StormSafe

A personal storm warning device with realtime lightning detection, and GPS-based weather alerts to keep you safe as you walk, hike, or bike!

Work in progress2,294

Things used in this project

Hardware components

AS3935 Lightning Sensor Breakout

Used for registering lightning and providing distance. We used the PlayingWithVersion breakout but there are others out there. Be sure to get the calibration numbers from the vendor for your unit.

3D printed enclosure

Ours was designed in collaboration by Eric and Molly to look like a Flux Capacitor, but anything that holds all the circuitry will work.

5mm RGB Common Cathode LED

Common anode would work too. Used for indicating the weather threat risk to user.

5mm RGB Color cycling LED

Simple 2-lead LED that slowly color cycles when 5V is applied. Used as center of the Flux capacitor.

Arduino Pro Mini (clone)

Used a tiny Arduino to do the Flux capacitor animation, freeing the Edison to handle the interrupts from the lightning sensor without messing up any timing.

74HC595 Shift Register

Used to sequence the Flux capacitor animation

5mm white LEDs

Used for the animation of the Flux capacitor

Hookup wire

Most of our wiring was standard 24 AWG solid hookup wire

9v to Barrel Jack Adapter - 126mm (power plug)

Ours was from the Seeed Grove Starter Kit we had available to us, but it's a common part and any would do.

9V battery (generic)

typical alkaline 9v cell

small breadboard/perfboard

Used to solder the LEDs and shift register in place

Momentary breadboard push switch

Used to reset the circuit (for demo purposes) after it has sensed lightning and triggered

Story

An estimated 6000 to 24000 people are killed annually due to lightning strikes. In the US, the most fatalities occur while fishing, camping, and boating. What if you were personally warned when lightning was a risk nearby, without having to continuously monitor the radio or NOAA?

This project plans to pair a realtime lightning detector, which has a sensing range of 40km, with a mobile device for getting an accurate lat/long position. It queries a WeatherUnderground API to get local details and screens the results for thunderstorm alerts. Any of these will trigger a color-coded LED to warn the user to seek lower ground and shelter.

The lightning sensor we are using is the AS3935, on a breakout board from PlayingWithFusion. I've verified its functionality with an Arduino UNO.

Prototyping Lightning sensor

We're still determining the ideal combination of portability and capability for the microcontroller that will play the centerpiece of this. Considerations include the Metawear, Spark Core, and FRDM-K64F. GPS coordinates will either be done through a connected Android or iPhone, or a GPS shield if one is available. Weather API would be done over that phone if no direct (SIM/Cellular) access is an option.

We attempted to use AT&T M2X, unfortunately we kept running into external Wifi issues with our location and it wasn't integrated for the presentation.

MetaWear case for wearable design

In the picture below, you can see the progress we made over the two days with the circuit. From left to right:

Intel Edison with Arduino breakout board, nested in bottom half of 3D printed case

- on breakout is a small vibrating buzzer for haptic feedback (small black disk visible just below and to the right of the Edison)

Small protoboard holding:

- transistor for supplying extra current to the animated Flux circuit

- small push button for resetting the circuit after it's tripped by lightning or an arc. Had we gotten as far as completing the mobile app, the app would have done the reset.

- AS3935 breakout board as seen above.

Top half of 3D printed case holding:

- RGB LED that is green indicating "all clear" and waiting for lighting input. Toggles to red when lightning is triggered.

- 6x White LEDs and 1 color cycling RGB LED that spruce up the look of the Flux Capacitor

-74HC595 shift register to perform the LED motion.

- (not seen) - A small Arduino Pro mini that was used to offload the animation of the Flux circuit so that Edison could focus on servicing the interrupts from the lightning breakout and communicating with the app.. It is affixed to underside of top case.

2x 9V batteries. Ideally this should be just one, but we found that it had trouble powering the Edison, 2 breakout boards, Arduino, and 8 LEDs, so as an interim solution we powered the two parts of the circuit separately.

StormSafe lightning detector as demonstrated to judges at Hardware Weekend Portland