Hi @dsj, it wasn’t per se the current default lightning algorithm that confused me. That is clear enough and I wouldn’t say it is too confusing. What confused me was the sentence from Corrine that seemed to suggest that if you were to change the “frequency” setting such that:
then
To me this is different from the current algorithm that will send a new alert after 30 minutes irrespective of the distance.
Either way, it seems like the confusion is mine!
I’m a bit confused too, but at least we’re all in it together!
I’m confused too. There were just some people that got struck by lightning in my area and I’m puzzled as to why people don’t want to be alerted when it’s dangerously close.
The people who got hurt weren’t directly under a storm either and it hit from 10-20 miles away.
^^^^^^^^^^ THIS !!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^
The AS3935 is not a science-grade instrument, and any attempt to set tight ranges when a lightning bolt itself can be 7+ miles long vertically is a recipe to get people killed.
You should have to be the person who is tasked with pulling motorsports drivers off the course as a thunderstorm approaches, looking out for the corner workers flung far and wide around the circuit. I actually wrote an article in the SCCA’s safety newsletter about this very topic and the psychological mindset of drivers as a storm approaches. I believe they adopted a mandatory 30/30 rule since then, to take all “judgement calls” out of the safety equation…
A question for users who wanted improvements to the lightning alerts - how has your alert frequency been since we made our API lightning alert updates about 13 days ago? Do you still feel like a radius selector in the settings in necessary?
The alert frequency is a delicate balance to strike (see what I did there 
), so I wanted to touch base and get feedback from those who voted for better control over their lightning alerts.
I would like the option for selecting a radius. Getting lightning alerts for storms that are more than 15 miles away are not much value for me.
note that it is currently defined into zones. the zone furthest away from you is the one that covers any strike 12+ miles from you. Having this option only saves you 1 notification, namely the one for that zone.
That’s true. I’ve turned off Lightning notifications for the moment. Most likely I would narrow the radius down to 0-5 miles.
in that range, any decent thunderstorm will sends its own notification… a big loud thunder 
Looking at my alerts (I just disabled sound) from earlier this week when we had some storms roll through, yes, more control would still be helpful. There were lightning notifications at least once every ten minutes or so. Thanks!
last moving storm around me was last Monday night rolling over to Tuesday , I was in a meeting so didn’t really follow it but looking at the alerts I have a feeling you can’t do much better in a standardized way.
You see it come closer and each time we cross a circle I get an alert. It went away and then came back and the process starts over again with finally rain.
To join others maybe give 2 options, what is the outermost circle from where it starts to send alerts and maybe the distance between circles. For now I see each 5 km … maybe some want less close circles but keep in any case the 0-5 km active whatever happens (except if they set it completely to off) as the purpose is a warning system …
it should be at most 4 because there are 4 zones, but yeah, that repeats after half an hour. As your storms were moving slowly you got all those extras. I sure hope @dsj finds the time to implement some improvements that would have limited it to 4 per storm.
I’m afraid it isn’t working as advertised. This is a snapshot of my latest notifications.
I mentioned that in another thread, mine is the same, disabled, but do you see reports on the graph for it? I do now (didn’t before), and am also getting notifications from that device.
I guess I don’t see them in the graph but I do get notifications from it.
Thanks, guys. It sounds like this is a bug in the lightning disable feature that may have been introduced recently. We’ve got it on the list and will investigate soon.
Thanks @dsj - just for info, this was the post on the other thread, including a graph showing the lightning on the indoor Air: Lightning detection off
My first major thunderstorm since setting up the Tempest was last night, and it detected over three thousand lightning strikes in the very early morning hours. Fortunately my phone is set to vibrate pretty much permanently, but there was an embarrassing number of lightning alerts when I woke up. It sounded like new settings for control of notifications might be on the way already?
Hi, I love the idea and very excited to see you rolling out the lightning strike distance option and frequency alert options.
I have also noticed on my station that some lightning isn’t being detected by the unit. Is that a function of sensitivity and can that be adjusted?
I haven’t recieved my Tempest yet but I will have to wait until October (or earlier if the weather is good to me) until I can really start testing the lightning feature here in Melbourne, Australia (yeah I know its 1:20am here but I’m excited to recieve my Tempest and we are lockdown, so can’t do much).
Just thinking about it, how is this possible to detect new storms if it can’t work out the direction they are coming from? For example a storm that was detected in the 20km radius would end up in the 20km radius again on the other side. So wouldn’t that trigger off another warning for the same storm since it’s been reset for that zone after 30 minutes?
I think you need to work out how fast that storm is travelling to be able to track it.
