I am new to the project having just completed assembling the Blue system. I'm currently using ferrite antennas and still looking for optimal placement of it. I have found that it works well in my attic and would like to leave it there for now. I have built a PVC pipe enclosure for the ferrite antennas and pre-amp. Pre-amp is, of course, connected to the blue controller in my home office via Cat6 cable.
My concern is the attic heat build up in the summer and the well being of the pre-amp in such heat. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of the long term ability of the pre-amp to function properly and survive in a hot attic? I'm going to guess the attic will get to 120-140 F in mid summer.
I have just got my system blue (PCB 19.3b) powered up (I'm using a genuine Samsung phone charger capable of about 2 amp output) and I can't seem to access the web interface...
The lights come on as expected and I am using 'Advanced IP Scanner' to find the IP address, which it does all ok, but when I put that IP address into Internet Explorer, the website never appears.
Any ideas?
[edit]
Hmm, it seems my phone can bring the webpage up, but my computer cannot. Both in Firefox or Internet Explorer. I'll have to dig deeper into my computer...
[edit 2]
Reinstalled Windows (it was about time anyway) and it's now all working perfectly.
Not to work on lowering my noise floor...
Hi,I get this Google Maps error message : "This page didn't load Google Maps correctly. See the JavaScript console for technical details." On a Google Chrome Console I get this error message: "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'getNorthEast' of undefined" or "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'getBounded' of undefined". I've try with Google Key API credentials after 5 minutes,but not working! How to fix it?
Update: On Google Chrome not working,but on Firefox working!
Hi.
I absolutely love your site and what you are doing. It provides useful statistics and information to whoever needs them.
I have one question. Is it at all possible to know the elevation of the lightning impacts? I can use the satellite map to infer whether the impact has hit ~ sea level or a hill but I have no way of estimating the height of the impact point. Is there a way you could calculate this or even estimate (with reasonable accuracy) from the topography of the map?
EDIT: Nevermind, I just found out that if you zoom in enough and switch to ''map'' and enable terrain, you see contour lines.
The antenna is about 2m above the floor near the west wall of a room in my house. Basically it's laying on a chest of drawers. Is that going to cause reception issues? This, of course, is temporary.
I mentioned that I had one screwup in a previous post. I unchecked DHCP and didn't pay attention to (or set) the IP address that Blue defaults to. It's easy to recover from such a mistake
Using Wire Shark I was able to recover the IP and set it to something my network would like in less than 5 minutes. This is how I did it-
Assuming Wire Shark is already installed
(1) Connect the computer LAN port directly to the LAN port on the Blue with a Cat 5 cable. Do not use a switch. Connect port to port so that there is no other network traffic.
(2) Start Wire Shark. Make sure you tell it to use the LAN port
(3) BTW- You'll need to know what your laptop IP address is. If you don't know how to find that then this process probably isn't going to work.
(4) Watch the packets scrolling thru and look for an IP address that isn't your laptops IP address. Write that down.
(5) As an example, if your laptop is 192.168.17.100 and you see 192.168.1.233 then your Blue is on the .233 address. Write it down. To connect to Blue you have to change your laptop to something in the same subnet. So...
(6) Shut Wire Shark down (and give it a hug for being so good). Change your laptop IP to 192.168.1. something other than 233. .200 would be fine.
(7) Open a browser, put 192.168.1.233 in the address and rejoice when the Blue config screen pops up
I finished my System Blue this evening. We had a big storm roll through TX last night and this morning. It's now in Louisiana and even though my H-field amp and antenna were literally only a meter above my workbench and connected to about 15 meters of 75 ohm coax I was able to receive some strikes. I took the system offline since it's not ready for prime time but I'm very happy with it so far.
Quick review:
Build quality: Outstanding
Ease of building: Very Easy (if you are experienced with soldering)
Interface: Very nice. Updating the firmware, looking through the settings and values, etc... all easy
Overall fit, finish, etc of the case: Very nice. Everything went together perfectly.
Mistakes made
Only one dumb one that was easy to recover from. I unchecked DHCP but DID NOT write down the IP address. When I unchecked DHCP the address went to a default value and I didn't know how to reconnect. I'll make another post about how to recover your IP address using Wire Shark
I know the switch has to be connected to jumper 5 and 6 but I also see two thru-hole connections, labeled power, that appear to connect to pins 5 and 6. Is that an optional location to connect the switch?
I've just started building my system Blue and I see there are 8 locations for SMA connectors. I was wondering what type (right angle or straight) other users are installing? I have the (very nice) enclosure. Is it normal to route cables outside if the enclosure to rear mounted SMA connectors or are the SMA connection points just for testing?
I have a new BLUE system which I built last weekend. It works great some of the time. I can detect strokes that are over 1500-2000km away easily, and have a good stroke ratio when it works.
However, I have a noise problem (on H-field antennas, mostly E-W loop) that starts in the evening and runs through most of the night into the day. It puts my unit into interference mode. Even if I turn down the gain it does not help because the spikes are so large. It's like someone turned on a switch or piece of equipment that starts the problem. I think the noise might be close by because I can see it on the E-field antenna too, but I could be wrong about that.
I'm looking for help in finding some posts here in the forum, or at other websites, on recommendations to start tracking down the location of this noise, and decide what nexts actions I should take.
Please see the attached images form the signal page, and other setup data. I can provide other information too if that will help.
I don't mind doing the work and learning new things, I just need a little help getting going. The information to help me might already be out there, but I'm not sure where to look.
