Paul VK4PLY and Bob VK4YA met with BDARS member Professor Adrian Panow VK4BCF and other academics at the University of Queensland (UQ) yesterday to discuss the Lightning Detector Project in the context of possible student participation.
BDARS members may recall that the Lightning Detector Project is a BDARS maker project, consisting of a low-cost system of local detectors situated at members’ QTHs and at BDARS facilities such as Mt Cotton. The system provides lightning strike locations using a graphical display designed by Paul. One practical benefit is the pop-up warnings delivered via Discord messaging, alerting members to disconnect their antennas! David VK4ZF built many of the units currently in use, including some of the antennas.
With the project aiming to maintain low detector costs while achieving good strike location accuracy, there remains significant scope for further development and expansion. This includes opportunities to investigate and enhance system performance, with modern machine learning and artificial intelligence representing one particularly promising avenue for future work.
Under the guidance of Adrian, who’s the Director of the Energy Transition Research Network at UQ, the project is being considered at several levels. Initially, it is hoped that an undergraduate team will examine, categorise, and refine the existing stored lightning data, with a view to improving detection capability.
This also presents a valuable opportunity for BDARS to support the community by providing undergraduate learners with real-world exposure, through engagement with a practical technical challenge and by exploring the impacts of environmental factors that increasingly affect everyday life.
To further support the project, additional detectors may be built and deployed. Interested members are encouraged to get in touch.
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