So, as I think I mentioned before, one of my goals was to incorporate lightning data into Gibson Ridge Software's GR2Analyst Nexrad display program. That's normally done using "placefiles" (text files that instruct the program to overlay additional data on screen). I now have a first draft of a PHP program to do that, using icons that vary according to age of the strike and kA intensity (strike current is also shown with hover text).
NOTE: you will need your Blitzortung participant username/password to access the raw data downloaded and displayed by these placefiles. This information needs to be inserted in the "lightningloader.php" file.
As a reminder, the Blitzortung raw data that this placefile uses is available only to system participants. The placefile won't work without such data access.In order to keep the load on the server and bandwidth usage light, while at the same time update nearly as soon as new data is available, the program polls the most recent raw data log file headers every 10 seconds, checks whether the log file has been modified since the last poll, and if so, only then downloads it and adds any new lightning log entries to a running list of strikes stored locally. It trims the local list to 1/2 hour, but when Gibson Ridge updates their software to include time ranges for placefile display data, I'll probably up that to an hour so it can animate the lightning data.
Right now, it throws the last 1/2 hour of lightning data on the screen all at once, with color coding to distinguish the age of the strike.
Here are some pics from the intense thunderstorms over Kansas this morning, and a copy of the code. The code is run locally and served up using a locally-running Apache web server. Icons are by Joel Wright (posted at the Gibson Ridge forum).
UPDATE 6/6/2014 17:00 GMT: I've modified the placefile into "loader" and "display" placefiles. Both should be added to the placefile list. This allows for ongoing lightning data gathering in the background without necessarily displaying the data (the loader should always be enabled).
I've also added some comments and simplified some of the code. It will now proceed to download data, for the time frame set by the variable $MaxAge, until it finds data that's already in the local lightning log. This allows the placefile to "catch up" when the GR-series program is first run.
UPDATE 6/13/2014: The loader file has been modified to accept the latest revision of GR programs, which have changed the way they identify themselves.
UPDATE 6/25/2014: Unfortunately, the "strike strength" data value hasn't been included in the log files for several days now - I think the Blitzortung developers are working on a number of enhancements, including faster data access. So, all lightning strikes are appearing only as dot icons. I may modify the placefile generator to calculate strike strength based on the distance to the farthest station that detects an individual strike.