Lightning Detector Software

This directory contains a collection of software to run and detect possible lightning with the Boltek EFM-100 atmospheric electric field monitor. This software provides a alternative to the Windows-only "EFM-100 Atmospheric Electric Field Monitor V1.18 Software".

This software depends on the following Python modules:

• pySerial
• pytz
• wxPython

Contents

emf.c C source code for opening up a serial port (/dev/ttyS0), reading in the electric field data, and averaging it over one second intervals. The code also computes the change in the electric field from one second to the next.

spinningCan.py Python script for interfacing with a Boltek EFM-100 via serial port and serving up the data via multi-cast UDP.

spinningCanCLI.py Python script to print out the packets coming from spinningCan.py on the command line if no GUI is wanted or possible.

spinningCanGUI.py Python script based on pySerial wxTerminal.py example that reads in from a a multi-cast UDP address (224.168.2.9, port 7164) and prints out field and warning notices.

spinningCanGUI2.py Like spinningCanGUI.py, but has seperate plot windows for the electric field and its derivative.

spinningCanBroadcast.py Python script for taking the multi-cast UDP data from spinningCan.py and sending it out to external subscribers over TCP.

spinningCanTest.py Python script to serve up fake lightning data so that the various interfaces can be tested without actually hooking up a Boltek EFM-100.

spinningCanReplay.py Python script to replay a spinningCan.py recording of the raw electric field values over multi-cast UDP.

analyzeRecoding.py Script that takes in a recoding generated by spinningCan.py and does lightning detection on the recorded values. Useful for testing new detection methods.