Not feeling the love

It is 12:30 at night and I was woken up by a thunderstorm raging outside. Heard the rain, saw the flashes, and heard the thunder. Went downstairs to look at the output of the AS3935 based lighting detector.  Dang thing is just listing most of the lightning strikes as “disturbers”. Only rarely is it calling them strikes. Just now the house shook from strike less than a mile away the device did not pick it up.

Either I have something wrong with the support circuit or software, or this chip is not worth the silicon is was made from.  I would love to hear from other users if they have had good luck picking up storms.

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4 Responses to Not feeling the love

  1. Beat says:

    Hi, had exactly the same observations today. Have always some entries about disturbers and sometimes flashes with no clouds in sight. Then tonight there are thunders and lightnings around but absolute no detection on AS3935. Its a bit frustrating. blitzortung.org has detected the lightnings ok… Not ready for livesaving now 🙁

  2. DaveH says:

    i might suggest that this problem of erroneous triggering is due to a lack of true earth grounding. the nature of the switching regulated power supply for the computer isolates any true earth ground reference. RF is finicky. ground loops etc. earth ground can be found on any properly wired 3 prong AC outlet at the plate holding screw. When i get my replacement board i will try both ways but am 100 percent convinced this will clear up the problems. a matter of running a wire from earth ground to the DC ground point through a 1 meg or so resistor. that resistor is crucial for safety and electronically. Floating reference points can not be accurate

  3. Cedric says:

    I did some test using my camera flash of my Nikon DSLR. More 70% of the flashes are detected and the energy level decrease with the distance. And it works fine for me even using the wire.h on adress 0x00 so long i don’t connect another device on the bus it works. As it is basicaly radio reciever it is sensibel and a good earth connection should be helpfull to keep the noise down.

    • Skye Sweeney says:

      I am happy that the device is working for you. I can get the unit to respond to disturbers by creating sparks from two AA batteries. But as I said, no luck in a real storm.

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