Actually, Lightning Strikes Way More Than Twice

What are the tricks that you use to manage the constant chatter of notifications, emails, and other information that you want to keep an eye on throughout the day? Some people go with dual- or triple-monitor setups to keep everything open in a window somewhere within their field of vision. Others have elaborate notification schedules, only allowing certain types of notifications to show at certain times, to keep the most relevant information at their fingertips. Still others use small, standalone devices like WebScreen to monitor things of special interest without cluttering their desktop.

Guy Dupont recently came up with an interesting idea that may be of use in some cases. Rather than displaying data on a digital screen, Dupont came up with a physical device that makes it easy to visualize certain types of data at a glance. In this case, he wanted to know whenever a lightning strike occurred anywhere on Earth, in real-time. His idea was to build — very appropriately — a lightning bug that glows each time a lightning strike is detected.

To make this happen, Dupont leveraged data from a real-time lightning strike map. A custom WebSocket relay chops the data down to the bare essentials, then forwards it to a Raspberry Pi Pico W development board. The Pico then blinks an LED, via its GPIO pins, to indicate lightning strikes. Few details are available at this time, but the lightning bug-shaped case that this hardware fits into appears to be 3D-printed.

This sort of device is clearly not right for every job. Only a minimal amount of information can be conveyed, and there is no way to slice and dice the data if further analysis is called for. But when you just want to keep an eye on the occurrence of some event, and you don’t want to clutter up your desktop or add yet another notification, this unique method could be the perfect way to go.