[SOLVED] Boltek Lightning Detector question

[JonNOklahoma]

I hope it will be okay for me to post this question here, since I'm not looking to buy or sell anything at this time.

I am considering purchasing a Boltek Lightning Detector for its real-time lightning display. However, with the considerable expense involved ($499 for a desktop computer and $799 for a laptop) I am extremely hesitant to do so without more information on how well people who have used the product feel it works for them. Of course, all of the endorsements on Boltek's webpage are very enthusiastic. But I'm sure Boltek has skewed the sample set from which they have selected their endoresements.

If anyone has this product, I would be very interested in your feedback.

[Chris]

Greetings,

I have had the boltek detector for about 7 years now and I must admit I have never had any problems with it as far it working or causing errors. I have run it on Win95 up to Win2000, the only problem I had with win98 was a memory leak.

In my opinion the best software to use with this detector is "Lightning2000" made by Aninoquisi ( http://www.aninoquisi.com/ )

You can view my webpage at:
http://llion.org/weather/page4.htm

As far as this product it's ok as a reference only. The things to remember are it’s a 1 sensor unit and with that you don’t get a true triangulation of range in distance to storms. It will give the proper compass bearing when it displays storms but distance can be misleading especially when there are very strong storms and also it will become blind showing storms behind other storms when they are training.

The software from Aninoquisi does give many options to correct range and bearing and to also isolate individual storms or squall lines so there are many useful tools to help adjust things but still it will hardly ever be correct if you overlay a radar image but it will be close many times.

All in all I would rate the detector and software about 8 out of 10 for visual representation and 5 out of 10 for locality of storms.

If you would like more info on this product or if you have any specific questions please feel free to contact me at chris@ozarkweather.net

[JonNOklahoma]

Thanks much for the info, Chris.

[StormAlertAdmin]

Yep, I also have one. Software is just fine and doesn't cause problems, but the instrument itself leaves a LOT to be desired in terms of accuracy, especially for the money. Since lightning and electromagnetic wave energy are 3-dimensional features, a single site sensor will never work correctly.

Of course as long as the NLDN remains such a tight monopoly, there's not much else you and I can do but rely on the errors drawn by a relatively expensive single-site sensor.

Evan

[RobertBuell]

Well, as at least Evan knows, I have some...ahhhh...shall we say "spirited"...opinions about this little gizmo and the various software options available for it.

Thanks for being willing to take my system off my hands, Evan. To everybody else, save yourself a few hundred bucks, buy StormLab, and you can relax in the knowledge you're getting accurate information.

--RB

(What advantage is there to operating your own "live" system when you know the data produced is incorrect?)

[StormAlertAdmin]

Now if only we could get NLDN data into StormLab....

And so I dream.

Evan

[JonNOklahoma]

You're not the ONLY one dreaming that dream, Evan! Based on the inputs here, I think I'll just save my $700. I could buy a lot of StormLabs and InterWARNs for friends and family for the same money. Or, it would make a great downpayment on a really good desktop computer with a couple of monitors so I could have several StormLab screens open at the same time, spread out over more than one monitor!

Let's get together to buy out NLDN and offer it to the public at a reasonable cost! :D

[StormAlertAdmin]

I'll chip in $10 if you have the other 100 million. :)

Evan

[Lorick]

What a lot of people do not realize is Boltek is working on a "network" version that will link different sites and use the data gathered from the sites for better accuracy. I do not think it is fair to say this instrument "leaves a LOT to be desired". I for one believe it does a great job at what it was created to do. With the new software packages being improved every day (NexStorm, Lightning 2000) they are making this product well worth the investment. The software and hardware creators for this product are VERY open to comments and others opinions which is more than I can say for "OTHER" software creators.

[StormAlertAdmin]

Lorick,

The problem here is that you do not have real-time NLDN data to compare the Boltek to, while I do with archived NWS data to compare my imagery to. My "leaves a lot to be desired" statement is factual, and the errors in comparing the single site sensor to a "true" data set are gross. This is not a knock on Boltek or any other single site sensor... as it's been stated in other threads this is simply a physics problem where you cannot accurately depict a 3D field with a single site sensor. Having spent 2 years on a single site lightning detector at Pennsylvania State University, I am also quite qualified to make that statement. It also has nothing with the software displaying the data of which there are I think 3 programs total for the Boltek (but this again isn't a Boltek specific issue, simply the name that was brought up by the original poster). You can only do so much averaging, but the point is that lightning discharges have such a wide spectrum of discharge energy, voltage, what have you, that it is simply impossible to detect the distance from a single source. The scatter gets exponentially worse as the storms get closer to the sensor (which is ideally where you want it to be MOST accurate), and the scatter gets worse the fewer strikes there are, because the distance is assimilated from both power of the stroke return and averaging with other recent strikes in that area.

The discussion is based purely on a standalone sensor and not "what's coming", irregardless of the make, model, manufacturer, etc... I wouldn't buy a product based on something in proposal.

Lastly, I take the "OTHER" software creators statement as a personal attack, otherwise you would have qualified it. I find this most interesting since over 70% of the features in InterWARN and 50% of the features in StormLab came not from us, but from your requests (via email or this forum). I would be more than happy to provide you with a list, and those who were the brains behind the idea. It's quite extensive and the user suggestions going into the currently developed versions of both InterWARN and StormLab skew these numbers even more toward making the software YOUR weather software.

Evan

[Tom Van Kuiken]

As the other poster noted Robert Boll is in the process of creating a triangulation network. I am actually one of the beta testors. Briefly we have a antenna connected to a GPS and data is being sent to a central location every few minutes over a DSL or cable connection. I really can't say much more about this system, but if it all works out, we will have a very affordable lightning detection network.

[StormAlertAdmin]

Triangulation of data is only as good as the individual sensors used in the calculation. Has this Robert Boll figured out how he's going to make sure that all the instruments in the network are pointed and calibrated properly? If one sensor is even 10 degrees off of true north (say 2 people use true north and person 3 uses magnetic north), significant errors will result.

I'm all for such an endeavor, however the people testing this project much site test/calibrate each individual location.

Evan

[Tom Van Kuiken]

The equipment we are using is somewhat different than the regular Boltek setup. There are 2 antennas, one is the Boltek sferics detector and the other is a GPS antenna. The computer card is also very different. When connected to the internet your site shows up on a private display map very accurately. I think we can all hope this project works out, and a secondary network for low cost lightning data is available.