⚡Raspberry Pi Lightning Detector⚡

If you’d like to know the weather generally, you could check in on the web or a phone app. But if you prefer to know how much lightning is going around in your local area, then this tweeting lightning detector by hacker Hexalyse’s looks like an interesting solution.

For his project, a Raspberry Pi uses the AS3935 Franklin Lightning Sensor to detect strikes up to 40km (25 miles) away. It can sense both strength of these strikes, and provide an estimate of how far away the storm is.

This particular detection station is linked to the @toulouse_orages Twitter account, and with the help of a Python script, sends out real-time info on strikes in Toulouse, France. As setup is simple with the board’s I2C interface, perhaps we’ll see more of these social media lightning detectors pop up around the world!