UDP API - Not seeing evt_strike packets in quite a while, anyone else still capturing them?

I’m working on developing a specialized controller and would like to use the UDP broadcasted Lightning Strike Event [type = evt_strike] information to fire a workflow. My initial sample code captured some evt_strike events initially, but I haven’t seen any in weeks. To prove my sanity, I had Wireshark running during multiple passing storm cells. The Tempest app was hammering me with Lightning detected push notifications for my station, yet not one evt_strike packet has been captured during these storm cells. I do have a pcap file and screen shot of the Tempest app push notifications to prove I actually had lightning activity.

I get all the other message types captured as expected.

Here is a dump from one event that I captured when I first installed the Tempest. (not raw data, but parsed from the packet)

********************* evt_strike Lightning Strike Event
Time Epoch=1593724576 serial number=ST-00014701 Distance=20 Energy=33556688

This is a current rapid_wind capture showing the serial numbers of the station and indicates I’m getting the other events just fine.

{“serial_number”:“ST-00014701”,“type”:“rapid_wind”,“hub_sn”:“HB-00030829”,“ob”:[1598552148,0.00,0]}

device fw is: 134
hub fw is: 143

Can someone run a Wireshark capture during your next lightning storm and see if you get any evt_strike messages? I use this capture filter to grab just the Tempest data: udp and port 50222

KD4Z

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Agreed…
Not seeing ANY UDP evt_strike data packets from either my Tempest or AIR, both on independent HUBs.
–Sam

Me too. My Tempest seems to not be sending any lightning strike events either.

i don’t capture udp in general but using a small app on my phone I just did. I didn’t get any strike events from tempest but did get some from my air.
<<{“serial_number”:“AR-00004563”,“type”:“evt_strike”,“hub_sn”:“HB-00002338”,“evt”:[1598628169,12,8927]}[17:22:53.113]
<<{“serial_number”:“AR-00019721”,“type”:“evt_strike”,“hub_sn”:“HB-00002338”,“evt”:[1598628169,10,15599]}[17:22:53.114]
That hub has firmware 143

Okay, I’m late to the party, but I too have noticed there are no UDP packets of type=evt_strike coming across. Since the posts I see are from August '20, I’m guessing this has been answered and I’m just not finding it. The WF app on my phone reports lightening strikes just fine - just nothing in the UDP traffic.

Thanks.

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Yes and no, all the Tempest devices are slowly being upgraded to FW 156, takes quite some time since each upgrades = 10 minutes and it is done in batches to avoid problems.

Yours will be done the coming days and once it is upgrade lightning data will become available in the UDP stream. It is just a matter of several days.

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Eric, thanks for the information and the update. I’ll be patient!

It looks like I’ve got 156 on my Tempest and I am not seeing evt_strike events. I’m getting push notifications to my mobile devices, both the web and mobile apps are showing the strikes, but I’m not seeing the events in the stream.

Could this be happening because my Tempest hasn’t yet detected any strikes, but instead I’m seeing the results of back-end processing?

The storm system that’s generating these strikes is heading towards me and should be here within the hour. I’m capturing output from listen.py for later analysis, so I’ll see if this is because it’s too far away at the moment.

My Tempest is also at firmware version 156; my hub is at 170. Lo and behold, this afternoon I started getting EVT_STRIKE packets on the the UDP port. (This afternoon is the first lightning activity since I posted.) I have no idea what changed (when I was NOT getting evt_strike, I had noted that my device fw was 156, but I failed to notice the hub level). So, bottom line, I can’t offer anything helpful.

The storm passed right over with some extremely close lightning strikes and I never got any evt_strike events. Is there anything that someone from WF can look at to see why this might be happening?

So sorry - I’m it here and I’m new to Tempest and UDP, so, feeling my way in the dark here. There are lots of other folks on the forum much more advanced that might be able to help.

Yep, that’s why I semi-ping’ed the Weatherflow folks ("…someone from WF can look at…"). No worries.