How are the lightning screens made?

lightningscreens.html
version 1.1
27 June 2003
last update: 14 Jun 2020

The Boltek stormtracker is a PCI card device, which works inside an old refurbished Siemens computer (meteoLCD is fond of vintage computers!). The card is connected by a long RJ45 cable to an antenna, which is mounted on the roof of the new meteoLCD building inside a plastic sewer tube (to protect the antenna electronics from humidity). 

This picture is an oldie; the ultrasound anemometer is now a different model.

The antenna captures the longwave impulses given by the lightning flashs and feeds them to the PCI processor card:

The software (Astrogenics Nexstorm) takes the raw data and processes them to find distance, direction, type of lightning etc. The detected lightnings are displayed on a realtime "radar"-type screen., the blue crosses represent the most recent flashes.

A central part extending to approx. 100km has been choosen for the map, so to give a reasonable magnitude of the contours of Luxembourg  and the neighbouring regions.

Last edit: 14-Jun-2020