Efficiency

[kriu]

Station: 2 stokes with 2 signals sent:
Efficiency = 2/2=100%
Effectivity = 2 / (2-2) 0=???%

[readbueno]

Hi All, Help, advice and education must be the Key here. I certainly don't want to see stations arbitrarily ignored if their station is not up to scratch.
Getting in touch with these people and letting them know that there is a problem with their station and that advice is available to help them resolve it if they can't work it out for themselves.
This is a hobby and most people will take good care to make sure that their station is doing the best that it can.
We all know, that sometimes real-life means that hobbies do not always get the attention we would like to give them!
Maybe better advertising of the Buddy system and people pairing up to keep the enthusiasm going would help?
Unfortunately not many of these stations post in the forums asking for this help, therefore they will have to be sought by other means initially.
Regards,

Brian.

[readbueno]

Station: 2 stokes with 2 signals sent:
Efficiency = 2/2=100%
Effectivity = 2 / (2-2) 0=???%


This is why we need a better Algorithm? Make some useful suggestions!

[cutty]

Well. My overall belief is 'one stroke' located accurately with 1001 signals is better than zero strokes "detected" per 1000 signals sent...  in order to have detected that 'one stroke' the station sent 1001 signals... but became the final 'locator' required to register a stroke...while the other 'locators' only sent 500 signals ---while its 'efficiency' / 'effectivity was nil, especially if compared to the other locators,  the benefit to the network was 'effective'... it enable the network to achieve the network goal, with a whole lot of effort on the stations part, and that critical station show's lousy efficiency / effectivity 'uniquely' . Conversely,  network 'effectivity' / 'efficiency' is not necessarily related to a stations capability or performance as a unique station.
Also consider that some percentage of virtually any stations' signals ARE skywave reflected strokes, but timing and distortion of signals, and lack of reception by enough other stations, does not result in it being 'recognized' and is scores as a signal, but not a stroke... thus lowering any efficiency / effectivity.

If I choose to operate at a short range only, I can be highly effective, and efficient, as far as my "Goal".. see my above post... my goal being most efficient and effective at <500km for example.  But related to 'network' I will almost always not contribute as many strikes... especially if compared to 'network' totals.  If considered 'uniquely', in other words, 'how am I doing for my environment, established goal, etc'... my 'long term', seasonally, situationally, geographically, has a better chance of contributing better 'quality' data to the network, rather than a high 'quantity'.

I send a LOT more useless signals than I'd prefer.... it's an environment issue. I can back those down by decreasing range, except when a couple of near disturbers flare up that are very strong, and the burst repetition timing does not trigger 'burst mode' interference... I'd prefer to go interference, not send signals, as the design intent... these disturbers don't make critera for interference modes . Therefore my network contributions on either system are nothing  like their potential. But, having establishing both 'normal' and 'situational' operating goals, I consider my two stations quire effective and efficient, all things considered. Its NOT the equipment... its the situation and my established paradigms. 

For me to compare my stations with stations in a super quiet environment, such as Brian and Mike encounter, is absurd. I can 'never' match them, except in rare situations.  Now Three years ago, before the environment degraded, I'd go 'head to head' with anyone... 

And I believe that stations that attempt to 'match' other stations 'performance', be 'on top' of the 'effectivity' tables may well be chasing a dream, which is fine... after some time, I think a lot of us come to realize that this is a "Team" effort, and we put our stations in a position of performing as well as possible, with maximum 'unique' efficiency...

BRIAN, the 'communication' between server and controller is NOT a 'triggered signal'.
PASENSE, I totally agree with you.

[cutty]

Station: 2 stokes with 2 signals sent:
Efficiency = 2/2=100%
Effectivity = 2 / (2-2) 0=???%


This is why we need a better Algorithm? Make some useful suggestions!

Effectivity would be infinity.  In our case we establish an upper limit of 100

[readbueno]

Dear Cutty, Of course you are correct, there is a happy medium.
My station Square lights up with only two or three others and sometimes there are not enough stations to register a stroke, maybe it is not the right sort of lightning. Who Knows?
Certainly for very near storms or heavy interference it is best for any station to stop sending to the server, that is the benefit of the network, most of those strokes are still going to be recorded by other stations, a thousand to one ratio seems reasonable under certain conditions, 100,000:1 is maybe less acceptable?
Comparing apples and oranges is not easy and most of us are trying to do our best.
I think what Egon is trying to find is a reasonable middle way and if that means excluding stations outside of certain limitations, so be it.
What you and the older stations have learnt has lead to the better development of the stations, over the years, greens to reds to blues to xyzs.
There will always be improvements and compromises possible, but we can't just sit on our laurels (or whatever!) and say that's it we are finished.
There is some way to go yet?

Brian.

[mwaters]

Hi All, We need to define what we each mean by "efficiency" and agree on a common definition?

In the case of:-

https://www.meteomelin.be/staticfiles/bl...egion=1&id=

Nice graph. I would add some reference lines for a better interpretation:

Your graph with the diagonal lines is GREAT !! I am always holding a straightedge up to my monitor. In some cases I have saved screenshots and added the diagonal lines with GIMP (a free OSS Photoshop clone). They should be added to that webpage.

[mwaters]

Hi All, Help, advice and education must be the Key here. I certainly don't want to see stations arbitrarily ignored if their station is not up to scratch.
Getting in touch with these people and letting them know that there is a problem with their station and that advice is available to help them resolve it if they can't work it out for themselves.
This is a hobby and most people will take good care to make sure that their station is doing the best that it can.
We all know, that sometimes real-life means that hobbies do not always get the attention we would like to give them!
Maybe better advertising of the Buddy system and people pairing up to keep the enthusiasm going would help?
Unfortunately not many of these stations post in the forums asking for this help, therefore they will have to be sought by other means initially.
Regards,

Brian.

Indeed! Some stations need to be contacted and help offered to them.

[readbueno]

Cutty, You should not be so modest.  Your instructions have been of great assistance to me whilst setting up my station.
Yes, I have taken the time to read most of the forums and I do monitor other stations for comparison with what I am seeing on the screen of my own station.
I am still improving, slowly.
Both your Red and your Blue stations seem to be always fairly near what most would consider about the optimum on the graphs!
I.e. You have taken the time and made the effort to find your station's Sweet spot.
The out-lyers on the graph, appear to be the problem and there are not many that could be accused of too little gain or too high a threshold, most of the stations that we are referring to, would err on the side of "high gains, low thresholds" or have a serious source of interference local to their station.
Auto, or semi-auto does not work at present, if your station is not reasonably well set up to start with?
This accounts, overall, to quite a small percentage of stations, but some of these stations send more signals per hour, than the rest of the Network combined.
I am not "trying to teach my Grand-Mother how to suck eggs!" but Egon did ask our for our opinions and suggestions, and it seems only polite, to respond with our views of how things are from a personal perspective. I am sure if I was in the "centre" of the network, I might be trying to defend a different view!
Discussion in the forums is very stimulating, but how many operators actually read the forums and take note of the suggestions made there in.
Some of the less well managed stations appear to be in "Institutions," where perhaps, they are not the responsibility of an individual.
"What is the work for all, becomes the work of no one?"
You only have to look at the stats to see glaring examples of this!
May be this is a different issue, but it appears to be at least part of the same problem, and needs to be addressed?

Brian.

[micha.d]

ok, I will try to sum up some things i heard:

---

There are different criteria for optimization for different locations. So if we want a station to be optimized for certain criteria, then we need a separate value for that. This location specific value should be high when the station is optimized for it's position in the network.
That means for stations at the border of the network:

1. They should send many signals, even if only a few more strikes are detected.This helps to get the valuable new strikes. So (detected strikes) / (detected signals) should be low. Sounds strange, but that might be helpful.
   
2. In this area we do not know how many strikes are there actually and thus calculating the ratio of (detected strikes) / (actual strikes) makes no sense. It will be always close to 100%.
   
3. Stations at the border might be those, where let's say, there are not more than the magic 11 stations within 3000km.
   

... and for stations in the center of the network:

1. They should send NOT too many signals. So (detected strikes) / (detected signals) should be closer to 1. Here the graph proposed a lot of times is looking very promising. If a station is too far away regarding this, then we can assume it will not help the network at all.
   
2. As we know nearly every actual strike, here (detected strikes) / (actual strikes) makes a lot of sense. (actual strikes) should of course only be the strikes within the expected area, not all worldwide.
   
3. Stations like this have let's say more than 11 other stations within 500km.
   

This value, as we can see above, has completely contradictory optimization strategies. It is therefore usable to measure the contribution to the network, but not for the local optimizations. And the owner of each station should be aware of what to optimize for.

---

For the local optimization the criteria are different. We all cannot change the position of our detector, but what we want to achive is a good signal to noise ratio. So we need some help to find the right amplification, threshold, filter frequency or quality of the power supply. For that we should get help e.g. like this:

1. When there are repeated signals normally we have noise, even if the numbers are below the interference. That means that (sporadic signals) / (all signals) would be a good ratio. So we need to measure the sporadic signals. The first attempt that is already built into a receiver is the interference detection, but I think we can get better data there. We can measure the time difference delta_t between the signals and see if delta_t is constant several times. Also (2 x delta_t) should be detected as repeated. All those with a completely different delta_t should be sporadic. I know this requires a bit more calculation effort, but if we find a proper algorithm, then this would be a very valuable input for the auto mode.
   
2. Wheneven a signal has a lot of amplitude BEFORE the trigger point, it is very likely to be noise as well. Looking at the "bad" stations (I'm allowed to say bad because mine is one of them sometimes), I see a lot of signals like that SOMETIMES. So (bad signals with noise before trigger) / (all signals) should be low. It would be a good input for the auto mode as well.
   
3. We could measure the V_in several times in the background. If it changes with high slopes, then something could be wrong with the power supply. That was the case for me.
   
4. ONLY if a station has a lot of noise all day, then a manual change makes sense. So we should not punish someone if we don't know it's a permanent problem.
   
5. And we should mark the TEST SYSTEMs in all the graphs. When looking at some of the "real bad ones", I also found a couple of test systems, which makes sense but is not obvious in the graphs. And stations that are not maintained actively anymore (let's say the user did not change anything or login within the last 1 year) could also be excluded (not marked because we don't want to blame someone), at least if they are not performing at all.
   

All in all, most of the points are too much changing over time and depending on CURRENT noise, so it makes more sense to improve the auto mode (or manual mode with partly auto) to solve them. It also makes no sense to put everything into ONE number. Giving the numbers I proposed above could help to get an overview but is not the solution. And I guess that users, that are not ABLE to optimize their station right now, will only slightly improve. When I had the problem with the power supply, I nearly gave up. It does not help to give them bad numbers, only contructive advices help. So go for a better auto mode to solve the problems with the settings and go for real advices, e.g. also by mail, for proposed hardware changes (shielding, relocation, power supply, ...).