Category Archives: Lightning detector

AS3935 details

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

After a very frustrating weekend, I am pretty confident I have the worst of the integration problems behind me. The Embedded Adventures board is a very nice board but did take the choice of SPI or I2C out of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AS3935, AVC, Components, Lightning detector, Pololu 9DOF IMU, Processors, Projects | 64 Comments

First impressions of the AS3935 lightning detector

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

After ordering the break out board from Embedded Adventures in the UK, I got a nice email indicating that they would ship to me via stock held in the USA. The email also included some sample code for a PIC.

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Lightning Detector

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

First I must apologize for going off line so long. Back in June I got a cold that damaged my inner ear. With the damage, I have been suffering from vertigo. Luckily, the brain learns and re-calibrates the inner ear … Continue reading →

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Converting the lightning detector over to RS-485

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

During the precessing of getting the RS-232 communication working with the lightning detector and my Linux box, I learned the advantages of RS-485. RS-232 sends over its signals as a single ended voltage. RS-485 uses a differential signal. This has … Continue reading →

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The real root cause (maybe?)

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Just when you think you understand everything, life gives you a left hook.

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Root cause to RS-232 bug found!

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Last night I found the true cause of my RS-232 problems. The question should not have been why two computers did not work when one did, but rather how did any manage to work.

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Bug update

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

This bug is now officially driving me nuts.  Just to review, for several years I have been working on building a lightning detector to shutdown my computer network during a storm when I am away from home. I learned a lot … Continue reading →

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Heartbreaking Bug Revisited

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Got time to look at the problem in much more detail. Last night I was just too upset to start work so close to bed time. Today I discovered that the baud rate was indeed correct. What i was measuring … Continue reading →

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A heartbreaking bug

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Last night I decided to try to find a nagging bug in my lightning detector software. The code is supposed to not output a strike severity number unless it is different than the previous value. I was seeing several cases … Continue reading →

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Solution to reboot issue?

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Skye Sweeney

Could it be that I found the reason that my lightning detector rebooted on strong sparks? When I ran the project without the programming cable connected I stopped getting resets. Connected it would reboot. Perhaps some kind of ground loop … Continue reading →

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