New – Thunder Board Lightning Detector and Simulator products Released
SwitchDoc Labs is pleased to announce the availability of the new Thunder Board Lightning Detector based on the AS3935 and the new Thunder Board Lighting Simulator.
The Thunder Board Lightning Detector is compatible with the Arduino, Raspberry Pi and ESP8266.
You can buy the Thunder Board Lightning Detector here.
You can buy the Thunder Board Lightning Simulator here.
New IOT kits for the lightning detector coming soon.
The Thunder Board Lightning Simulator
Debugging Lightning Detectors has always been a problem. You have to wait for a lightning storm. To fix this problem, we have now developed a Lighting Simulator product. This board is a companion to the SwitchDoc Labs Thunder
Board Lighting Detector. This fully assembled and programmed product will generate simulated lighting on cue to test your lightning detection setup.
We use it regularly in house and are pleased to release this as a product.
We have just posted the software for the Thunder Board Lightning Simulator.
https://github.com/switchdoclabs/SDL_Arduino_ThunderBoardSimulator
It comes with a fully assembled and programmed shield plugged into an Arduino Uno R3. Works out of the box. USB to USB – Type A Cable for programming and power.
Here is what it does:
- Far Lightning Strike (push Far Stk Button)
- Mid-range Lightning Strike (push Mid Stk Button)
- Close Lightning Strike (push Close Stk Button)
and three other lightning test modes:
- Slow Timed Lightning Strike Mode – Every 5 minutes (push Far Stk and Mid Stk buttons together)
- Fast Timed Lightning Strike Mode – Every 15 seconds (push Mid Stk and Close Stk buttons together)
- Random Timed Lightning Strike Mode – From 30 seconds to 30 minutes (push all three buttons together)
You terminate the Time Strike modes by pushing any single button or by performing a power off or reset.
Note: This lighting simulator is not very strong and might have to be held close to the Thunder Board Lightning Detector especially in the presence of cell phones, computers and monitors. If you look at the Thunder Board Lightning Detector, you can see when the Lightning board picks up lightning when the Interrupt White LED blinks or lights up.
If you are having detection problems, move your whole test setup away from RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) sources.
The Thunder Board Lightning Detector
This board will be on sale in mid-December 2017 as soon as we have fulfilled all the kickstarter rewards!
- – 2.4V – 5.5V operation
- – I2C Interface – 0x01-0x03 Address
- – Buffered I2C Interface
- – Grove Connectors – No Soldering Required
- – Lightning sensor warns of lightning storm activity within a radius of 40km
- – Distance estimation to the head of the storm down to 1km in 14 steps
- – Detects both cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud (cloud-to-cloud) flashes
- Embedded man-made disturber rejection algorithm
- – Programmable detection levels enable threshold setting for optimal controls
- – I2C interface is used for control and register reading
- – Antenna Tuning to compensate variations of the external components
- – Power-down, listening, and active mode
- – Full Test Code Supplied
The Thunder Board is an Arduino and Raspberry Pi Grove compatible breakout board with a full set of connectors. No external antennas required! It is designed for use in Low Power applications such as battery and Solar Power applications. It can detect lighting up to 40km away.
How the heck do we detect lightning? You would think it would be pretty easy, but it turns out it is not. It’s not just like a giant spark. Well, it is a giant spark, but there are lots of other things that make electrical noise that can be confused for lightning. Your computer (even your Raspberry PI and Arduino!), your car, the motor in your refrigerator, your cell phone, your computer monitor, your AM/FM radio and even your TV. They all make electrical noise that can be confused with Lightning.
The Thunder Board is an I2C device and detects Lightning and provides a distance estimate to the “leading edge” of an incoming storm.