I am not sure if this is a bug, or if the feature has been removed (or I changed a setting??), but I was hoping you could shed some light for me the Lightning Graph.
Originally the graph would show a count of strikes in the different time periods, and you could zoom in to 30 minute periods like this;
But now it shows the stikes in a different way, which does not seem to include a way to historically see a count of how many strikes happened in a given time period.
Is this a bug, or has the feature been removed?
If it has been removed, is it possible to put it back in as an option?
To me, I think it is more interesting to see how many stikes there were in a 3 hour period, rather than them being broken into distances with no way of being able to tell how many there were altogether.
Good question! The lightning graph was recently updated to include both distance and count. Rather than grouping a count into a single bar (with no indication of distance), we are now plotting every single lightning strike. The estimated distance is represented by the height vertical position of the marker and the count is indicated by the density of the markers. See below.
Bringing the older “count by timeslot” graph back is not currently on our roadmap but if there is enough demand for it, we could put it there. I’m going to update the title of this thread from “Bug or Feature dropped - Lightning count not showing in graph” to “Bring back the lightning count-by-timeslot graph”
IMHO it would be nice to have both graphs available or separate out the two sets of data points. Us folks who have some degree of color blindness (about 10% of males) can affect how we see color gradients.
@dsj, thanks for the info and for changing the title.
So it looks like it is a bug that the count is not showing. I am with @hankster, I would like it if both were an option, but this would not be a top priority for me - personally, I would prefer SmartThings integration first
for me the lightning graph doesn’t work anymore after this update, when I click on the lightning graph the page frozen then I need to refresh the page, so now I’m nit able to access the lightning graph. hope they bring back the old one.
Am I correct to assume if I place my mouse over a section of the graph and right mouse click I can expand the time scale to see the strikes? I honestly had to take a second look when I saw your lightning chart example.
At first it just struck me odd ~ Now that I understand how the data is reflected it makes a little more sense. So if I am reading this chart right at about 3:50 AM there was one single strike at five KMS?
You can expand the time scale by tapping/clicking on the + (zoom in) but the new lightning graph does not show an explicit count - count is only shown indirectly via the number of markers. So, darker clumps mean more lightning strikes and lighter clumps mean fewer. But I agree this is probably too qualitative and we probably need to either (1) add a more direct strike count to the new graph or (2) bring back the old “count-by-timeslot” graph (which doesn’t show distance). Graphing lightning strikes and distance over time is tricky!
Here are a couple of ideas hand drawn on the graph above.
The left scale values might have to be scalable based on the peak number of strikes. On the line plot rather than a gap in the line it could just drop to zero. Some time window (bin size?) would need to be chosen like 15 or 30 minutes with the hour being the start of an interval.
Thanks @gizmoev. We have explored a combo graph with scatter plots. After some testing, things get wonky with the scaling when users have 100+ strikes. Most likely we will implement 2 graphs for lightning: 1) for distance and relative intensity, and 2) for strike count.
It’s important to know that our lightning detector is not a $1000+ super high power lightning sensor. It will not pick up every single strike, and distances are approximate. Instead, it is designed to sense incoming electrical storm activity and provide warning.
By popular demand, we will be bringing back the original “count by timeslot” graph in the next release of our apps. This is an additional way to view lightning data, not a replacement of the current time vs. distance graph.
my station is underway from hong kong, but why not make a stack bar chart where different colors represent the range (in this color palette, yellowish for nearby, and lightblue for far away)
I honestly had to take a second look when I saw your lightning chart example.
