Seeed Studio Partners with Davide Cogliati for a Long-Range Grove Lightning Sensor
Designed under the Grove Sensor Co-Invent Program, this AS3935-based lightning sensor launches this month.
Seeed Studio has announced the impending launch of a Grove Lightning Sensor, designed by Davide Cogliati under the company's Grove Sensor Co-Invent Program.
"We launched the Grove Sensor Co-invent Program last year," Seeed's Sharyn Xu explains, "and received over 100 ideas. So far, five excellent selected designs have been licensed to Seeed Fusion and will soon be on sale on Seeed Studio — [and] now [the] Grove Lightning sensor (AS3935) is on pre-sale!"
Designed by physics major and electronics engineer Davide Cogliati, the Grove Lightning Sensor is based on the ScioSense AS3935 Franklin lightning sensor, designed to offer detection of cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-cloud lightning activity out to a 40km (around 25 mile) range.
As well as providing early warning of incoming storms, the device can also be used to provide distance estimations to the storm head — which can be tracked over time to see if it's getting closer or further away.
Cogliati's carrier board for the sensor is based on the standard Grove Sensor format, offering a single Grove connector at one end with I2C and SPI communication plus 3.3V or 5V operation.
"The Grove Lightning sensor functions as a preventative alert to the lightning front of an approaching storm to avoid injury to electrical equipment or personnel," claims Xu. "The sensor can be fully integrated with other sensors in weather stations, making it useful in agriculture for crop protection during storms. Plus, it can also be used for weather research because sufficient data of the intensity and number of storms can be provided."
The sensor is due to launch this month, Seeed has confirmed, with pricing not yet released. More information is available in the company's announcement.