Hi everyone,

I’ve been following Blitzortung for a while and really enjoy seeing how global lightning activity gets tracked by so many volunteers. I’m now seriously considering setting up my own station and contributing data to the network.

Before I order a kit, I’d like to ask a few quick questions:
For a beginner, is it better to go for the System Blue or wait for any future hardware updates?

I’ve seen some amazing station setups on this forum and would love to learn from everyone’s experience.

Thanks a lot in advance for your advice and insights!

Best regards,
WonderNomad

apparently ive noticed a bug in lightningmaps.org where it no longer displays data from the testing and Blitzortung sources, even while the sources are turned on in the menu. this must be a bug here and its really annoying that i cant see the thunder fronts on the other two sources. i dont know if this applies to this forum but im reporting it for the LightningMaps website which redirected me here.

The little white dot showing my station was used for a detector link doesn't show up on the map.


It always used to show up for my old RED but now doesn't for my BLUE BASIC.

Why is that?

I was on a VERY remote bike ride, when I got stuck in a lightning field for about an hour and had a bolt strike no more than 200m away from me - catching the thing on on video. 

For proof: 
My Coords:  29°55'38.9"N 83°04'23.6"W
Approx DateTime: 2025-06-27T00:16:00Z

Having gone through such a vulnerable moment, in the presence of over 100 lightning all within eyesight of me, I would like to create a short visualization of my time through the region to bring awareness to the gravity of the situation and share the story with more immersability.

I am also a frontend & GIS developer, and very avid contributor to open source projects, as seen through my Github charlieforward9. 

I would not have a problem setting up a system to contribute, but I am living on a month to month lease until I get married next year and would like to make that larger commitment to a community project when my living situation has stabilized.

If so kind to, would anyone mind sending me the raw dataset of lightning strikes between: 

(+/- 2 hrs or) 
2025-06-26T22:00:00Z 
2025-06-27T02:00:00Z 

and 

(+/- 1° or)
North: 30.5 
South: 29.5 
West: -84 
East: -82

For Video Proof, please email me, its not letting me send videos in here: charlesrichardsonusa@gmail.com

Thank you for making the image samples and the forum available for questions!

Hello .. im managing to build an app called AlertNet... an app base don algorithms and calculation including .. presidential alerts , Earthquake warnings( Early earthquake warnings in near Future... firefighting conditions and much more .. one of this system was lighting strike . when a lighting strike occurred near user then it will send an alert notification about warnings and instruction .. So please send me an email ntsoukopoulos@gmail.com for talk .. I'm will be so happy if i manage to make my lighting monitor on app working <3 
Loukopoulos Panagiotis (Athens, Greece) here an example of app with blitzortung simulated ..

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I've wound my loops, and found the wiring diagram for the preamp at https://docs.lightningmaps.org/hardware/...tors/mini/.

Is proper for me to simply hook up my two unshielded loops to H1+, H1-, and H2+,H2-, respectively, without any soldering on the preamp board?
A screw-connection header is already soldered to the board.

Other preamp instructions indicate that pairs of solder pads on the back of the board are to be bridged if an air-core loop antenna is used.
The solder pads appear to be present on the 23.1 preamp board, but no mention is made in the instructions about bridging them.


(I'm not posting from the account I registered when I got the URL from booting up Blue Mini on my home network: I'm pretty sure I know how I broke it and I can't fix it in the short term:  I am dellel, station 3147, if my bone fides are required to get an answer).

I spent the day getting set up: debugging the connection to the very economical Bingfu GPS active antenna, 
www.amazon.com/Bingfu-Waterproof-Navigation-Connector-Tracking/dp/B07R7RC96G
The baud rate turned out to be pretty important for the 1 Hz GPS signal: anything less than 460800 would fail to lock it, 
and a view of the overhead sky is best for it: a south window simply would not do.

thanks for reading

Complete System RED for sale.  Fully functional until 6/18/25 as station 1187.  Included are main RED board, E-field amp, H-field amp, 2 ferrite rod antennas, AC power supply, and GPS antenna.   The ferrite antennas and H-field amp in a nice clear plastic box.

Make me a reasonable offer.  That offer will include shipping to you including insurance.

The system is on ebay now.

Payment by PayPal only.            

Hi, ive already ordered and had boards for system red. But i'm new to radio engineering. I found a well understood partlist for system blue in docs.lightningmaps.org/hardware/lightning-detectors/hardware_reference/
Do someone have the same look partlist but for System Red?

When I try to access the download site for system red firmware (http://tracker.blitzortung.org/firmware) I get an 404 error (even after login). Could anyone please check?

Thanks.

Hi it appears that the format of https://data.blitzortung.org/Data/Protec...s1.json.gz changed recently.

Previously it contained in addition to other fields:
  - all
  - member
  - valid
  - used

Now it contains:
  - total
  - valid
  - involved
  - used

Is there documentation of this change somewhere?

Thanks,
Ken