Lightning Detector

Long distance lightning detection for home, office, car, truck, or boat

LD-250 plots lightning strikes up to 300 miles (480km) away and displays them on your desktop or laptop computer.

FEATURES

• The LD-250 connects to your computer's USB or RS232 (COM) port making it suitable for use with both laptop and desktop computers. The LD-250 will even detect lightning when your computer is turned off. When the LD-250 starts beeping or the Strike light starts flashing you can turn on your computer to see where the storms are located.
   
• LD-250 Lightning Detector has two built-in alarms: a Close Storm Alarm and a Severe Storm Alarm. The Close Storm Alarm will activate if a thunderstorm is detected closer than a preset distance. The Severe Storm Alarm activates if the number of lightning strikes per minute exceeds a preset limit.
   
• The LD-250 will sound an alarm tone when either alarm activates. Front panel pushbuttons allow both the Strike tone and Alarm tones to be disabled.
   
• The computer can also be configured to sound an alarm tone and/or pop up a notification window when an alarm activates. Alarm status is indicated by the color of the Close Storm distance circle and Severe Storm status indicator in the top left corner of the map window.
   
• Connect your GPS or marine compass to your LD-250 and track lightning from your car, truck or boat.
   
• Turn on the LD-250's heading indicator when running mobile. The blue triangle in the center of the screen rotates as your vehicle turns to show the LD-250 is using your GPS or marine compass to correct for changes in your vehicle's direction.
   
• The antenna may be mounted indoors (in a wood framed house for example) or outdoors.  For mobile installations it is mounted outside on the roof of the vehicle.
   
• Lightning Detector includes software for Windows. Third-party software is available for displaying LD-250 Lightning Detector lightning images on the Internet or an internal Intra-Net.

The LD-250 uses a small active antenna to receive the radio signals from lightning strikes. These signals are the crackling you hear on an AM radio during a thunderstorm. The direction-finding antenna is able to tell which direction the signal is coming from. The software measures the strength of the received signals to estimate distance.  Special signal processing in software reduces the effects of strike-to-strike energy variations providing more accurate distance information.