Topic: Lightning Sensor Tower now on Access

[DoctorKnow]

I just realized that my Access found the Lightning sensor with thermo/hygro tower. I added it to my dashboard. Firmware 51.

[gardengrub]

I just realized that my Access found the Lightning sensor with thermo/hygro tower. I added it to my dashboard. Firmware 51.

Good catch.  I've had a 06045M Lightning Detector installed since February.  Found it as an available device and added it as one of my Access Sensors.  It started displaying data after just a few minutes. 

[nincehelser]

If you're using the myAcurite smartphone app, you'll need to update it if it hasn't already.

[rct]

I just was looking through the iOS updates and almost fell off my chair when I saw they added support for the "lightning tower".  I then checked my Access and saw the firmware was recently updated.  Then I came here to find all of those details were already covered.

It doesn't look like you can add any lightning related alerts through My Acurite yet.

Hopefully now I can finish my rtl_433 decoder.  I never had a good lead for the strike distance value.

[Mabcmb]

Does anyone have the lightning sensor Model # 06045M ? Is that what you are calling the " Lightning Tower " ? Also before I order one is there a way to turn off the audio beep ? I will be putting it outside and don't need something beeping out there and driving my dogs insane lol lol .

[rct]

Yes the 6045M is the sensor we are talking about.  I hadn't seen it referred to as the "lightning tower" until Acurite just added to Access/MyAcurite, etc.

There is no settings to disable the beep.  Though it would be fairly easy to open up the case and unsolder the piezo buzzer.

In the last year or so, I've noticed the double beep freaks my dog out. I don't know if it's the beep or if he's then anticipating thunder which what he is really afraid of.

[Mabcmb]

Yes the 6045M is the sensor we are talking about.  I hadn't seen it referred to as the "lightning tower" until Acurite just added to Access/MyAcurite, etc.

There is no settings to disable the beep.  Though it would be fairly easy to open up the case and unsolder the piezo buzzer.

In the last year or so, I've noticed the double beep freaks my dog out. I don't know if it's the beep or if he's then anticipating thunder which what he is really afraid of.

Thanks for the info !!!!

[nincehelser]

Does anyone have the lightning sensor Model # 06045M ? Is that what you are calling the " Lightning Tower " ? Also before I order one is there a way to turn off the audio beep ? I will be putting it outside and don't need something beeping out there and driving my dogs insane lol lol .

It auto-mutes after 10 lightning strikes.  It un-mutes after 2 hours of no lightning detected.

[Mabcmb]

Does it also show up on the new touch display ? P.S I just ordered one from Amazon for the free shipping .

[rct]

My Acurite shows 5 minute data buckets, so this might be a little harder than I'd like

I haven't been following along.  IIRC the Access posts to an https URL.  Is it possible to intercept the Access traffic by hijacking DNS?   Does it check the SSL/TLS certificate?

One thing I was able to see today with MyAcurite that people with consoles reported is that the strike count displayed by Acurite consoles and MyAcurite goes up when either the field that seems to be the strike count increments or the field that seems to be the strike distance changes, and there also seems to be a correlation with the USSB1 (unknown strike status bit) also toggles.

If the 6045M requires keeping state to infer the events, rtl_433 will only ever just output raw data.  A consumer of the data (ike Weewx) would have to check the last message and look at the most recent message to figure out what the new state is.

[nincehelser]

My Acurite shows 5 minute data buckets, so this might be a little harder than I'd like

I haven't been following along.  IIRC the Access posts to an https URL.  Is it possible to intercept the Access traffic by hijacking DNS?   Does it check the SSL/TLS certificate?

One thing I was able to see today with MyAcurite that people with consoles reported is that the strike count displayed by Acurite consoles and MyAcurite goes up when either the field that seems to be the strike count increments or the field that seems to be the strike distance changes, and there also seems to be a correlation with the USSB1 (unknown strike status bit) also toggles.

If the 6045M requires keeping state to infer the events, rtl_433 will only ever just output raw data.  A consumer of the data (ike Weewx) would have to check the last message and look at the most recent message to figure out what the new state is.

A DNS redirect works.  It's also possible to re-program where the Access sends data itself with a bit of work, or you can load up Acuparse and use its built-in tool.

It doesn't care about the certificate validity, so you can make your own.

I've been looking at the Atlas lightning module decode.  The counter is obvious through creating false strikes, but I haven't figured out the distance and interference parts. 

[nincehelser]

If you're using Acuparse, it appears that it isn't forwarding the 6045M lightning sensor data to myAcurite.  You have to switch back to atlasapi.myacurite.com before it is detected.

I've sent the Acuparse author a note about it.

[nincehelser]

I haven't been following along.  IIRC the Access posts to an https URL.  Is it possible to intercept the Access traffic by hijacking DNS?   Does it check the SSL/TLS certificate?

I see the current version of Acuparse is throwing this error in the syslog.  It might save you some hassle.

Code: [Select]

Oct  2 18:11:21 raspberrypi acuparse(2.9.1-release): (ACCESS)[ERROR]: Unknown Sensor 00000174. Raw = dateutc=2019-10-02T22:51:40&id=24C86E0A4E56&mt=light&sensor=00000174&sensorbattery=normal&rssi=4&hubbattery=low&baromin=29.94&humidity=44&tempf=77.2&strikecount=3&interference=0&last_strike_ts=2019-10-02T22:03:55&last_strike_distance=1&dewptf=53.6

[rct]

George - Thanks so much for the pointers.

Intercepting the Access posts seems like it should make it pretty easy to figure out the rest of the encoding.  Thanks for posting the details of your message, that tells me a bit.

I didn't know how evolved Acuparse had become.  I was confusing it with one of the early perl scripts for scraping the smarthub data. Thanks for saving me the time with regard to the exception. I'm now watching the Acuparse repos so I should see when a fix gets committed. 

From https://gitlab.com/acuparse/acuparse/issues/85:

To start, lightning towers will work like any other tower, minus the lightning data. A new option will also be added so users can select if they also want to pass unsupported sensor data to MyAcurite. At the moment, it's dropped. That will stay the default.

Lightning data will come later, it requires a bunch of database changes and rework. There is additional data from the Atlas to collect, so will be part of that update.