Blitzortung lightning smart home integration, free and open source
Unofficial connector: lightning strikes near your home, distance, direction and storm alerts.
Published by LM1LC3N7
- Devices
- Version 0.1.1
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
Unofficial connector, not affiliated with Blitzortung.org. It brings the lightning strikes detected by the Blitzortung.org community network into Gladys: the strikes near your house, the distance and direction of the nearest one, scene triggers and a storm widget.
Not a safety system. The detection depends on volunteer detectors and on an internet feed that can stop at any time; strikes can be missed or placed a few kilometres off. Never rely on this integration to protect people or equipment: when thunder roars, go indoors.
The data: private, non-commercial use
The strikes are computed by Blitzortung.org from detectors that volunteers build, host and pay for. Their data is provided for private, non-commercial use only. This integration therefore:
- keeps one connection to the live feed (the one of the map), and opens it only while at least one lightning device exists in Gladys;
- never stores, resells or forwards the data: it only counts the strikes near your houses, in memory;
- credits Blitzortung.org on the widget.
Do not use it in a commercial product. If you like it, consider hosting a detector to improve the coverage near you.
What you get
| Surface | Content |
|---|---|
| One device per located house | strikes within the radius in the last minutes, distance (km) and bearing (degrees) of the nearest one, its direction (N, NE...), time of the last |
| Scene triggers | lightning within a distance (5 to 200 km, once per storm), storm over (quiet for the chosen time), storm approaching |
| Scene action | lightning status: count, nearest distance, direction, minutes since the last strike, storm in progress |
| Dashboard widget | Lightning: calm, or storm at X km in a direction, with the count, the nearest and the last strike |
Setup
Bandwidth: about 1 GB a day. Blitzortung.org sends the strikes of the whole world to every client: the feed cannot be narrowed to your region. As long as a lightning device exists, the integration downloads all of them (about 9 KB per second, more during the northern summer) and keeps only those near your house. On a metered link (4G box, data cap) or a small box, check that this suits you before adding the device; deleting the device closes the feed.
- Set the location of your house in Gladys (Settings → Houses) and accept the location access when installing the integration.
- Open Discovery and add the "Lightning near …" device of your house. The feed opens as soon as a device exists.
- Optional: change the radius (30 km by default, up to 200 km), the counting window (15 minutes) and the quiet period before "storm over" (30 minutes).
- Put the Lightning widget on a dashboard and pick the house.
The Test the feed button shows the server in use, the number of strikes per minute worldwide and the situation around each house.
The states
- Nearby strikes: the strikes within the radius during the window.
- Nearest strike (km): the closest one of the window. With no strike in the window it is the radius itself, so a condition "below 10 km" never holds a stale value.
- Bearing (degrees from north) and direction (N, NE, E... in French N, NE, E, SE, S, SO, O, NO): where the nearest strike was; "—" when calm.
- Last nearby strike: its time in UTC (ISO 8601).
The states are published every 15 seconds at most.
Scenes
- Lightning within a distance: pick the house and the distance. The scene runs at the first strike closer than that distance, once per storm: it can run again only after the quiet period without any strike at that distance. The integration only sees the strikes inside the radius of the configuration: a distance larger than the radius acts as the radius. Variables: the distance of the nearest strike, its bearing and direction, the count, the time of the strike.
- Storm over: no strike within the chosen distance for the quiet period, after a "lightning within" of the same distance (unplug, close, notify).
- Storm approaching: the window is cut in three thirds; when the nearest strike of each third is closer than in the previous one, the storm is coming towards the house. Once per storm, with a rough approach speed.
The action lightning status gives {{count}}, {{nearest_km}},
{{direction}}, {{minutes_since_last}} and {{storm}} for a message or a
condition.
How it works
The integration reads the worldwide live feed of Blitzortung.org, the one of the live map: several strikes per second, each decoded, then dropped unless it falls within the radius of one of your houses. The feed is worldwide and cannot be narrowed to a region: it weighs about 1 GB a day (more during the northern summer), which matters on a metered connection.
One connection at a time, to ws1, ws7 or ws8.blitzortung.org. The
servers close every connection after about 6 minutes: the integration then
moves to the next server after 1 second. When a server fails, the next one
is tried after 5 seconds, then 10, 20... up to 5 minutes. Without any
message for 2 minutes, the connection is considered dead and replaced.
Troubleshooting
- "No located house": set the location of the house in Gladys, then open Discovery again.
- "The Blitzortung feed is unreachable": the servers are run by volunteers; the integration retries by itself. The list of servers is in the advanced section of the configuration, in case Blitzortung.org changes it.
- No strike although the map shows a storm: check the radius, and that the storm is within it from your house; the coverage of the network varies by region.
- Logs: the integration's log level is set with the
LOG_LEVELvariable.
Privacy
The location of your houses is used inside the integration to measure the distance of the strikes and never leaves it: the feed is the same for everyone, nothing is sent to Blitzortung.org but the subscription message.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Blitzortung lightning asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightning around your house | section | No | Unofficial connector, not affiliated with Blitzortung.org. It reads the live feed of the Blitzortung.org community network: one device per located house with the strikes of the last minutes within the radius, the nearest one (distance, direction) and the time of the last one, scene triggers "lightning within X km", "storm over" and "storm approaching", and a storm widget. Bandwidth: the feed is the whole world's, about 1 GB of download a day while a device exists. The data is provided by volunteers who run the detectors, for private, non-commercial use only: never resell it, and credit Blitzortung.org. Lightning detection here is informative, NOT a safety system: never rely on it to protect people or equipment. |
| Radius around the house (km) | number | No | Only the strikes closer than this count. The "lightning within X km" trigger cannot see beyond it. |
| Counting window (minutes) | number | No | The device counts the strikes of the last minutes, and gives the nearest one of that window. |
| Quiet period before "storm over" (minutes) | number | No | No strike within the distance for this long: the storm is over, and "lightning within X km" can fire again. |
| Language of the directions | select | No | The direction of the nearest strike in the states and scenes: N, NE, E... (English: W for west). |
| Advanced | section | No | The integration keeps ONE connection to one of these servers, and moves to the next one when it fails. The feed is worldwide (about 1 GB a day, more in the northern summer). Change the list only if Blitzortung.org changes its servers. |
| Feed servers | string | No | Short names (ws1 stands for wss://ws1.blitzortung.org/) or wss:// addresses, separated by commas. |
How to install Blitzortung lightning in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Blitzortung lightning appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/lm1lc3n7/gladys-blitzortung:0.1.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/LM1LC3N7/gladys-blitzortung.
Blitzortung lightning requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
Blitzortung lightning is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by LM1LC3N7, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all external integrations
- Discover the native integrations built into Gladys
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation