can only afford to have hardware dedicated to current offerings, hence why I dont think it will be possible.

System Green Users will be given a good discount on the new System Blue and will be given first dibs on system blues and will have get a title on the Blitz forum to say they were part of founding of Blitzortung.

I know its a bittersweet moment, as the Oceania Network got the shortstraw as most people here had greens and have only got hardware thats less than 2 years old and now its going to be depreciated, but this only due to Timing etc. If we joined in earlier this would be less painfull as people would be ready for an upgrade. But this is the way life goes.

The new hardware will be so much better than the old, as it will allow IC cloud detection and has the options for more antennas.
Vertical and Horzontal H field, E-field etc.

I would strongly encourage members to stay with it if you can. Without this network we have no other free way to view and detect with accuracy, Lightning in realtime.

[ricky]

Yeah it is disappointing that the green processing will be deprecated, it is still working well for out basic nz detection and I'm sure could be integrated somehow..

Maybe us green owners can use ours to get discounts for others since we cant sell them on.

Strangely having both the red and green here I had more good detections from the green when both were being fed the same antenna signals (and sending data on both), but there is much more waveform data sent by the red so should allow good future improvements to the reckoning software..

From what I read, anyone with the red now is fine and you don't need to worry about upgrading anything, the receive and sampling characteristics of the blue are the same, its just built and sold in a simpler form to get going and has, I'm guessing, a cooler user interface!

[ricky]

not knowing much about the Greens, are the amplifiers the same as on the Reds? I have a spare red board which I hosed up the solder job on the gps module and destroyed some of the tracks trying to remove it. I received a replacement board that I'm currently running, but was able to resurrect the original with a few leads back to alternate contact points rather than surface mounted. It's ugly but still works. If the amps are the same someone is welcome to the spare.

Quite different unfortunately, the filtering is a bit different, but the main thing is that the controller needs to communicate with the new preamp to set gains etc, without it responding the system wont run. The old preamp has no microcontroller onboard so even if if it was hooked up for signals it wont work..

[tgsnoopy]

I've decided to turn my detector off. I'll likely turn it on again for any forecast nearby storms.

I'm very disappointed that say Tim for example was in the loop and knew what has been going on, whilst all the other contributors were left in the dark. When I contacted a couple of times I got no suitable answers to my questions. That it was so hard to even try to acquire a system red.

If Tim is right and I get an offer of a Blue upgrade at a reasonable price, I'll consider it then.

As for their changes to their website, making it so difficult to see if your station is online (I have to climb into my ceiling to check or reset mine), it used to automatically show your region with a single click, now it's a couple of additional clicks post maximising my screen for me to do so (with it defaulted to the whole world).

I like what they had achieved, I liked being able to contribute to it. But it used to only need 3 signals to triangulate position. Now it needs 5. I'd much rather they detected it with 3 less accurately than they insist on a more accurate 5 detection location and ignore anything with less detections. Maybe they need an option where users of their site could choose what they prefer (yeah right - too logical, they might find their choice wasn't their users preference).

As for them being swamped and too busy etc, delegate it! Don't ignore or fail to answer us.

Shaking my head in disappointment right now.

[Tornado Tim]

I'm very disappointed that say Tim for example was in the loop and knew what has been going on, whilst all the other contributors were left in the dark.

I agree with you, but I really couldnt say anything..... If I had my way I would had all the info out there in the first place, so people could have given feedback etc.

I would like you to turn on your detector again, but I understand if you dont....

I always think in terms of public good in keeping the detector and weather station etc going. I dont do it for an organisation in itself, I do it because I like it and its good for the public.

[Manukau heads obs]

are you able to change the soon to be defunct green systems to send the data to your own server back end here in NZ sort of thing?

[tgsnoopy]

I would like you to turn on your detector again, but I understand if you dont

Tim, there are better detectors in NZ now. Mine isn't picking up as well as it was due to this as yet unidentified interference. If it's better when I put the loops outside on the roof, I'll likely run it again. But for the moment it's not really contributing anything and I doubt it will be missed. I'm also going to try rotating the loops to see if I can identify by nulling which angle the interference is. Am also considering using a single loop & my portable oscilloscope to see if I can track it down. It's a rather strong approx 55 kHz switching PSU by the looks. If I can find it, I should be able to reduce the radiation from it.

Like I said, I'll likely turn it on in advance of any forecast local storms.

[Tornado Tim]

are you able to change the soon to be defunct green systems to send the data to your own server back end here in NZ sort of thing?

Yes its possible.... It would require quite a bit of work, and invlove recompiling the tracker programs to send it to the other server.

I would need to get copies of the algorithm if this was to happen.

[bpo]

Without this network we have no other free way to view and detect with accuracy, Lightning in realtime.

There have been several attempts at creating a Boltek network but they struggled to gain active participants. People complained that Boltek hardware and software is proprietary and expensive, but I don't think hacking the Blitzortung stuff is much easier for the average enduser, and how much is a System BLUE detector going to cost? A lot less than a Boltek StormTrackr-PCI? Less than one of those at all?

What I like about the TOA network is its reach: The Boltek gear is excellent over short and medium range, but can't compete with the TOA beyond that. It was an excellent complimentary system, because the TOA wasn't worth bugger all covering those ranges in which the Boltek excelled.

Let's hope more people (in NZ) are willing to pay the price of a System BLUE than have bought Boltek detectors.

[tgsnoopy]

Another detector has joined the network in Kazakhstan.

[tgsnoopy]

Another detector as joined the network, Silvan, East of Melbourne Vic.

[41south]

I've lost interest in this project so I have a full system red for sale if anyone is interested. Both E and H detectors are included with a set of ferrite antennas.