This is a small tool for the acquisition of lightning strike data from an instrument, for my Nuffield Science Bursary project in collaboration with the Space Science Department at CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
The Project
The aim of the project was to set up a system to obtain data on lightning strikes in the vicinity of the Chilton ionosonde for research into how the composition of the ionosphere is affected by lightning strikes.
Data Acquisition
Lightning strike data was obtained via a Boltek® StormTraker PC-based lightning detector. The data was acquired from this instrument via the software package NexStorm and then my Lightning Data Ccquition Tool received this data to place it in a PostgreSQL database for analysis.
The program is a small C++ MFC application written in Microsoft® Visual C++ .NET 2003 that reads the data from a shared memory space belonging to NexStorm using the FlashGate IPC system. It then issues SQL commands to the database server to insert the data into a table.
Flowchart of Application (PDF, 26KB)
Schematic of Data Flow (PDF, 17KB)
These items are © Copyright 2004 D Wilkins and may not be reproduced without permission.