[HN Gopher] Blitzortung - real time lightning strikes around the...
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Blitzortung - real time lightning strikes around the world
Author : thunderbong
Score : 128 points
Date : 2024-08-27 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blitzortung.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blitzortung.org)
| metadat wrote:
| Is anyone else seeing a 85% black overlay which makes it
| impossible to view the page on mobile? I've tried several
| browsers to no avail.
|
| Edit: It is the cookie banner, and under Firefox the page works
| fine. That's unusual these days :).
|
| Wow this is about as Cool or cooler than I expected, curious
| where the data is coming from.
| mftrhu wrote:
| Looks like a bunch of crowdsourced antennas. See
|
| [1] https://www.blitzortung.org/en/station_list.php [2]
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/whats_new.php [3]
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php
|
| It's really an interesting project.
| PopGreene wrote:
| Start with https://map.blitzortung.org/ . Zoom in to your
| area. Pull down the hamburger menu at the top right. Select
| the "Detectors" check box and slide the slider to the right.
| I found someone operating a detector a few miles from my
| house.
| zeroz wrote:
| > The network consists of more than 500 lightning receivers and
| some central processing servers.
|
| > The receiving stations approximately record one millisecond of
| each signal with a sampling rate of more than 500 kHz. With the
| help of GPS receivers, the arrival times of the signals are
| registered with microsecond precision and sent over the Internet
| to our central processing servers.
|
| > Every data sentence contains the precise time of arrival of the
| received lightning discharge impulse ("sferic") and the exact
| geographic position of the receiver.
|
| This link covers some technical details on how data is collected:
|
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I don't have much to add except to say that this is really
| amazing. I had no idea we had so many interlinked lightning
| strike detectors across the world. What's really interesting is
| from time to time, the detectors in Europe seem to be detecting
| lightning in the US.
| _Microft wrote:
| _" Since the attenuation of VLF waves is smaller for west to
| east propagation and during the night, thunderstorm activity up
| to distances of about 10,000 km can be observed for signals
| arriving from the west during night time conditions. Otherwise,
| the transmission range is of the order of 5,000 km."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_atmospheric_signal
| ("sferic")
| Handyman10 wrote:
| Just a little teeny tiny bit of morbid curiosity, Blitzortung
| can also serve as a civilian early detection system for
| nuclear detonations in the rare, unusual, pesky occurrences
| of nuclear armageddons ;), a nuclear bomb detonation would
| show up in the signal with a much higher magnitude than a
| lightning strike and therefore could be easily detected as
| well, right?
|
| If so, then it would be useful if Blitzortung could classify
| unusually high magnitude events and send out a special kind
| of notification. you would see the notification before you
| hear anything in the news (that is if you're still alive to
| see the notification and check Blitzortung).
| lightningshz wrote:
| "Nuclear detonations are generally realized to be strong
| sources of coherent electromagnetic radiation (the elec-
| tromagnetic pulse) within the very low and low-frequency
| (VLF and LF) radio bands (3-300 kHz) [US. Department of
| Defense. 1962. pp. 502-506)." ... " The network consists of
| more than 500 lightning receivers and some central
| processing servers. The sources of the signals we locate
| are in general lightning discharges. The abbreviation VLF
| (Very Low Frequency) refers to the frequency range of 3 to
| 30 kHz." - blitzortung website
|
| So I guess it seems like it sounds be possible, yea!
| sva_ wrote:
| Perhaps we could write some unit tests that detonate a
| few nukes to make sure it works
| itishappy wrote:
| Interesting to note that "electricity arcing through air" is
| pretty much exactly how our first radio transmitters worked,
| including the device used to send the first transatlantic
| signal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| You might like this too... :-)
|
| https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/soundscape-listening-...
| Porygon wrote:
| Here are some more interesting related resources.
|
| This Wikipedia article explains how the lightning strikes are
| localized:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzortung#Detection_method
|
| And this map uses the same data, but looks a bit nicer:
| https://www.lightningmaps.org If you zoom in a lot, you can also
| see an expanding circle, which visualizes the sound of thunder.
| delgaudm wrote:
| This is cool I never really contemplated how frequently there are
| strikes across the globe.
|
| Is there / Could there be a random number generator based on
| lighting strikes?
| ianpenney wrote:
| Pseudorandom but you'd have an issue with the fact that certain
| tall objects get struck all the time and there are better radio
| noise sources that are probably better at generating entropy.
|
| Maybe the timing rather than the locality might be a better
| input.
| luizfzs wrote:
| I'm impressed with the range of some detectors. Some lightnings
| in Japan are being picked up by detectors in the US' east coast,
| or detector in New Zealand picking up a lighting in North Africa.
| _Microft wrote:
| You can read more about that here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41372225 (I just happened
| to have replied there first)
| pawelduda wrote:
| I've been using this for years. It's very useful in the summer
| season for hiking. There's an Android app that lets you configure
| alert if there's a lightning strike nearby. IIRC you could also
| buy their detector hardware and join the network to help improve
| accuracy.
| layer8 wrote:
| > There's an Android app that lets you configure alert if
| there's a lightning strike nearby.
|
| Does it play a thunder sound? ;)
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| Or play Thunder Struck by AC/DC! :-)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM
| Avamander wrote:
| Buying proprietary hardware to support a project does not make
| much sense to me.
|
| They also haven't really sold it for a while AFAIK, a few other
| comments here have also mentioned this.
| shae wrote:
| I know the author, this came out of some interesting academic
| work he did.
| DubMFG wrote:
| Fun fact: you can integrate Blitzortung lightning strikes into
| Home Assistant with this HACS repo: https://github.com/mrk-
| its/homeassistant-blitzortung
|
| It will add each strike as a device temporarily on your devices
| map.
| SSchick wrote:
| I'd be careful about this, they explicitly do not want you to
| use their websocket as a public api (hence the obfuscation in
| their protocol), I wrote a JS library and opted not to play cat
| and mouse with them.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Their site specifies how to use the data [0] under "Services
| that use our data".
|
| [0] https://www.blitzortung.org/en/contact.php
| spdustin wrote:
| From the repo: Data is served through a
| public MQTT server (dedicated to serve requests for this
| component) - thanks to geohash-based topics and some other
| optimizations it greatly reduces amount of data sent to
| clients comparing to direct websocket connection to
| Blitzortung servers (it is also required by Blitzortung data
| usage policy - third party apps must use their own servers to
| server data for their own clients).
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| The Home Assistant integration works very well (once I figured
| out how to configure it.)
|
| I use it to set off alarms to get out of the pool, and self-
| power-down sensitive systems.
| yreg wrote:
| I use their service ( https://www.lightningmaps.org/ ) often, it
| is perfect for getting an impression about the scale and distance
| of an incoming storm.
|
| It's a bit of a shame, that their detector system project seems
| to be frozen/dead.
|
| Last version (2014, unavailable for orders):
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php
|
| Forum thread (last post 2019):
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/forum.php?tid=1656
| jeffbee wrote:
| Are such instruments of ongoing interest now that we have
| orbiting lightning mappers?
| https://www.goes-r.gov/products/baseline-lightning-detection...
| aftbit wrote:
| I'm personally interested in them but I'm not sure there's a
| good technical reason. I just think offline local sensing is
| cool.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| It's a bit deeper than this...
|
| First of all, Blitzortung is as far as I can tell
| independent, volunteer-based and thus open for everyone to
| use, support and feed with data. It is also real-time (or at
| least max 10-15 seconds of latency).
|
| There are however drawbacks:
|
| - The hardware is relatively expensive (relatively because
| when you compare it to ham or professional RF tech, it is in
| fact dirt cheap :(), so there's a barrier for entry into the
| network if you would like to cover your area. Add to that
| having an appropriate place for the antennas.
|
| - There seem to be issues that make the default visualisation
| of lightning strikes as points on the map dubiously accurate.
| The example I notice most often is that whenever a lightning
| discharges in a cloud as opposed to the ground, it often gets
| detected as several lightning strikes. This may be as simple
| as adding the equivalent of error bars to each detection, but
| I am not any kind of authority on the matter.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| They just released a new detector so I don't think it is
| necessarily true that the detector system project is dead. I'm
| not sure how you get one of those boxes though:
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/whats_new.php
| modeless wrote:
| Wow, you could build a really cool 3D visualizer with this data.
| shdh wrote:
| Environment Canada was using streams of radar data to predict the
| probability of lightning strikes in particular areas. That was in
| 2014.
| adamm255 wrote:
| I use this to make sure no Lightning is in the area when playing
| Golf. Had a couple of times where you hear a rumble, and see the
| lightning strikes are many, many miles away in the app, going
| away from you. So you can keep a close eye on it.
| Havoc wrote:
| I wonder if anyone is using this as a source of entropy
| spdustin wrote:
| For my kids, I have a virtual light switch in HomeKit called
| "Shower Is Safe". It's pinned to the top of the Home app.
|
| I use the Home Assistant integration to fetch this data and run
| some calculations on the past few minutes of lightning activity.
| Since the API returns lightning strike time and bearing from a
| given location, I can (in combination with wind direction)
| determine if the lightning is approaching or receding.
|
| If it's approaching and less than 30 minutes away (or if any
| strike is within 20 miles in any direction), it turns off the
| light switch. It then waits until it's been receding for at least
| 15 minutes (and with no more detections within 20 miles) before
| switching "Shower is Safe" back on.
|
| I can (and do) override it if I notice it's potentially hazardous
| to shower.
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(page generated 2024-08-27 23:00 UTC)