Notices

Inspired by the storms that have been around here, and by a Palm application that performs the same function, I wrote a little application to calculate how far away lightning is.

It's simple, really: tap the big button once when you see the lightning, tap it again when you hear the lightning, and it will approximate how far away the lightning strike was. However, I wanted to add a bit of a personal touch to it, so I added something: the ability to calculate the speed of sound based on temperature. You can also switch units on the speed of sound, and the distance displayed will be based on whatever units you choose.

Just a silly little utility, really. It's available in diablo extras, and the current version is 1.0.0-3. Screenshot:


Known bugs:

• Calculating speed of sound when "mph" is selected doesn't seem to work correctly
• Icon in menu is too small until cache refreshes. Then, it's too big.

Post any other bugs you find/features you'd like to see.

Looks great. I've also been counting seconds between lightning and thunder in the chicago area recently. Next you'll have to integrate the camera and microphone to detect the lightning and thunder.

and this is why i love geek related devices

It would be great to be able to set speed via temperature/altitude. While I wouldn't go as far to incorporate standard atmosphere 1976, a few handy formulas are found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound

When Fn lock is on (N810) the keyboard still enters numbers when trying to change the temperature. It works by holding Fn and hitting the number keys though.

Cool app though. Now I want a thunderstorm so I can use it.

Is it really so hard to divide by 5? My dad taught me that 5 seconds = 1 mile when I was a wee nipper, never really needed an app to help me with it.

Well, your app's nice with all the different methods nevertheless

Hmm, I wonder if the ambient light sensor on the N810 is sensitive enough to pick up the lightning - that would be a lot easier to do than analyse camera input...

I think that this is a very droll application and I appreciate it. I haven't tried it yet, but even the idea has me rolling in the aisles, so to speak.