BOLTEK - What's New at Boltek

The Institute of Power Engineering of Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Finland has developed the "TTYtutka" Lightning Detection Network based on Boltek lightning detectors. Custom software by Astrogenic combines the output of five LD-250 Lightning Detectors with four EFM-100 Electric Field Mills to produce a wide area lightning map. GPS data timestamps individial lightning strikes. Additional details can be found here. Contact Ilkka Lilja for more information.

Astrogenic Systems has developed the StrikeStar Lightning Detection Network based on Boltek lightning detectors. StrikeStar detectors are operated by Boltek owners around the United States and Canada. These detectors send their data to the StrikeStar central server where the software triangulates their data and presents the results in near real-time. Visit www.strikestarus.com for more information

Now you can connect user supplied equipment such as lights or sound devices to your LD-250 Lightning Detector. Three solid state relay outputs are provided, one for each of the Strike, Close and Severe Storm alarms. Click here for details

The Boltek EFM-100 Atmospheric Electric Field Monitor not only detects nearby lightning but can actually warn of the high electric field conditions that precede lightning. Click here for details.

Astrogenic has started shipping its much anticipated NexStorm software for the StormTracker Lightning Detector. NexStorm combines display, analysis, networking and interprocess communication functionality in a unique way. This cool software will allow you to display your StormTracker lightning data on the internet in near real time. NexStorm supports both PCI and ISA StormTracker cards. Click on the Astrogenic Logo for details.

LD-250 Firmware V1.1 Update for Garmin GPS V GPS
A firmware update (V1.1) is available for LD-250 owners who wish to use their LD-250 with the Garmin GPS V GPS. The GPS V uses a slightly different format than its predecessors sending heading data which can be misinterpreted by the LD-250 V1.0 firmware. V1.1 firmware corrects this problem. Email for more information.

StormTracker Device Driver Update for Windows 2000
An updated device driver is available for StormTracker users running Windows 2000. The previous StormTracker device driver had a problem with Windows 2000 Service Pack 3. To upgrade to the new driver: first erase the old driver file windrvr.sys in the \WINNT\system32\drivers directory. Download the new windrvr.sys to the Windows drivers directory (\WINNT\system32\drivers). Reboot to install the new driver.

StormTracker-PCI Revision R9B Hardware Update
A free hardware update is available for users with revision R9A PCI hardware who have experienced problems with their card. The problems relate to constant noise detection caused by some computer cooling fans and a separate problem which caused some strike locations to be incorrectly plotted along the north-south axis. Users with difficulty should email their name and address along with their receiver card serial number. A replacement card will be sent along with instructions for returning the old card. (The revision number is on a label near the top of the card. The serial number is on a small bar code label near the antenna connector on the left side of the card.)

Two new accessories for the LD-250: the LDGPS-1 GPS Receiver and the LDCMP-1 Fluxgate Compass. Both can provide heading correction information to the LD-250 when used in a mobile installation. Click here for more information on the LDGPS-1. Click here for more information on the LDCMP-1.

Worthing Weather (Worthing, England) has developed software for displaying EFM-100 data live on a web site. As well as displaying the current data with a live moving display Worthing's new EFM Online software logs the data on the server allowing archived data to be recalled through drop down date/time selection boxes. For more information contact Worthing through their web site www.worthing-weather.com. Once on their site click on Field Mon to see live field readings from Worthing and from Boltek's demo field mill near Buffalo, NY.

StormTracker and LD-250 are now shipping with Astrogenic's NexStorm Lite software. NexStorm Lite has the same easy-to-use user interface as Astrogenic's popular NexStorm software but does not include some of the more advanced features such data sharing, Internet connectivity features, nor any of the bonus software which are included with NexStorm.

Upgrading from NexStorm Lite to NexStorm is simpler than ever since the background maps are compatible.

Detailed information on NexStorm Lite is available on Astrogenic's web site.

Updated software for the EFM-100 is now available on the Downloads Page. EFM-100 Display Software V1.06 adds a Mute Speaker icon to each field mill and corrects some inconsistencies in event logging.

Boltek's new LTS-2 GPS Timestamp Option Kit allows software developers and researchers to timestamp each detected strike to within a few hundred nanoseconds. Combining the timestamped data from three or more StormTracker Lightning Detectors allows cloud-to-ground strike positions to be calculated to within thousands of feet. Detailed information is on the Developers page.

Lightning/2000 now has one more display option for your lightning data. View lightning strikes in Google's popular Google Earth virtual globe software. Click here for more information from Aninoquisi's web site.

Astrogenic has released a free lightning viewer Java applet for your Java capable cell phone.
Visit Astrogenic's SPARK web page for detailed infomation on this exciting new software.

Danny Knaggs is administering StormForce, a new open source data viewer for the Boltek LD-250 Lightning Detector. Written in Python this application can be run on most platforms, including Linux and FreeBSD. More information on downloading or contributing to StormForce can be found on sourceforge.com and code.google.com