I guess the people at weatherflow are very busy, but here is my current wish list for improvements (most mentioned before).
suppression of false lightning (many users are in environments with occasionally a false lighting strike and they cannot do anything about it. Easily suppressed by detecting that it isn’t followed by another strike within 10 minutes or so. Could be an option, to allow users in better environments to have slightly earlier detection)
graphs with many more points. currently it shows only 32 data points, which is a waste of screen space as we can easily have 4 times or even 10 times as many points. 32 data points is fine for the highest zoom level, but when zooming out, more data could be displayed (as an extra you could add a smooth curve that follows the data, but doesn’t necessarily go exactly through the data points)
allow more graphs seen at the same time, so it is easy to compare for example temperature with pressure or rain. The don’t have to be in the same graphing area, one could simply add an extra panel with a new graph below the current one.
show real rain rate. preferably as a line graph, not bar chart. This will work fine and even better when more data is shown as suggested in item #2
a tiny mark in the graph when calibration is changed
show data in 24h format in web viewer instead of am/pm (times like 12.30 am are very confusing) (should be a user preference)
store the high res data a bit longer (we could pay for that if it costs you a lot)
allow zooming in at any point in the graph. support two finger zoom on mobile.
have the user select the units on https://smartweather.weatherflow.com/map so all stations have the same data to compare (for example every station’s wind speed in m/s) Currently it is the owner who determines what i see, so one station use bft, the other km/h and another m/s.
(( send someone some ice cream as I expect the usual remarks))
That said, if you wanted the ability of the user to be able to self-tune how ‘sensitive’ the lightning strike detector was, that would seem to be a good idea to me. But we don’t have any ability to tune anything currently, we light the Hub up and it reports what it reports. Probably a non-trivial thing to do. But possible…
Items 2-9 are wanting something from their mobile app or web page. I don’t use either so no thoughts either day. Everybody’s a gui expert. Ok, not me. I’m ‘really’ not a gui expert.
nah. Report what is real! (just as you don’t want to see bird landings as false rain. weatherflow has some algorithm to try to suppress that; doesn’t always work though). And if a second strike is detected within 10 minutes, my suggestion is to report the first one as well, so all real strikes are reported. (only the first one with a tiny delay, but still with the correct timestamp). Note that I also wrote that this could be an option. You might just turn it off
I would like to have a sensitive sensor. It feels great to be able to detect a thunderstorm approaching from 30 km away. Adjusting sensitivity might not even be the right thing for many false strikes as the false strikes can be pretty strong. Mine are labeled between 10 to 35 km away. Reducing sensitivity to see only strikes closer than 10 km would make it less fun.
That would not work at all for Florida and I would suspect for much of the deep south. One reason for the lightning report/warning is to give people a heads up that lightning is in the area. Any delay in reporting any strike is completely unacceptable! It is common for small thunderstorm cells that are only a few miles across pop up within minutes. Having a delay of 10 minutes could cause a dangerous situation for people that are outside and are close to these storms.
You say it could be an option but that option is possibility putting people in danger of death for the convenience of the few that have a false lightning issue. You may think I’m over stating the danger. Last year two people died in my city from unexpected lightning strikes. One, a lady that was 7 months pregnant, was walking from her car to her house under a mostly sunny sky. The unborn also didn’t make it.
I’d like to stress again this feature is just an early warning for a possible thunderstorm. It wasn’t meant/build to be a detector.
You need several detectors in network to localise a strike. The little detector in the Air does a fairly good job. If you really love thunderstorms and lightnings, or really want something accurate you’ll have to use other gear developed for that and in network or go for very expensive stuff. And false detections are a thing we’ll have to live with as we use so many electric, electronic gear. Ideal would be to set the air in a remote place with no disturbers near (means at least 10 km from anything…)
I’m not sure if I explained it clear enough.
First of all nobody likes false alerts. If you get them too often you just disable them. Going inside every other day because of a false strike is not something people are going to do. Only if you are lucky enough to have an environment for the sensor so it doesn’t produce false strikes (or has system that suppresses the false strikes) this might be a thing to do.
There is hardly any logic in warning people for a thunderstorm with only one strike. If the thunderstorm consist of only one strike, it is over after the strike and no warning is needed. So let’s assume a thunderstorm is heading towards you which will produce more then one strike. Most likely these strikes will have an interval way, way less then 10 minutes. As soon as the second strike hits, you will get your warning, it doesn’t wait 10 minutes to warn you. So it might be just a few seconds after the first hit. For an active cell that is what would happen. I rather have a system that doesn’t report false strikes and accept the few seconds delay.
Also we are talking about thunderstorms that are far enough away that you can’t hear them. As soon as you can hear them, no alarm is needed anyway. Those far away thunderstorms might be approaching quickly but a few seconds delay is fine.
This 10 minutes is to report those storms with very infrequent strikes. Having those a bit delayed is no problem.
If you disagree with all of the above or have a good place for the sensor, just disable the option.
Think it is time everyone goes reading the definition of thunderstorm and lightning.
The air can detect lightning activity occurring in a thunderstorm but not the storm as is.
As often people tend to mix both names as they are very often occurring at the same time, but not always. Let’s try to be careful in our name choice as it can be misleading (I know how easy I mix hub and air … )
seriously??? here is the answer… I never claimed that wheatherflow stated that it is a thunderstorm warning. Does that help you?? It is still true that there is hardly any logic in warning people for a thunderstorm with only one strike (read the rest of the post as well, please)
Having been on baseball fields with metal spikes on when they cleared the field ‘and’ the stands if there was ‘one’ strike visible in any direction, yes there is a great amount of logic in warning people with only one strike.
I think it’s also reasonable to assume that after one strike, there is no certainty there won’t be another a minute later. At what point does one assume that one strike is the only strike? Thirty seconds? Two minutes?
no there is no certainty that there wouldn’t be another strike. Most likely there will be other strikes, but that wasn’t the argument. Try to read it carefully. For thunderstorms with more than one strike, you will get a warning as soon as the second strike happens (which for many real storms is rather quickly) and for thunderstorms with only one strike, the warning is useless (as that single strike already happened). Just from casual observations I’ve put 10 minutes for a the limit to differentiate between real storms and a false strike.
And don’t forget to say it should be an option to toggle on or off
And since some say it can be useful, I’d say a toggle that is off by default (so it reacts from impact one) and if you really have to many false positives you toggle it on and only from strike 2 you get a warning if it is within a 10 minute lap, over that you reset the timer/detection.
In any case, there isn’t a good or bad answer to the situation if strike one should or shouldn’t trigger an alert. As usual, all depends the situation for each and everyone.
there might not be a good or bad answer, but the current situation is that many people are stuck with an environment where false strikes are unavoidable, and that makes the warnings pretty useless. With a small software trick, that bad situation can be turned into a good one, with very minimal impact on the usability and no impact at all for those who turn it off.
For sure the default should be off. There is no need to turn it on if you have no false strikes.
And if that 2nd strike happens to be in close proximity to you, then what? It might be too late. In the summer it’s not unusual to have thunderstorms forming right over you, so unlike storms moving in from a distance, there may be little to no warning.
Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to bring in the reality of meteorology. The fact is I hope nobody is using the Sky as a means of determining whether it’s safe or not to move the kids from the ballfields.
Except that is the very audience that the Franklin AS3935 chip (used in the Air and most if not all consumer lightning detectors) is being targeted to!
Back when I used to work as safety chief at motorsports events, the sanctioning body made us use a 30-30 rule. When the time between the flash and bang was less than 30 seconds, we had to suspend competition and pull all of the corner workers in to seek shelter. We could not resume competition until 30 minutes after the last lightning flash or thunder was heard. I always argued against the first 30 part, since the storm was waaaaaaay too close by then for workers potentially a half mile away at the far end of the circuit to walk back to the paddock and break down their canopies, tents, lawn furniture, etc before the storm arrived. I think that 30-30 was an insurance industry thing at the time, and there’s nothing except whining drivers preventing a safety official from stopping an event sooner if weather threatens…
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