NexStorm Manual

Version 1.9.
USER MANUAL
Photo credit: Relko Vazic, Astrogenic Systems ©2005

Lightning Detection Software, Version 1.9.5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................ 5
TERMS AND NOTATIONS USED IN THIS MANUAL.......................................................................................6

Terms................................................................................................................................................ 6
Notations........................................................................................................................................... 6
NEXSTORM DIRECTORY STRUCTURE.......................................................................................................... 7

Folders.............................................................................................................................................. 7
Files.................................................................................................................................................. 7
Windows 7/8/10 notes....................................................................................................................... 8
NEXSTORM MAIN WINDOW............................................................................................................................ 9

Activity frame..................................................................................................................................... 9
System frame.................................................................................................................................... 9
Statistics frame.................................................................................................................................. 9
NEXSTORM AND BOLTEK LD-250................................................................................................................ 11
PLACE LAYER................................................................................................................................................ 13
NEXSTORM MENU SYSTEM.......................................................................................................................... 15

Menu: NexStorm.......................................................................................................................................... 15
Map setup....................................................................................................................................... 15
Map snapshot.................................................................................................................................. 16
Clear strikes.................................................................................................................................... 17
Replot strikes.................................................................................................................................. 17
Replay............................................................................................................................................. 18
Save settings................................................................................................................................... 18
Hide when minimized...................................................................................................................... 18
Start minimized............................................................................................................................... 18
Start on login................................................................................................................................... 18
Startup delay period........................................................................................................................ 18
Exit.................................................................................................................................................. 18
Menu: Options.............................................................................................................................................. 19
Configuration................................................................................................................................... 19
Data Export..................................................................................................................................... 19
TRAC Report................................................................................................................................... 19
Segmented Ranging Correction...................................................................................................... 19
Ranging adjustments...................................................................................................................... 19
Display mode.................................................................................................................................. 19
Zoom............................................................................................................................................... 19
FlashGate........................................................................................................................................ 19
LD-250 settings............................................................................................................................... 20
Menu: Trend graph....................................................................................................................................... 20
Increase time scale......................................................................................................................... 20
Decrease time scale........................................................................................................................ 20
Smooth............................................................................................................................................ 20
Stacked........................................................................................................................................... 20
Trend graph settings....................................................................................................................... 20
Menu: Help................................................................................................................................................... 20
Enable Hints.................................................................................................................................... 20
Astrogenic Systems website........................................................................................................... 20
Product registration webform.......................................................................................................... 20
NexStorm website........................................................................................................................... 20
Support forum................................................................................................................................. 20
About............................................................................................................................................... 20
Edition: 10
2020-08-30 © 2020 Astrogenic Systems Table of Contents Page 2
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS DIALOG........................................................................................................... 21

Map graphics tab......................................................................................................................................... 21
Distance rings configuration............................................................................................................ 21
On-map strike presentation............................................................................................................. 22
Map AutoRange settings................................................................................................................. 22
Data graphics tab......................................................................................................................................... 23
Strike and noise alert indicator settings........................................................................................... 23
Strike rate trend graph configuration and colors..............................................................................23
System clock color.......................................................................................................................... 23
Strike symbols tab........................................................................................................................................ 24
Strike symbol configuration............................................................................................................. 24
Strike history color codes................................................................................................................ 25
On-map legend............................................................................................................................... 25
Density plot tab............................................................................................................................................ 26
TRAC settings tab........................................................................................................................................ 29
TRAC info pop-up........................................................................................................................... 30
Close storm activity coupling........................................................................................................... 30
On-map Ident.................................................................................................................................. 32
TRAC Target symbols..................................................................................................................... 32
TRAC Target persistence................................................................................................................ 32
Sound tab..................................................................................................................................................... 33
Alarms tab.................................................................................................................................................... 34
Alarm types..................................................................................................................................... 34
Alarm looping configuration setting................................................................................................. 34
Hardware tab............................................................................................................................................... 35
Receiver model and hardware port address....................................................................................35
Antenna alignment.......................................................................................................................... 36
Receiver settings............................................................................................................................. 36
Receiver squelch............................................................................................................................. 36
Noise sensitivity (StormTracker and LD-350 only)..........................................................................36
Discard artifical noise (StormTracker and LD-350 only)..................................................................36
Reflection inverter (StormTracker and LD-350 only).......................................................................37
Receiver activation.......................................................................................................................... 37
System tab................................................................................................................................................... 38
Archive maintenance – Autoclip...................................................................................................... 38
Archive maintenance – Move after completion................................................................................38
Archive maintenance – Do not archive noises................................................................................38
NexStorm VM Usage, System status, Memory Status and Internal memory buffer........................38
Ranging tab.................................................................................................................................................. 40
Nighttime ranging up shift................................................................................................................ 40
General ranging correction.............................................................................................................. 42
Plot scale adjustment...................................................................................................................... 42
Noise Ranging Assist...................................................................................................................... 43
Cloud-ground ranging (StormTracker and LD-350 only).................................................................44
TYPE DIFFERENTIATED STRIKE RATE GRAPH......................................................................................... 45

Time scale....................................................................................................................................... 45
Strike rate scale.............................................................................................................................. 45
Graph smoothing............................................................................................................................. 45
Graph modes.................................................................................................................................. 46
Normal mode................................................................................................................................... 46
Stacked mode................................................................................................................................. 47
USER INTERFACE POP-UP MENUS............................................................................................................. 48

Map pop-up menu........................................................................................................................... 48
Quick zoom pop-up menu............................................................................................................... 49
VECTOR MAP CONFIGURATION.................................................................................................................. 50

Vector map configuration dialog breakdown...................................................................................51
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REPLAY........................................................................................................................................................... 52
The replay panel............................................................................................................................. 52
Archive activity graph...................................................................................................................... 52
Opening an archive for replay......................................................................................................... 52
Replaying an archive....................................................................................................................... 53
DATA EXPORT OPTIONS.............................................................................................................................. 54

Data export utility setup dialog........................................................................................................ 54
Data transfer configuration.............................................................................................................. 54
Transfer settings............................................................................................................................. 54
Upload options................................................................................................................................ 55
Other settings.................................................................................................................................. 55
Screenshots.................................................................................................................................... 56
Image formats................................................................................................................................. 56
Screenshot — additional settings.................................................................................................... 57
TRAC REPORT............................................................................................................................................... 59
Thunderstorm Ranging and Acquisition.......................................................................................... 59
Targets............................................................................................................................................ 59
TRAC Target colors and intensities................................................................................................. 59
TRAC Report................................................................................................................................... 59
TRAC Report dialog........................................................................................................................ 60
TRAC Report colors and intensities................................................................................................ 61
Flip tag button................................................................................................................................. 61
SEGMENTED RANGING CORRECTION KERNEL........................................................................................ 62

Kernels............................................................................................................................................ 62
Linking............................................................................................................................................. 62
Calibration values............................................................................................................................ 63
How to calibrate.............................................................................................................................. 63
SOFTWARE TECHNICAL SUPPORT............................................................................................................. 64
APPENDIX A – PLACE MARKER LAYER FDB FORMAT.............................................................................65
APPENDIX B – UPLOAD AND COPY ERROR CODES AND MESSAGES...................................................68
APPENDIX C – FLASHGATE IPC-1 SPECIFICATION (STRIKE DATA).......................................................70
APPENDIX D – FLASHGATE IPC-2 SPECIFICATION (TRAC DATA)...........................................................71
Edition: 10
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for choosing NexStorm as your lightning detection software! Aside from the obvious functionality of
displaying lightning data captured by the Boltek lightning detector on a map, NexStorm includes several
features which will allow you to easily publish your lightning data on the Internet without having to use third-
party screenshot grabbers or FTP upload clients. NexStorm was designed and developed with Internet
connectivity in mind so there are no notable performance degradations when using these features.
The NexStorm software is a 32-bit multi-threaded application that utilizes Microsoft Windows preemptive
multitasking capabilities in the most efficient way. While the main thread of execution communicates with the
Boltek lightning detector and performs various computations, other parallel application threads will handle
things like drawing strike and storm symbols on the map, capturing screenshots or uploading data to a web
server.
As a pioneering first and to date the only one in its class, NexStorm has the capability to communicate its data
to external applications in real-time. This feature enables third-party software developers to extend the
software functionality by developing add-on software. Such add-on applications can be provided by us or by
independent software developers because the real-time data interface is publicly available and fully specified
in this manual.
Our main goal with NexStorm was to provide the end user with an application that is stable, reliable, highly
accurate in terms of lightning locating accuracy, and focused on features that the user will actually need and
use. Usability, presentation and accuracy is why NexStorm has become the lightning detector software of
choice for Boltek lightning detector owners around the world.
Edition: 10
TERMS AND NOTATIONS USED IN THIS MANUAL

Terms
TRAC Thunderstorm Ranging and Acquisition subprocess.
Ranging a computational process used to determine strike locations.
+CG Positive cloud to ground strike.
-CG Negative cloud to ground strike.
+IC Positive in cloud or intra-cloud strike.
-IC Negative in cloud or intra-cloud strike.
Left-click or
Right-click indicates you should press the left or right mouse button, usually while the mouse pointer is
hovering over a specific location on the user interface.
CVM Composite Vector Map – a proprietary scalable vector map format for use in NexStorm.
Notations
Throughout this text there are shorthand notations used to indicate what you should do to access a specific
section of the user interface. For instance Options->Configuration->System means that you should select
Option from the main menu, then select Configuration from the drop-down menu, and finally select the
System tab in the Configuration dialog that subsequently opens. Configuration->System means exactly the
same thing, only here, the main menu item Options has been omitted and it is assumed that you know how
where to find the Configuration menu option.
Ctrl+[Letter] denotes shortcut keys. In the case of Ctrl+S you should press and hold the Ctrl-key while
simultaneously pressing the S key. This particular action will save your configuration settings without the need
to explicitly open the NexStorm menu and selecting “Save settings”.
Words written in italic are in some cases used for sake of clarity to indicate a configurable function, a concept
used in the software or a particular menu option.
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NEXSTORM DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

This section will briefly explain the organization of NexStorm folders and subfolders and the contents that can
be found in each folder. The NexStorm installation folder, sometimes also referred to as home directory, is
created by the installation program and the actual location on disk is chosen by the user during the installation
process. If the application was installed in the folder suggested by the installer your NexStorm files will be
located in C:\Program Files\Astrogenic\NexStorm\.
The listing below applies to the directory structure found inside the installation folder, irrespective of its
location on the hard drive.
Folders
\docs NexStorm documentation folder.
\driver Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista/7 installation program for the Astrogenic

StormTracker ISA card and PC-speaker sound device driver. This is a 32 bit driver
that will not work on 64 bit operating systems.
\rkernel Segmented ranging correction kernels (filename *.krn).
\sound Supplied sounds for use with NexStorm, WAV-file format. You can also put your own
sounds here.
\util Contains the NexMap support application and the nxutil command line utility for data
extraction from NexStorm archives.
\reports This directory will only be created if you choose to save TRAC Reports. All reports
generated by TRAC will be saved in this directory.
\graph This directory is created when you run NexStorm and will contain strike rate graph
data that is loaded into memory after the software is restarted.
Files
NexStorm.exe
gfx.dll
StormPCI_DLL.dll
nxsplash.bmp NexStorm executable, dynamic link libraries and the splash screen image that is
shown during startup.
unwise.exe NexStorm uninstaller program. Do not run unless you want to remove NexStorm from
your system.
Additionally, a configuration file named confdata.bin and daily lightning data archives (filename extension
*.nex) will also be stored in the home directory when the program is run. Archives may be moved
automatically to a different directory by using the Move after completion feature.
Edition: 10
Windows 7/8/10 notes
The following section only applies if you have installed NexStorm in the Program Files folder!
Unlike older Microsoft Windows versions, the user account management features that are part of more recent
Windows editions will not allow software to write files to the Program Files folder unless the software is
configured to run with administrator privileges. The Program Files folder as well as several other folders are
protected system folders with limited access permissions for non-administrator users.
If you choose to not run NexStorm run with administrator privileges, Windows 7/8/10 will in this case redirect
all NexStorm file saves to the Virtual Store. Consequently, all files that NexStorm generates will be found in
the following path:
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Astrogenic\NexStorm
(Above, USERNAME is specific to your Windows user account)
In order to keep all NexStorm related files in one place we recommended that you allow the NexStorm
installation program to install the software in the default path: C:\Astrogenic\NexStorm
While not recommended, you can also configure the software to automatically run with administrator
privileges. For details on how to configure software to permanently run with administrator privileges please
refer to Windows 7/8/10 Help.
If you elect to let Windows 7/8/10 redirect NexStorm files to the Virtual Store and later want to uninstall the
software, the archives and other data that were saved in the Virtual Store will not be uninstalled automatically.
This is important to know if you at any point want to perform a clean install of NexStorm in which case you will
have to manually delete data archives and/or configuration files from the Virtual Store.
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NEXSTORM MAIN WINDOW

The main window is the part of NexStorm that is always visible to the user when the application is not
minimized. The largest part of the main window consists of the map area. Additionally there are three frames
containing various indicators, labels and counters.
Figure 1: NexStorm main window
Right clicking on your mouse while the mouse pointer is over the map area will bring up a pop-up menu.
Using this menu, colors of the map overlay components such as distance rings and labels, can be adjusted.
You can also access the Map setup dialog and the Configuration->Strike symbol dialog that are also
accessible through the regular menu system.
Activity frame
The topmost frame in the user interface is called the Activity frame. It contains counters, strike and noise alert
indicators and the last detected strike bearing and distance indicator. Portions of this frame will change
appearance if LD-250 is configured as the detector type in the NexStorm hardware configuration.
System frame
The middle frame is called the System frame. It reflects certain parts of your NexStorm configuration settings
and shows the current system date and time. Labels in the System frame are “clickable”, for instance clicking
once on the Squelch label will bring up the Configuration dialog focused on the Hardware tab where you can
adjust the receiver squelch.
Statistics frame
The bottom frame is the Statistics frame. It holds the peak strike rate counter and time indicator, the
application uptime counter, plot mode indicator and the strike rate trend graph.
Edition: 10
A. Strike and Noise alert indicators and the latest strike bearing
indicator. The strike and noise indicators will light up when a
strike or noise is detected, alerting you of the event that just
occurred. The latest strike bearing indicator will display the
bearing and distance to the latest strike that was detected,
making it easier for you to locate the strike on the map. To control
how long the strike and noise indicators should be lit up, open the
Configuration dialog, Data graphics tab and adjust the indicator’s
duration time. (You can also click on the System frame clock
label to view the same tab in Configuration dialog.)
B. Per minute counters for strikes, close strikes and noises.
Close strikes are classified according to the close alarm setting
which is adjustable in the Configuration->Alarms tab dialog. The
Noises counter will turn yellow if the amount of noises exceeds
20 per minute and no strikes are detected or if the strike to noise
ratio exceeds 5 to 1. The latter phenomenon is very common
during elevated and nearby lightning activity and could be
indicative of frequent intra-cloud discharges, weak electrical
activity or mixed component signals that were not well formed,
hence could not have the directions properly determined.
Strike type ratios will not be available when the software is used
with the Boltek LD-250 model, instead GPS relayed data will be
shown in real time in such cases where an NMEA compatible
GPS has been connected to the LD-250.
C. Total counters for all classes of strikes, close strikes and
noises. This is a daily counter that will reset at midnight.
D. Totals and percentage ratios for the four different strike
categories that NexStorm is able to classify. With regular, non-
severe summer storms, the positively charged cloud to ground
strikes should be in minority with ratios of 0 to 30 percent. During
winter thunderstorms (thundersnow), the positively charged
strikes can dominate although the cumulative total is likely to be
relatively low. Tornadic supercells in the mid-western continental
US have been recorded to contain a large amount of positive CG
strikes, especially during the dissipation stage.
E. The System frame contains information about the
configuration state of your NexStorm. The labels in the System
frame are clickable and will open various configuration dialogs
depending on which label was clicked. The label to the right of
the Upload label might display error codes if a file transfer error
occurred. Right-clicking on the Range label or the selected view
range label will bring up the Quick Zoom which lets you select the
particular view range that you want to zoom in on.
F. Uptime indicator, Peak rate indicator and Plot mode. The
uptime shows how many hours and minutes the application has
been running since it was started. It is only reset when NexStorm
is restarted. The Peak rate indicates the highest strike rate that
has occurred during application uptime or, if the application has
been running for over 24 hours, within the current day. The Peak
time indicates at which time the peak strike rate occurred.
The Peak rate counter is reset at midnight every day or if you exit
the application.
The Plot mode indicator can either be Strike or Density. To toggle

plot mode, press shortcut key Ctrl+A.
G. The strike rate trend graph shows lightning activity for a set
period of time. For more information about the graph please see
Figure 2. NexStorm textual data frames the Strike rate graph section.
Edition: 10
NEXSTORM AND BOLTEK LD-250
When NexStorm is used with the portable Boltek LD-250 detector model, the activity frame will change
appearance so that it displays GPS data relayed by the LD-250 instead of the strike type distribution table.
When run in LD-250 mode, one additional LD-250 specific menu item will be available under the Options
menu.
With the LD-250 it is currently not possible to capture raw signal data as is the case with PCI type detectors.
This is related to bandwidth limitations inherent in the communications port over which the LD-250
communicates with the PC and subsequently any interface application. Because of this limitation, which
prevents NexStorm from being able to classify stroke types, and the fact that LD-250 was designed with GPS
support, the activity frame strike type distribution table will be substituted by a GPS data information table
whenever the software is configured for usage with the LD-250 detector.
In cases where an NMEA compatible GPS device is connected to the LD-250, NexStorm will display selected
GPS parameters in real time. Figure 2 shows how the activity frame will look if LD-250 is configured as the
detector model under the Configuration->Hardware tab and with no GPS connected.
Figure 3. LD-250 mode activity frame
Heading: Shows the current heading in degrees in which the antenna is pointing. This information is retrieved
from the NMEA GPGGA sentence. In addition to this reading, NexStorm can optionally draw a rotating
heading pointer on the map.
Speed: Shows your current speed in km/h, miles per hour or knots. Information is retrieved from the NMEA
GPRMC sentence.
Trip: A trip odometer showing the amount of distance traveled in kilometers, statue miles or nautical miles
depending on the distance unit setting. This odometer is application internal and can be reset by accessing
the LD-250 specific menu LD-250 settings under Options.
Edition: 10
Alt: Indicates the altitude (GPGGA) in either feet or meters depending on the distance units setting.
Sat: shows how many satellites are currently used by the GPS for positioning. Less than 3 satellites indicates
an unreliable GPS fix and will make this indicator turn yellow. If no satellites are being received, this indicator
will indicate it with the text “None” colored yellow. The satellites in view parameter is parsed from the GPGGA
sentence.
Figure 4. Stormchase during NexStorm 1.1 field tests using a Boltek LD-250 connected to a Garmin GPS-V.
Edition: 10
PLACE LAYER
Using a plain text, semicolon separated flat file database (FDB) you can now add place markers (cities,
airports etc.) to any background map. Each place marker is configurable so that it can be set to appear on the
map below a certain zoom level only.
Figure 5: NexStorm map with place markers
The place marker FDB content format is described in detail in appendix A of this user manual.
The Place Layer supports a user selected font with optional text outlining for clearer labels, and also a
separate symbols font set set such as Wingdings for use in drawing the actual place markers.
A Place Layer can be enabled or disabled in the Configuration dialog->Map graphics tab, and is loaded into
NexStorm via the menu->Load places data file option, or by pressing the shortcut key CTRL+P.
Edition: 10
Note that if you make changes to the FDB you have to reload it (CTRL+P) or restart NexStorm before the
changes will appear on the map.
When exporting CVM maps to raster image format using Map snapshot you have the option to include place
markers in the exported image. To do so enable the Include place markers checkbox in the Map snapshot
dialog..
For details on how to add place markers to your map please refer to appendix A of this user manual.
Edition: 10
NEXSTORM MENU SYSTEM
The menu system is used for navigating between different locations in a program. Using the menu you can
active or deactivate functions or open hidden dialogs that lets you configure how NexStorm operates. This
section walks you through the entire NexStorm menu system. To see more in depth explanations on certain
options in the configuration, click on the appropriate hyperlink.
Menu: NexStorm
Map setup
(Shortcut key: Ctrl+M)
Open this dialog when you want to assign or unassign maps that are to be used in NexStorm. You can assign
two Base maps and up to 14 Custom maps, one for each view range (level of zoom).
NexStorm supports the proprietary CVM (Composite Vector Map) scalable vector map format or as an
alternative, if you want to make your own background maps, Windows Bitmap (bmp) images. If you create
your own maps you must save the images to BMP format before being able to use them in the software.
Before assigning your own maps, you will obviously need to first create and then scale them. Use the
accompanying NexMap program to do this. See the NexMap documentation for details on how to create
maps.
To load a map, click on the left side button with a folder depicted on it. To unassign a map, click on the red
cross button on the right side.
When a custom map is loaded it will automatically be assigned to the zoom level you currently are in. For
instance, to assign a custom map to the 300 km range, first zoom in so that the outermost distance ring
displays 300 km (use the Insert and Delete buttons or the mouse scroll wheel for zooming). Load a previously
prepared and scaled bitmap. Repeat this process for each range that you wish to assign a custom map to.
A base map can be assigned irrespective of which zoom level you have selected. Besides this slight
difference compared to custom map assignment, the map setup process is identical.
Base maps can be assigned as either a full range or medium range base map. The difference is the area of
geographical coverage. While the full range base map needs to cover the entire 1200 km (750 mi) view
range, the medium range map should only cover half this range, e.g. 600 km (375 mi). The reason for having
two different base maps is because to the pixelation effect that becomes evident on images with high
magnification factors. With two base maps this problem can be reduced as the medium range base map is
better adapted for showing closer view ranges while the full range map is better for more distant ranges.
A note on map rendering order

The medium range base map has precedence over the full range base map so that if you have assigned both,
once the view range is inbound of 600 km (375 mi) the medium range map will be rendered in the map
window instead of the full range map. Similarly, if a CVM map is assigned, it will be rendered at all view
ranges irrespective of any base maps that are assigned. Lastly, any custom zoom level maps that you assign
will be rendered at their respective view ranges irrespective of what other type of map is assigned. This
rendering priority procedure is referred to Z-ordering and allows you to extensively configure your map display
without the need to constantly load and unload maps.
Although the NexStorm maximum view range is 1200 km/750 miles, this in no way implies that your lightning
detection system will be capable of tracking thunderstorms at that range. Generally, ranging of storms
becomes increasingly unreliable with increased distance and at ranges over 500 km/300 miles there is no
guarantee that any kind of signals produced by lightning can be captured by the Boltek system.
Edition: 10
Map snapshot
(Only available with CVM format vector map)
With a CVM format map loaded you can use the Map snapshot feature to export the currently selected view
range to a BMP or PNG image. The exported image is automatically saved in the NexStorm installation folder.
Alongside each exported image there is also an XML file saved which contains geographical coordinates that
defines the map center point and North, South, East and West borders. The coordinates are given in Degrees
Decimal format. For the XML to contain correct information you must ensure that you have configured
NexStorm with the correct center point (Latitude and Longitude). Setting the center point is done in the
Configuration dialog, Ranging tab, Nighttime ranging upshift. Note that the Nighttime ranging upshift feature
does not have to be enabled, the important thing is that the coordinates are set correctly.
This map exporting capability is very handy if you need to generate maps for the StormVue companion
application, third party applications, or if you want to add specific features that are not available in the CVM
map itself.
To export a specific view range, simply zoom to that range and select Map snapshot from the menu. A dialog
box will open where you can set the dimension of the exported image. Just press Save to save it to disk.
Figure 6. Map snapshot dialog
You can use the up/down buttons to set the size or type a number directly in the textbox.
If the 600 km (375 mi) range map is selected for export, the resulting bitmap image saved to disk will be
named mps_600.bmp (or .png). Similarly, the 1200 km view range will be named mps_1200.bmp (or .png)
and so on. Saved images will always use the corresponding metric value in the filename irrespective of your
distance unit configuration setting.
To include place markers that you have added previously on your exported maps, enable Include place
markers checkbox.
Note that images previously saved for a specific view range will be overwritten in case you save that view
range again! Make sure that you either move or rename any exported map images that you intend to
use or alter or they could be lost!
To generate maps for StormVue you must set the size to 500x500 pixels in order to fit the applet map display.
You also need to convert the resulting image to GIF or JPG format using a third-party graphics editor before
being able to use the new map in StormVue.
Edition: 10
The primary tool for adding cities and other places of interest to your map is the Place Layer feature.
If you need to customize your vector map in a way that is not supported by the Place Layer you can use the
Map snapshot instead. The exported image should in this case be saved in the same pixel size that is
displayed in the Map assignment dialog caption bar. This reading indicates the size of your map window and
will vary between different systems.
After you have made modifications to your map, assign it as a custom range map. This way you will obtain
perfectly sized map images for your specific machine and the currently used NexStorm display mode while
avoiding image stretching artifacts.
Clear strikes
Clears the map display of all strike symbols that were drawn prior to the current time.
Replot strikes
Replots all strikes between current time and the Persistence limit
Edition: 10
Replay
(Shortcut key: Ctrl+R)
Opens the archive player dialog that allows you to playback older archives. Refer to the Replay section for
details on how to use this feature.
Save settings
(Shortcut key: Ctrl+S)
Will save your current settings and display a confirmation dialog if the save were performed successfully. The
changes you make in your configuration are saved every time you exit the program, you should use Save
settings to ensure that the settings are saved immediately after a change or your configuration changes might
disappear in case of a power outage or system crash.
Hide when minimized

Enable to place the NexStorm icon in the system tray when the application is minimized. Double click on the
NexStorm system tray icon to bring back its window to the desktop.
Start minimized
Enable to have NexStorm start minimized to the task bar or system tray instead of displaying the main
window when started.
Start on login
Enable to have NexStorm start automatically when you logon to your Windows desktop
Startup delay period

Add a startup delay period if you are experiencing problems with the receiver not connecting properly when
Start on login is used. These kind of problems can be related to driver misconfiguration or unexpected delays
in the driver startup. Using a delay period will allow the relevant driver to start up and initialize before
NexStorm attempts to access the receiver hardware for the first time.
Exit
Quit the program.
Edition: 10
Menu: Options
Configuration
(Shortcut key Ctrl+C)
Open the Configuration dialog. This is a tabbed dialog where each tab allows the configuration of a specific
part of the application. Refer to the Configuration section in this manual for further details.
Data Export
(Shortcut key Ctrl+X)
The Data Export dialog is where you set up when and how your screenshots will be captured; and how
uploads of screenshots, data and TRAC reports should be performed. Refer to the Data Export section for
details on how to configure the Data Export.
TRAC Report
(Shortcut key Ctrl+T)
TRAC is the NexStorm strike analysis subprocess. The TRAC Report dialog will list all detected
thunderstorms in a table. One line in the table represents one stormcell that has been targeted by the TRAC
subprocess.
In this dialog you also have the option to enable the On-map Ident feature. On-map Ident will attach a tag to
each stormcell on the map. The tag contains coded information about the nature and behavior of a particular
storm.
To learn more about TRAC and On-map Ident, refer to the TRAC section of this manual.
Segmented Ranging Correction

With the segmented ranging correction you can tune the way NexStorm will range strikes in different
directions and distances. Subsequently, this will affect the TRAC subprocess and how close or far away a
storm is determined to be. Contrary to the general ranging correction described later, the segmented ranging
only applies to a specific sector and/or distance. A complete segmented ranging correction configuration is
called a kernel. A kernel can be saved to or loaded from disk. For hints and examples on how to use this
feature, refer to the Segmented Ranging section of this manual.
Ranging adjustments
(Shortcut key Ctrl+Z)
Selecting this menu option will open the Configuration dialog and focus it on the Ranging tab where you can
make generic (non-segmented) ranging calibrations.
Display mode
NexStorm supports 3 different display modes ranging from 800x600 up to a maximum of 1152x864 pixels.
The display mode determines how large part of your desktop area the NexStorm graphical user interface will
occupy. Choosing Autosize as the display mode will make NexStorm attempt to occupy the full desktop area
up to a screen resolution of 1152x864 pixels. If your system is configured for a higher screen resolution than
this, the display mode will default to the maximum available size of 1152x864.
Zoom
Insert/Delete keyboard keys or mouse scroll wheel. Use this feature to zoom your map in or out. If you have a
CVM map installed you can zoom out to 2400 km (1500 mi) range, otherwise 1200 km (750 mi) range.
FlashGate
FlashGate is NexStorm’s way of communicating its data to external applications. The FlashGate function
feeds real-time data to a reserved part of system memory. This allows applications which run on the same
computer to read the data and perform additional processing, storage or presentation. If you do not have any
add-on application that uses FlashGate you should keep it disabled to conserve system resources. Refer to
Appendix C - FlashGate IPC-1 Specification and Appendix D - FlashGate IPC-2 Specification for additional
information.
Edition: 10
LD-250 settings
This option is only visible if the detector model has been set to LD-250 under the Hardware tab. LD-250
settings contains a submenu with the following options:
Noise beeps: Check this option if you want your LD-250 unit to beep when it detects noises
Disable heading indicator: The heading indicator will point towards the heading that the antenna is facing if
a GPS device is connected to the LD-250. Check this option if you want to hide the heading pointer.
Reset trip meter: Resets the internal trip odometer and will restart counting traveled distance from zero.
Menu: Trend graph
Increase time scale

(Shortcut key F1)
Increase the trend graph time series interval
Decrease time scale

(Shortcut key F2)
Decrease the trend graph time series interval
Smooth
(Shortcut key F3)
Enable or disable smoothing
Stacked
(Shortcut key F4)
Enable or disable stacked graph mode (not available with LD-250)
Trend graph settings

(Shortcut key Ctrl+G)
Open the Data graphics configuration dialog. For more information about the graph, please refer to the
section Type differentiated strike rate trend graph
Menu: Help
Enable Hints
(also known as Tool tips)
Check this menu item if you want to be able to get hints on different items and labels that are part of the
NexStorm user interface. To read a hint after enabling this feature, hover your mouse pointer over the item in
question. Note that not all items have hints attached to them, some are considered self-explanatory by name
and should not require hints for understanding their basic function.
Astrogenic Systems website

Will open Astrogenic Systems website in a new web browser window
Product registration webform

Will open the NexStorm serial number registration page in a new web browser window. The registration
process needs only to be done once. This menu option will not disappear after you have registered!
NexStorm website
Will open the NexStorm website in a new web browser window. After you have registered your serial number
and received a confirmation, this web site is where you will find software upgrades.
Support forum
Will open Astrogenic Systems support forum website in a new web browser window
About
This dialog holds the version number of your NexStorm installation as well as revision numbers of the
processing core and control parameters. Always include this information when asking for support.
Edition: 10
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS DIALOG
This is by far the most content packed dialog in the application. In here you will be able to configure most of
the configurable features available in the software. Open this dialog by pressing Ctrl+C, through the regular
menu system (Options->Configuration) or by clicking on one of the labels in the System frame.
The Configuration dialog is a tabbed dialog. Under each tab you will find a window containing configuration
options for a specific part of the program. Let’s step through the available tabs.
Map graphics tab
Figure 7. Configuration dialog, Map settings tab
Distance rings configuration

Configures the map overlay graphics. The map overlay consists of distance rings and labels, azimuth lines
and a center cross. One additional item that can be drawn on the map is the Close alarm range ring. This
component is configured under the Alarm tab described in a later section.
You can configure which components of the overlay will be visible on the map by checking the corresponding
checkboxes. You can modify the distance ring configuration entries to change the number and spacing of the
distance rings that are shown on the map, or to change the units used for distance ring labels and other
distance related measurements made in the program. The available measurement units are kilometers (km),
statue miles (mi) or nautical miles (nm).
Edition: 10
On-map strike presentation

Under this tab you will also find settings for strike persistence and new strike persistence. The persistence
setting controls how long a strike plot will be visible on the map. The checkbox New strike enabled will disable
the new strike flag if unchecked.
To setup which strike symbols and history color-coding to use, click on the Strike symbols tab.
Map AutoRange settings

When AutoRange (also referred to as automatic zoom) is enabled, NexStorm will automatically zoom in or out
on the TRAC storm target that is defined as the reference target. For instance, with the reference set to close,
the program will always set the zoom level so that the TRAC target closest to center is in the focus. If
reference is set to distant, the zoom will be adjusted so that all TRAC targets on the map are shown.
AutoRange will only adjust the zoom within the Inner range and Outer range limits. If the lightning activity
stops and no TRAC targets are being tracked, the automatic zoom will default to the Outer range setting.
When this feature is enabled, the Range label in the System frame will change to AutoRange.
Note that setting the zoom level manually is not possible with AutoRange enabled!
For more information about TRAC, see the TRAC section.
To configure map overlay colors, click the right mouse button with the mouse cursor pointing somewhere on
the map. A pop-up menu will appear allowing you to chose which component of the overlay you want to adjust
the color for. This pop-up menu also contains shortcuts to other application configuration dialogs: The Map
setup, Vector map configuration, Map graphics and Strike symbol configuration dialogs can all be accessed
directly from here. Additionally, the on map legend position can be changed here as well as toggling the
display of uncorrelated strikes and selection of plot mode.
Edition: 10
Data graphics tab
(Shortcut key Ctrl+G)
Figure 8: Configuration options for the graph and system clock colors
Strike and noise alert indicator settings
Alert indicators lit-up duration will adjusts how long time in milliseconds the strike and noise indicators will
be lit when either is detected by the program. Move the slider tab back and forth to adjust this time.
Strike rate trend graph configuration and colors

Allows you to configure the different strike rate graph colors.
To change a color, click on one of the color boxes. A color picker dialog will open and allow you to change the
default color to one of your choice.
The selectable options are described in detail in the Type differentiated strike rate trend graph section.
System clock color

Allows you to change the default color of the main window date/time to a color of your choice.
Edition: 10
Strike symbols tab
Use this dialog to configure the symbol generator, assigning strike symbols to be used for plotting different
categories of strikes on the map.
NexStorm can discriminate between two types of lightning, cloud to ground (CG) or intra-cloud/in-cloud
strokes (IC). Additional filtering is done based on the polarity of the stroke and can be either positive or
negative. The NexStorm symbol generator allows you to visually discriminate between these four distinctive
types of strikes when they are plotted on the map.
Strike symbol configuration

To change a strike symbol for a specific type of strike, you must first select which type you want to change.
You do this by selecting the strike age (New Strike or Old strike button) and the strike classification
(radionbuttons -CG, -IC, +CG, +IC) Each combination can be configured to have a unique symbol setting.
(Note that the default configuration does not discriminate between the four possible stroke types.)
After selecting which strike you want to change you need to assign a symbol for it, you can browse through all
available symbols by clicking on the left and right buttons located at the bottom of the symbol preview area.
To change the size of symbols, press the up or down buttons located to the right of the symbol preview area.
If you need to assign a different color to a particular type of strike, click on the Color button to open the color
picker dialog.
The Equalize button is used to neutralize the visual discrimination of strikes by setting all symbols to be equal
as the currently selected strike category. This means that if you press this button, all categories of strikes will
use the same symbols for New strike and Old strike as the currently selected category.
Due to its long continuing current, a positive cloud to ground stroke (+CG) is considered to be one of the most
dangerous forms of lightning and is often the cause of lightning initiated fires and human deaths.
Studies show that some +CG strikes originate from the anvil at the top of the Cumulonimbus cloud, which is
the category of cloud associated with thunderstorms. As the cloud tops due to atmospheric conditions
generally are lower at higher latitudes, the distance between the cloud top and the ground becomes shorter.
This shortened cloud to ground traveling distance creates more favorable conditions for a +CG discharge and
is why this type of strike is more likely to occur the farther north or south you are in the world. At latitudes
closer to the Equator storms with predominantly +CG discharges are likely to be severe with a potential of
producing large hail and tornadoes.
Edition: 10
Strike history color codes

Color coding strikes by their age is useful for determining which way a storm is moving and to see where the
most recent activity is occurring. Adjust these settings to your preferences by selecting colors for different
ages and by altering the interval breakpoint slider. Keep in mind that this feature is in a way dependent on the
persistence setting. To allow the use of all available color codes, your Strike persistence setting (Map
graphics dialog) should be matched with the Interval breakpoint in this dialog. For instance, an interval
breakpoint of 10 and a Strike persistence setting of 30 minutes will discard the last three color codes since
they are outside the persistence setting time range.
You can decrease the number of color codes used by intentionally adjusting the settings in a way so that the
last few colors fall outside of the persistence setting. Strikes older than the maximum persistence setting will
not be plotted on the map.
Select a color for a specific interval by clicking on the color boxes to the left of the interval times. The topmost
color (first interval) is configured by setting the Old strike color, clicking on its color box will not open the color
picker dialog.
The history color coding feature is not discriminating by category, it will colorize all strikes equally irrespective
of their type or polarity. The strike type discrimination is only done on the New strike and Old strike plots until
the secondary interval becomes active.
The Reset history colors button will restore NexStorm’s default color coding settings.
To deactivate the use of history color coding, uncheck the checkbox named Color-coding enabled.
On-map legend
Check this option if you want to superimpose a legend on the map that is reflecting your Strike Symbols
setting. To change which corner of the map the legend will be rendered in, right-click on the map and select
an appropriate position using the Legend position sub-menu in the pop-up.
Edition: 10
Density plot tab
With Lightning Density Plot mode active (abbreviated LDP), NexStorm will replace the normal plotting of
strikes on the map with contour-filled areas derived from strike density. The LDP feature renders a radar-like
image and is an excellent tool for determining where the most intense lightning activity is currently located.
Figure 9. Lightning density plot showing a thunderstorm system (50 pct. alpha channel blending)
LDP logic is based on a cell grid covering the full range map area. Once a predefined number of strikes fall
into a cell, it will become active and included in the contouring process. LDP will contour adjacent cells and
color the resulting area based on the density plot settings. Areas with a less aggregation of strikes are colored
first and the densest aggregation areas last which will produce a contour-filled cell as in figure 7.
Edition: 10
To allow the map to be visible through any density areas, configurable amounts of transparency can be
applied in LDP, this is also known as alpha channel blending or alpha blend. With alpha blend enabled,
features on the map that are located underneath a contour-filled density area will be visible through the
partially transparent density layer. The degree of transparency is related to the percentage of alpha blending
applied and is adjustable in this configuration dialog. To access the Lightning density plot configuration dialog,
press Ctrl+C in NexStorm and click on the "Density plot" tab.
Figure 10. Lightning Density Plot configuration tab
To change how LDP will render density areas, select a level from 1 to 4 where 1 represents areas with lowest
strike density and 4 areas with highest strike density. Adjust the Contour grid sampling minimums accordingly,
this setting tells the application when to start plotting a specific density level. For instance, setting Level 1 grid
cell aggregation to 7 as in figure 8 means the program will start rendering areas with green color once a cell
has an aggregation of more than 5 strikes and less than 15 strikes at which point level 2 will be used for
coloring the density area.
Edition: 10
Change the amount of Final composite transparency to apply different amounts of transparency to density
plot areas. A setting of 0% means no transparency will be applied.
To render a density plot legend (see figure 5, top right corner) in one of the four corners of the map window,
check the option On-map legend. To change which corner the legend will be rendered in, right-click on the
map and select an appropriate position using the Legend position sub-menu in the pop-up.
The density level color and grid-cell aggregation settings in this dialog will take effect after the Set button is
pressed. To restore default Density plot settings, press the Restore button.
Due to its grid based nature, LDP will be subject to resolution loss as it is zoomed in on and the density areas
will become increasingly blockier. The general recommendation is to use this feature for view ranges at or
above 200 km / 125 miles radius.
Edition: 10
TRAC settings tab
Thunderstorm Ranging and Acquisition - TRAC for short - is a subprocess in NexStorm that computes
thunderstorm locations, tracks their movement and analyzes trends and characteristics of a storm. Details
about the TRAC process is located in the section describing the TRAC Report dialog.
Figure 11. TRAC settings tab
Plot storm targets Enables or disables plotting of TRAC target symbols on the map. A TRAC target is
NexStorm’s analytical guess on where storms are located. Due to the nature of single
antenna positioning systems, it will not always be correct but will in most cases give
you a fairly accurate positional estimation of a thunderstorm’s geographical location.
The symbols that are used for displaying TRAC targets are configured using TRAC
target symbols settings described below.
Ignore uncorrelated
strikes An uncorrelated strike is a strike that TRAC was not able to link to any currently
tracked thunderstorm. Enable this feature to de-clutter the map from sporadic strikes,
thus making the whole situational analysis more easy to interpret.
Ignore all strikes Enabling this feature will prevent any plotting of individual strikes on the map. This
feature can be used when the only thing of interest is TRAC computed locations of
thunderstorms.
Edition: 10
TRAC info pop-up

The TRAC info pop-up is a feature enabling you to analyze data for individual storms without having to open
the TRAC Report dialog. If you see a TRAC target on the map, position the mouse cursor over it and click to
bring up a small dialog with information and a mini-strike rate graph for this particular storm.
Figure 12. TRAC info pop-up
This dialog will close itself when the storm disappears or after the number of seconds that you configure it to
stay open. You can also force the pop-up to stay open until tracking of a storm is lost by right-clicking on the
TRAC info pop-up and selecting Pin to map. Double clicking on a TRAC info pop-up dialog will open the
TRAC Report dialog.
Close storm activity coupling

This function is critical if you want close storms to be ranged accurately and in a more natural way than would
be the case with this feature disabled. The activity coupling tells NexStorm to assume that nearby storms,
positioned within the angle parameter of the closest storm in one direction, are parts of the same storm
system. Thus the range to each target will be adjusted towards the closest TRAC target though only if the
more distant targets are within ± angle.
In some rare instances, the above logic will not apply and this could lead to incorrect ranging in certain
directions. In the majority of cases however, this feature will improve ranging to close storms considerably so
it is a general recommendation that you keep it enabled at all times. If you for some reason need to deactivate
the activity coupling just set the angle parameter to 0 degrees.
Edition: 10
Note also that the activity coupling will only affect storms (TRAC targets) that are inside the Outer boundary
distance parameter.
Figure 13. Left image shows how a storm system is ranged with activity coupling disabled. Right image shows the
same storm at the exact same time but with activity coupling enabled (20 degrees angle, 200 km/125 mi)
Note how in figure 11 right image, cluster fragmentation is almost non-existent and the entire thunderstorm
system is ranged closer with the activity coupling enabled. The right side image in fact displays exactly the
storm’s actual position this day while the left image is not as accurate for the clusters to either side of the
nearest storm. Another notable thing is the distance to the activity closest to center. At the exact point in time
when these screenshots were made, the thunderstorm was passing overhead moving towards north-east so
the activity coupling is producing overall better ranging to the storm than in the left image where it was
disabled. With this in mind, you can use the activity coupling when making ranging calibrations.
The angle and outer boundary values are by default set to 20 degrees and 100 km (63 mi) respectively but
feel free to experiment with these values if you feel it is required.
Edition: 10
On-map Ident
This feature in conjunction with the TRAC target color mapping allows you to instantly see important
characteristics of a storm by simply viewing it on the map. The identity text that is attached to a TRAC target
is called a tag. You enable On-map ident by selecting in the drop-down box how the identify labels should be
displayed, either Single or All. Single will attach the identification tag to the storm that was last selected in the
TRAC Report table. All will attach identity tags to all storms that are being tracked. (Flip tag button – see
TRAC Report section, Flip tag button)
The format of the ident code when viewed from left to right is as follows (example assumes an On-map ident
code on the map showing K-2332+4-):
K-2332 Identification code for the thunderstorm, the letter and numbers are unique for each storm
and are computed based on the time of detection. Look for this identification code in the
TRAC Report table to locate additional information about the storm.
blue - or red + Dominating Cloud to Ground strike polarity in this storm, can be negative (-) or positive (+).
4 last recorded strike rate.
strike rate ^ increasing

v decreasing
- no change or undetermined
A
Storm identification number F-6171, dominating
CG strike polarity is positive, latest recorded
strike rate per minute = 3, no detectable change
in strike rate.
B
Storm identification number F-4932, dominating
CG strike polarity is negative, last recorded
Figure 14. On-map ident examples strike rate per minute = 4, the strike rate per
minute is increasing.
C
Same as B a few minutes later, strike rate is now
12 strikes per minute and decreasing.
TRAC Target symbols

Sets which symbols should be used for displaying TRAC Color Strike rate/min Classification
targets on the map. Targets are drawn in three colors where
each color denotes a storm’s intensity based on its strike rate. Green 1-10 Weak
Yellow 11-49 Moderate
Red > 50 Strong or Severe
Table 1
Current version of NexStorm has three target symbols that you can choose from. Symbol selection is linked
meaning that the symbol you select will be used for all storm target plots, irrespective of their intensity. You
can alter the default colors that are used for storms in each intensity class and also modify the width of the
lines that the symbols are drawn with. The dash-dot and dotted line types are only available when the line-
width is set to 1 pixel.
TRAC Target persistence

This setting tells NexStorm how long time it should keep monitoring a quiet storm for additional activity. Once
the configured period of time expires, the storm is considered dissipated and the program will stop tracking it.
You can set the release time to anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes with the default being somewhere in
between.
Edition: 10
Sound tab
Use this dialog to configure which sounds to use for strike and noise beeps and for the configurable alarms.
You can configure NexStorm to use any valid sound in Wave file format (WAV).
Figure 15. Sound settings tab
To assign a WAV sound for an alert or alarm function, click on the corresponding Open file button next to the
edit box of the sound you want to assign.
You can test all of the assigned sounds by setting the desired sound mode, then selecting the alarm or alert
you wish to hear and pressing the Test button.
To remove an already assigned sound, double click the text box for the sound that you wish to remove.
You can disable strike and/or noise alert by deselecting the corresponding Enable Strike/Noise click
checkboxes. Enabling or disabling alarms and setting the number of times an alarm sound will loop is done in
the Alarm dialog described next.
Edition: 10
Alarms tab
Figure 16. Alarm configuration tab
Alarm types
NexStorm provides you with three (plus one) different types of alarms:
Severe storm alarm Triggered by a configurable strike rate set by the user.
Close storm alarm Triggered by a TRAC targeted storm cell being at or inside of an adjustable
range. If the Strike option is checked, the Close alarm will trigger on
individual strikes instead of TRAC targets.
Severe storm cell alarm Triggered when a TRAC storm cell’s strike rate goes above the user
adjustable strike rate parameter.
The Severe and Close storm alarm triggers can be shown in the main user interface window by checking the
Visible on map and Visible in graph checkboxes respectively.
Additionally, strike and noise alerts can be deactivated for events that occur outside a specific distance by
enabling the Inactive for storms outside... option.
Alarm looping configuration setting

When an alarm is triggered, its associated sound (whether played using the PC-speaker or wave sound) will
be played the amount of times that is configured under the Alarm looping configuration setting. The pause
parameter tells NexStorm how many seconds it should wait between playing consecutive alarms.
Edition: 10
Hardware tab
Figure 17: Hardware configuration options dialog
Receiver model and hardware port address

Before you can use NexStorm for detecting lightning you must configure it to match the type of Boltek
detector hardware that you are using. NexStorm supports the StormTracker PCI detector and the portable
LD-250 and LD-350 detectors. Select the detector model in the Receiver model drop down box.
If you are using the LD-250 detector, make sure to select the appropriate serial COM port before enabling the
receiver.
Edition: 10
Antenna alignment
The Antenna alignment feature allows you to mount your StormTracker antenna in any direction as the
deviation from north can be fully compensated for by adjusting the alignment parameter. The Reverse (X-Y
swap) switch must be used if the antenna north is pointing somewhere towards south, e.g. between bearing
90 and 270.
When you have made your adjustments, the figure within parenthesis above the adjustment slider will show
the direction in degrees that your antenna is physically pointing to.
Examples:
Antenna direction Adjustment Reverse (X-Y swap)

360 degrees 0 unchecked
180 degrees 0 checked
315 degrees North -45 unchecked
225 degrees South +45 checked
Table 2
The adjustment you make here will not be stored in the archived data. Archived strikes are stored without any
regard to the Antenna alignment adjustment setting.
Receiver settings
Allows you to set the StormTracker receiver hardware squelch, and to adjust the Noise sensitivity filter.
Receiver squelch
High squelch settings (above 4) may cause many weak strike signals to not be captured by the lightning
detector and should be avoided as it could affect the precision of storm ranging and TRAC. If you have a
noise problem, usually manifested as a substantial amount of false strikes plots on your map, you should first
and foremost try to locate and eliminate the source of the false signal emissions.
Noise sensitivity (StormTracker and LD-350 only)

The Noise sensitivity filter can be used to increase or decrease the amount of signals that are classified as
noises.
A setting of Low or Very low will allow more signals to be classified as strikes while a setting of High or Very
high will work the opposite way. Use the Noise sensitivity filter with caution! Lowering it might in some cases
allow for better distance ranging of thunderstorms but could in other cases interfere with the ranging process
and make it less accurate.
A Noise sensitivity filter setting of High or Very high can help in situations where false strike signals are
generated by sources in your vicinity, for instance electric fences or light dimmers. Note that higher noise
sensitivity filter settings will also cause a higher percentage of true strike signals to be classified as noise. In
extreme cases, as much as 40% of real lightning may be interpreted as noise with the Noise sensitivity filter
set to Very High. The best and only way to determine the optimal setting for your StormTracker installation is
by experimenting.
Leave the filter setting at Default if you are not sure which setting to use, or if you do not have noise
problems!
Discard artifical noise (StormTracker and LD-350 only)

With the Noise sensitivity filter set to High or Very high and Discard artificial noise enabled, false strikes which
are reclassified as noise will not be stored to the archive, affect the thunderstorm distance ranging accuracy,
nor cause the noise counter to increment. Your receiver will in other words appear to be silent, despite that
there may be considerable noise activity going on in the background. Enabling this setting when the Noise
sensitivity filter is at or above High setting is recommended unless you are fault searching your system.
Edition: 10
Reflection inverter (StormTracker and LD-350 only)

When the Reflection inverter is enabled, an electric field coherency verification algorithm in NexStorm will be
activated. This algorithm analyzes each strike signal for e-field phase errors and if any are found, an attempt
to correct the error will be made. Signals with e-field phase errors will cause the strike plot to appear on the
opposite side of where it occured. For instance, a lightning strike which occurred on bearing 225 degrees
(south west) will, if reflected, appear in bearing 45 degrees (north east) on the map. This highly undesirable
behaviour is known as a reflection or mirroring.
The Reflection inverter function may eliminate a large number of reflections but is in no way guaranteed to be
fool proof. A reflection issue is indicative of a radio signal reception problem and your primary objective in
such cases should be to try to mount the Boltek antenna so that no reflections appear. Sometimes, however,
this is not possible as reflections can be caused by obstacles such as mountains or concrete buildings. As the
effects on radio signal reception of such objects are not easy to eliminate, enabling the Reflection inverter
may improve the directional accuracy of your lightning detection system.
Do not use Reflection inverter unless you have a genuine reflection problem!
Receiver activation
Enable this setting if you want NexStorm to automatically connect to the lightning detection hardware when
the program is started.
Edition: 10
System tab
The System dialog provides you information about NexStorm memory usage, free disk space on the drive
where NexStorm is installed and allows you to adjust a few parameters related to the application’s
performance and behavior.
Archive maintenance – Autoclip

If you expect severe weather - enable this feature! The clipping of archives is used for keeping file sizes of the
currently used daily archive to controllable levels. With Autoclip enabled, the archive will be split into
manageable parts sized 4 MB each. Enabling this feature will greatly improve performance on all systems
once the archive starts growing. After a clip is performed, the part that was clipped will be renamed with a
sequential digit appended to its filename, i.e. 20030425_1.nex, 20030425_2.nex and so on. The counter data
in each archive will be valid up to the point the archive was clipped. The daily archive that was last used,
hence not renamed, will contain counter totals for the entire day.
You can at any time perform an immediate clip on the archive by pressing the Clip now button. This will clip
the archive without regard to its size so avoid performing this operation frequently.
Archive maintenance – Move after completion

This feature allows you to move a completed archive to another location on the same hard drive. Normally
you would create a subfolder in the NexStorm installation folder and configure this feature to move completed
archives to this location.
Daily archives are finalized at midnight each day and it is after this point in time that they will be relocated.
Don’t forget to select which folder to use as the archive storage by pressing on the Directory button and
selecting a folder or this function will not have any effect! Note that NexStorm will only move the previous
day’s archive if it is allowed to run past the point at which date change occurs.
Archive maintenance – Do not archive noises

Enable this option if you are not interested in archiving noise data. Not archiving noise data will render smaller
archives so this setting is particularly useful if your setup has intermittent noise problems which would cause
the program to store a lot of garbage data in the archives. You should strive for as noise-free environment
as possible when mounting your lightning detector antenna! Even moderate amounts of false
electromagnetic signals (showing as strikes and/or noises on the NexStorm display) may adversely
affect ranging accuracy.
NexStorm VM Usage, System status, Memory Status and Internal memory buffer.
The virtual memory usage setting (VM) controls how much system memory NexStorm will allocate to store its
strike data in. All strikes and noises are stored into a memory buffer, the VM usage setting controls how much
system memory this buffer will use.
You can see how many strike records will fit into the buffer with your current VM usage setting by looking at
the Memory status/Reserved space entry. The amount of kilobytes these records occupy is visible directly
below. The percentage of virtual memory used is visible in the System virtual memory usage bar, this should
correspond to the setting you chose for VM usage.
You can also see how much of the entire buffer is currently being used by looking at the NexStorm buffer
usage bar.
Once the memory buffer is full, NexStorm will begin recycling it. The oldest strikes will be removed from
memory and new strikes will be put in the buffer in place of older ones. A buffer usage of 100% is in other
words nothing that will stop NexStorm from running, it just means that the entire allocated buffer has been
populated with data and is a perfectly normal situation. Old strike data is always saved to the archive so you
will not risk losing any data even when the buffer is filled to capacity.
You can adjust the VM usage between 5 and 20 percent. It is recommended that you adapt this setting to the
amount of memory you have installed on your system. 5 percent is recommended any time your installed
Edition: 10
RAM is less than 128 MB. This setting will affect performance on low end systems, if you are running anything
slower than a 500 MHz processor you should reduce the buffer allocation to a minimum. After you have made
adjustments you will need to restart NexStorm for the new settings to take effect.
Internal memory buffer information holds information about the purging of the memory buffer. Every once in a
while, NexStorm will clean out the buffer of strikes that are older than the maximum persistence setting of 300
minutes. As these strikes cannot be displayed anyway, there is no need to keep them stored in memory.
Purging will improve performance by allowing NexStorm to iterate through a smaller amount of records when
plotting strikes on the map as compared to if the buffer was not purged. You can see at what time the buffer
was purged and when the next purge will occur. After a purge has been done, you should see NexStorm
buffer usage decrease a bit, the amount will depend on the number of records that were purged.
Lastly, keep a watchful eye on the Disk usage bar. This indicator shows you how much space is used on the
hard drive unit where NexStorm is installed. If the disk starts becoming full, the bar will turn yellow to alert you
of this. At this point you should seriously consider removing unused files to free up disk space, NexStorm will
not be able to run if it has insufficient disk space for storing its data.
Edition: 10
Ranging tab
Under this tab you can adjust all of NexStorm's non-segmented ranging functions. There are four range
modifiers that can be used independent of each other, which ones you should use depends on the type of
ranging calibrations that you need to make.
Figure 18. Ranging configuration settings
Nighttime ranging up shift

This function will change ranging of strikes upwards by the specified percentage and starting from the
specified distance but only during night!
Nighttime ranging upshift utilizes a sun position calculator. In order for this feature to activate and deactivate
at the correct times you have to enter your location's Degrees Decimal latitude, longitude and UTC standard
time offset. Once these parameters are set and Enabled is checked, the sunrise and sunset times will be
displayed in the upper right corner of the panel with Daylight Savings Time (DST) automatically adjusted for.
During replay, Daylight Savings Time cannot be computed for the date of the archived data. To override the
default (today’s) DST state, open the Replay setup dialog (green arrow in the replay control dialog) and select
or deselect DST. When first opened, the DST Override setting will be enabled or disabled depending on if
DST is active for the current day.
Edition: 10
Why differentiated night time ranging is useful

Lightning detectors such as the Boltek StormTracker and LD-250 are subject to radio signal propagation laws.
When a lightning strike occurs it will emit a radio signal pulse that propagates towards the detector antenna
both as a ground wave and a sky wave. A sky wave is essentially a signal that was “bounced off” the Earth's
ionosphere at least once. This enables sky waves to propagate much further than ground waves. The
phenomenon is well known among amateur radio enthusiasts and enables them to communicate across great
distances when atmospheric conditions are favorable.
The ionosphere consists of several layers called D, E, F1 and F2, where the D-Layer will absorb sky wave
signals in certain frequencies during daylight hours. The F1/F2 layers, commonly referred to as the F-layer, is
in effect reflecting these waves, bouncing them back towards earth with minimal attenuation. Shortly after the
sun sets, the D-Layer will begin to break up which allows the higher level F-layer to reflect signals that were
being absorbed by the D-Layer during daytime conditions. Under certain conditions and especially during
night time hours, lightning signals from very distant thunderstorms can therefore “sky-hop” their way to your
antenna by bouncing between the F-layer and the ground one or more times.
Occasionally you may therefore observe more or less well defined storms appearing relatively close to your
location while the actual thunderstorm that is generating the lightning is located much farther away, often
outside the range of the map. If you see this phenomenon then the most probable explanation is that the
atmospheric conditions are favorable for sky wave propagation
The Nighttime ranging upshift can partially or fully compensate the incorrect ranging that occurs with some of
these distant thunderstorms but you should not expect it to be accurate all the time. The NexStorm ranging
formula becomes more error prone at greater distances because of the reduced amounts of captured
lightning signals. But there are also other factors which will influence the performance of the Nighttime
ranging upshift feature, such as daily and seasonal variations in atmospheric conditions or surrounding
terrain.
The ranging upshift will activate at sunset and gradually be applied until full effect is reached around 30
minutes after initial activation. Similarly, after sunrise, the upshift effect will be gradually reduced and reach
minimum/switch off level after around 30 minutes. If the latitude, longitude and UTC offset are all set correctly,
the times at which Nighttime ranging upshift activates and deactivates will correlate rather well with the
dissipation and formation of the D-Layer.
The optimal values for Range shift and Boundary will be different for different locations but may also vary for
the same location on different days.
Edition: 10
General ranging correction

Allows you to adjust how individual strikes should be ranged by NexStorm. The General ranging correction is
a weighting modifier, that is, by adjusting it the TRAC sub-process will be “nudged” or biased to range storms
towards the direction of the applied adjustment.
Negative values means that strikes will be ranged closer to the center, positive values means strikes will be
ranged farther away. The 2x effect boost will double the power of the ranging adjustment and can be used if
you find that the default maximum or minimum setting is not sufficient for your calibrations. Note that there is
also a separate 2x effect boost provided in the Segmented Ranging Correction
The General ranging correction is omni-directional, changing it will affect strike ranging in all directions.
Strikes that occurred before an adjustment was made will not be affected. To see the effect on TRAC targeted
stormcells you must allow the program to process some 30 or more strikes per target before the adjustment
you did will have any impact on the storm distance. For this reason it is better to use the Replay for calibration
work using General ranging correction as you then can speed up the whole process.
Remember to have a great deal of patience when making ranging calibrations! These kind of adjustments can
take several months to get perfect and even then you cannot expect every single storm to be positioned
accurately. Instead of making calibrations on real-time data, make notes of how and where storms are ranged
good or not so good and then use the Replay function at a later time to make your calibrations – it will save
you a lot of time.
Use the General ranging correction in conjunction with the Segmented Ranging Correction to achieve optimal
ranging. The Segmented ranging allows you to adjust ranging for 8 separate sectors and should be used
where environmental circumstances require differentiated directional ranging. One such example is a location
with a large body of water in one direction and land mass in the other. In this example thunderstorms over
water will in many instances be ranged differently than storms over land due to signal attenuation differences
over land versus water.
Plot scale adjustment

This function will change the strike X-Y coordinate to map scale ratio. Plot scale adjustment is a high-level
graphics function with immediate effect, sliding the plot scale slider back and forth does not affect the ranging
algorithms (contrary to the General ranging correction) and the result can be instantly seen on the map.
Setting the plot scale adjustment to values above one will move strikes and storms farther from center, values
less than one will move them closer. It is easy to calculate the new distance by simply taking the current
distance of a storm (or strike) and multiplying it with the new Plot scale factor.
Why two different ranging adjustments that seemingly work the same way?
Although superficially the General ranging correction and Plot scale adjustment appear to be doing the same
thing, they do it in different ways yielding slightly different results. Each method has its advantages and
disadvantages as described below.
The Plot scale adjustment is instant but will modify the shape of a storm cluster by radially elongating it. This
problem gets worse the more you scale the range upwards (values > 1.0). Similarly, for downscaled ranges
the storm clusters will become more compressed although this is not as evident as the radial elongation that
occurs with upscaling. The reason for this behavior is that when you adjust the Plot scale, you are also
modifying the radial distance ratio of the area (i.e. the map) where strike and storm data are being plotted.
The General ranging does not exhibit the radial elongation or compression problem but is on the other hand
more complicated to adjust properly since you are not modifying existing strike and storm positions, but rather
instructing NexStorm which way to bias ranging. Another drawback with General ranging correction is that it
will take a much longer time for the adjustment to take effect. Depending on the strike rate of a storm it can
take anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes before you see the effects of your change. Generally you should
use Plot scale adjustment if you need to make smaller corrections frequently or during calibration work when
you want to estimate how much General or Segmented ranging needs to be applied. After transferring the
required Plot scale change to either one of the other two available ranging functions, the former should be
reset to zero.
Edition: 10
Figure 19. Radial elongation example. Note how the radial length of these two storms varies depending on
which ranging adjustment method is used
Noise Ranging Assist

During nearby thunderstorm activity and where the environment around the detector is free from interfering
noise signals, a series of noises immediately preceding a valid strike will in most cases indicate that initiating
portions of a strike were captured by the detector (related intra-cloud component, stepped leader etc). The
Boltek detector is capable of detecting these relatively weak electromagnetic signals at close range but
determining the direction of such an event can be difficult and they are therefore often classified as noises.
If such a noise pattern is detected by NexStorm, the program will utilize it to produce a better estimation of the
distance to a co-incidental strike. The Noise Ranging Assist has four effect levels where Full is the default
setting. If you notice that ranging of close storms is too much biased towards center, try lowering the Noise
Ranging Assist gradually until ranging becomes more accurate.
The Noise Ranging Assist function is vital for achieving accurate close storm ranging and should only be
disabled if you are having serious noise problems with your detector! It is imperative that you make sure that
your lightning detector is not picking up continuous noises from artificial sources such as electrical equipment.
If you find that you are unable to use the Noise Ranging Assist feature then this is a good indicator that
relocating your antenna might be necessary. Alternatively, you could try to find and eliminate the noise source
that is causing your problems.
Occasional noise indications of 1 per minute or less frequently does not affect the performance of Noise
Ranging Assist.
Edition: 10
Cloud-ground ranging (StormTracker and LD-350 only)

This new feature introduced enables the software to only use strikes classified as cloud-ground for distance
ranging computations.
When enabled only +CG and -CG strikes will affect TRAC target positions. Intra-cloud (IC) strikes are range
adjusted towards the closest TRAC target location but will not affect its position.
To only use -CG strikes for range computations, enable the -CG only option.
To inhibit plotting of all strikes that do not affect ranging, enable the "Plot only" option. Note that if -CG only
and Plot only options both are enabled, the software will only plot -CG strokes on the display.
Because of the predominantly vertically oriented electromagnetic fields of a CG strike, this feature should in
theory yield more accurate distance ranging. However, CG ranging may not work poorly for low intensity
storms or storms that consists of predominantly cloud lightning. There is in other words no guarantees that
enabling this feature will automatically yield more accurate ranging. It is up to you to test and determine
whether CG ranging has the desired effect and, if necessary, combine this with other range calibration
features to achieve optimal performance.
In contrast to +CG flashes, -CG flashes will usually consist of several individual strikes where the total count
of strikes constitute the "flash multiplicity". Isolating ranging to -CG only may therefore improve overall ranging
accuracy further because the software will in most cases be able to obtain several range samples per flash.
Edition: 10
TYPE DIFFERENTIATED STRIKE RATE GRAPH

The NexStorm strike rate graph can be configured to display historical strike rate data in several different
ways. The graph is type differentiated, which means that the different strike types can be represented using
separate graph plots, and persistent which means that the graph data is saved to disk and will persist through
software restarts.
Time scale
The graph can be configured to display different time intervals, ranging from 0-15 minutes and up to 0-24
hours. The 24, 12, 8 and 4 hour graphs have a 2-minute granularity (time resolution and display refresh rate)
while the graphs spanning 120 minutes or less have a 20 second granularity.
To change the time scale, press F1 to increase or F2 to decrease.
Strike rate scale

The scale which indicates the strike rate is scaled automatically. The lowest possible range on the vertical
axis is 0-30 strikes per minute. The upper bound is infinite.
Graph smoothing
The different graphs can all be smoothed by applying a Laplace 5-pass smoothing algorithm. The difference
between a smoothed and non-smoothed graph is illustrated in fig.17 where identical graph data is shown with
and without smoothing applied. A side by side comparison of an equivalent stacked graph is shown in fig.20.
Figure 20: Non-smoothed (black) and smoothed (red) graph comparison
As is evident in fig.17, graph peaks will be smoothed out so that the peak strike rate shown in the graph will in
most cases be lower than indicated by the numerical peak strike rate indicator. Smoothing is used to improve
the visualization of strike rate data but will on the other hand make the graph less accurate. If accuracy is
important then use of smoothing should be avoided.
To toggle graph smoothing, press the F3 key or select the corresponding option from the Trend graph menu
or the Data graphics configuration dialog.
Edition: 10
Graph modes
The graph has two different presentation modes which makes it possible to display strike rate data in slightly
different ways.
Normal mode
In normal mode, each graph will be plotted so that the strike rate value correctly matches the scale indicator.
Figure 21: 120 min normal mode graph, showing

total and close strike rates, and noise rate
Similarly to a stacked mode graph (see below), a normal mode graph also has the capability to show
differentiated strike rate data. For longer time series, differentiated graphs in normal mode can turn out to be
less useful because the graph may become cluttered and difficult to read.
Figure 22: 30 min differentiated, smoothed normal

mode graph
Graphs available in normal mode:

• Total strike rate
• Close strike rate
• Noise rate (optional)
• +CG, -CG, +IC and -IC rate (optional, not available with LD-250)
Edition: 10
Stacked mode
In contrast to the normal mode graph, the stacked mode graph is used to more efficiently present the
relationship between strike type specific strike rates. Here, each graph is plotted so that it represents the
aggregate value of its own data set and all of the data sets beneath.
Figure 23: Side by side comparison of a 4-hour stacked graph without (left) and with (right) smoothing
In stacked mode, the topmost graph is the one that will show the total true strike rate. To obtain the actual
strike rate value for an individual graph you must subtract the strike rate values of all the graphs beneath it.
Stacked mode is particularly useful for observing changes in polarity and strike type distributions in
thunderstorms over time.
Graphs available in stacked mode:

• Stacked +CG, -CG, +IC and -IC rate
The stacked graph mode and differentiation is not available with the LD-250 detector!
To toggle between normal and stacked mode, use the F4 key or select the corresponding option from the
Trend graph menu or the Data graphics configuration dialog.
Edition: 10
USER INTERFACE POP-UP MENUS
There are two pop-up menus available directly under the user interface. The first one is accessed by hovering
the mouse pointer anywhere over the map window and clicking the right mouse button. This menu contains a
number of shortcuts to help you configure your map window display and presentation of data.
The second pop-up menu is accessed by right-clicking on the Range label or the current range indicator to
the right of this label. This action will bring up the Quick zoom pop-up menu which allows you to select a
specific view range instantly instead of having to step through a number of zoom levels using the Insert or
Delete keys.
Map pop-up menu
Figure 24. Map pop-up menu
The first 5 entries in this menu will open a color picker dialog if clicked. Use this to change the respective
colors of the various map overlay components.
Map setup will open the map assignment dialog and is equivalent to selecting NexStorm->Map setup from
the main menu or pressing Ctrl+M.
Vector map configuration opens the dialog where you can change the colors of CVM map layers, hide or
display the different available layers or recenter the CVM map center. Accessing the vector map configuration
can also be done by pressing Ctrl+E
Map graphics and Strike symbols will open the main configuration dialog with the respective tab already
selected. This is equivalent to pressing Ctrl+C and then clicking one of these tabs.
Edition: 10
Legend position allows you to position the strike symbol legend or the density plot legend in one of the four
corners of the map window.
Ignore uncorrelated strikes toggles the plotting mode between showing and hiding uncorrelated strikes. You
can also change this setting in the Configuration dialog, TRAC Settings tab.
Toggle lightning density plot switches between the normal strike plotting mode and the density plot mode,
selecting this option is equivalent to pressing the shortcut key Ctrl+A.
Quick zoom pop-up menu
Figure 25. Quick zoom pop-up menu
Right-clicking on the Range label or the adjacent current range indicator label will bring up the Quick zoom
pop-up menu. Select which range to zoom in to by clicking one of the available ranges in this menu. The
currently selected range will be checked as can be seen in the above screenshot. Although NexStorm can
zoom out to 2400 km (1500 mi) with a CVM map installed, only ranges between 25 km (16 mi) and 1200 km
(750 mi) are available in the Quick zoom pop-up menu.
Edition: 10
VECTOR MAP CONFIGURATION
This section of the manual only applies if you have purchased and installed a Composite Vector Map. To
obtain a custom CVM map for you location, please visit our website or contact us by email.
NexStorm supports a custom map format called CVM. This section describes the vector map configuration
dialog that is only accessible when a CVM map has been loaded.
The procedure for assigning a CVM map to NexStorm is exactly the same as for the regular BMP format
maps. Once assigned, pressing Ctrl+E or selecting Vector map configuration from the map window pop-up
menu (click the right mouse button while the mouse pointer is hovering over the map) will bring up the dialog
shown in figure 23.
Figure 26. Vector map configuration dialog
The CVM map is layered, this means that there are several separate geographical data objects all packed in
the CVM file, for instance country borders, state boundaries and county boundaries. A layer can be either
polygon based or polyline based and each layer has its own color settings. Polygon based layers have
separate outline and filling colors while a polyline layer consists only of lines so there is only one color that
can be altered.
Normally, country boundaries are polygon based while highways, state and county boundaries are polyline
based. The Type label in the Vector map configuration dialog will indicate which type the currently selected
layer belongs to.
The following page describes each of the available vector map configuration options.
Edition: 10
Vector map configuration dialog breakdown
Layer: Allows you to select which of the available layer you want to work on.
Line width: Sets the outlining line thickness for the layer that is currently being shown.
Outline: The outline color used for this layer. Click inside the color box to change the color.
Fill: The fill color used for this layer. If the layer type is polyline, the fill color box will be dashed indicating
there is no color that can be modified
Visible: Check this option if you want the currently selected layer to be hidden, i.e. not drawn on the map.
Map background: Click inside the map background color box to change the background color used.
Type: Label displaying what type the layer currently is, polygon or polyline
Align map: If you need to adjust the map center, use the arrow buttons to move the map in one of four
directions. The closer you zoom in on the map, the more precise will the movement become. To reset any
alignment that has been made, press the center button with a red ‘C’ on it.
Save color settings: Press this button to save any color changes you have made. Note that the CVM map is
self-contained in regard to its data so any changes you make will be saved directly to the CVM file! For
this reason it is strongly recommended that you make a backup copy of your CVM map before you start
modifying its color settings.
Edition: 10
REPLAY
The replay feature is used not only for replaying older archives in NexStorm, it is also an excellent tool for
ranging calibrations. Despite the name of this feature it does not replay the archive in the true sense of the
word. Instead, while you are replaying, NexStorm actually reprocesses each strike in the archive, using its
raw data component as the source for computation. It is very much comparable to your Boltek StormTracker
hardware receiving a strike that is then processed by NexStorm, only with replay, the signal arrives from the
archive. For this reason, replaying the same archive twice, will produce similar but rarely identical results.
Before we go through the available features in replay you should note that during a replay session, the file
upload and file copy features will be blocked from operating. The screenshot feature will remain available in
either real-time or replay mode and the real-time capturing of strikes will keep running in the background until
you exit replay. Automatic TRAC Report generation will be disabled during replay, you can however at any
time during replay press the Save button in the TRAC Report dialog to generate a report based on the
replayed data. The real-time TRAC data is kept in memory until you exit replay.
The replay panel

Open the panel through the menu NexStorm->Replay or use shortcut keys Ctrl+R. Note that NexStorm will
not enter replay mode until you actually load an archive, just opening the replay panel has no visible effect on
the real-time capture. You will be able to see the switch between modes by looking at the NexStorm system
clock, a capital ‘R’ is always visible after the time when the replay mode is made active.
There are 8 buttons on the replay panel that are used for
immediate replay control. The buttons are (from left to right in
figure 11):
1. Open archive
2. Rewind to start time
3. Stop
Figure 27. Replay panel 4. Play
5. Increase replay speed
6. Decrease replay speed
7. Toggle archive activity graph
8. More options
Button 8 - More options will open separate dialog where you

can configure looping, replay start and stop times and switch
Daylight Savings Time or set NexStorm to replay and loop the
archive currently in use (i.e. archive of today).
Archive activity graph

This is a graph that shows you the distribution of activity in an archive that you are about to open. It will
additionally display the amount of records (strikes and noises) that the archive contains, the distribution
between the various types of records and when the first and last events (strike or noise) were captured. In the
graph you will be able to see how the strike rate fluctuates during different times of the day and you can use
this to easily locate a time of interest to replay specific parts of the archive.
The graph is activated when the Open archive button (1) is pressed and is populated with data when a valid
NexStorm archive in the open file dialog is highlighted. Once you open the archive, the graph will close. You
can reopen the graph at any time while in the replay mode by clicking the Toggle archive activity graph
button. This button toggles the activity graph between visible and hidden.
Opening an archive for replay

Click on button 1 (with a folder icon) in the replay panel. A file dialog will open along the archive activity graph.
When you highlight an archive that contains some data you should see, the archive activity graph becomes
populated with information. To open this archive, click on Open in the open file dialog or double-click on the
archive file. Once the archive is loaded you should see its name above the Open archive button.
Edition: 10
Replaying an archive
You can immediately start replaying the archive by clicking on the Play button (4). The replay start-time is
automatically set to begin replaying from the first recorded event in the archive but since a lone strike or noise
early in the morning hours will affect this setting, you should initially adjust the start-time lightly before the real
actions begins. To adjust the start and stop times, click on the More options button (8). Set the desired start
and/or stop time and check the checkbox “Loop replay” if you want NexStorm to keep replaying this archive
indefinitely. Note that if you are in the middle of replaying an archive and click on the More options button, the
replay will be halted.
Use the archive activity graph to pinpoint where in the archive the action can be found and adjust the replay
start and stop times accordingly.
The Rewind button (2) will reset the replay to whatever time you have set the start-time to.
The Stop button (3) will halt the replay until you press Play (4) again.
Adjust replay speed up or down using buttons 5 and 6. You can see the current replay speed right above the
speed setting buttons.
Maximum replay speed is 1024x which equates approximately 17 minutes for each passing second while the
replay is running. You should be aware that, depending on the intensity of the storms that are being replayed
and the computer you are using, very high replay speeds will adversely affect the NexStorm performance in
general.
To replay and loop today's archive’s last 30 or 60 minutes, click the More options button and press the
appropriate button. This particular feature in the replay will replay the last 30 or 60 minutes of today's archive,
then reload the latest captured data once it has played the archive to the end.
You may also replay the currently used archive by opening it like any other older archive but you will not have
the option to set the start and stop times. This feature is only available to allow viewing data captured prior to
the last 60 minutes. To be able to replay today's archive with time control, make a copy of today's archive and
replay the copy instead. You do not have to disable or restart the program in order to make a copy, NexStorm
does not continuously lock the archive file while running.
To adjust ranging with the replay, refer to the Ranging adjustment section of this manual. The procedure for
applying ranging correction is identical irrespective of which mode you are in, replay or real-time.
Edition: 10
DATA EXPORT OPTIONS

Data export utility setup dialog
Using this dialog, you can configure the built-in automatic screenshot feature and the automated data transfer
function settings.
Data transfer configuration
Figure 28. Data export, transfer configuration tab
Transfer settings
FTP Server Domain name server or IP-address of the web server to where you want to upload
data.
Port Port number used for your FTP connection. Port 21 is the default FTP port number.
Mode PASV or PORT, see above for details.
Username Username required for logging in to your FTP host.
Password Password required for logging in to your FTP host.
Destination directory Enter the path of the directory you want to upload data to here. The last directory in a
path does not need to have a file separator character appended to it. Use Unix file path
separators (forward slash, ‘/’) when entering paths, i.e. /home/www/uploads.
Edition: 10
Upload options
Interval Set the interval to the desired number of minutes between each data exporting event. The
interval can be set between 1 and 120 minutes.
Include TRAC
report in upload Will also upload the textual TRAC report when uploading other data. For details on TRAC,
refer to the TRAC section if this manual.
Use File Copy

instead of FTP This feature will disable the FTP upload and instead use file copy to move the desired files
and screenshot between directories. When enabled, the upper half of the Data export
dialog will display the file copy settings in place of the FTP settings. Choose the source and
destination directory by clicking on the folder button for each edit box, then browse to and
double-click on the desired directory in the Select directory dialog that opens.
Other settings
Enable upload Check this to enable the main file upload or copy.
Edition: 10
Screenshots
NexStorm has a built-in, in-memory screenshot feature. When active you do not need to keep the application
user interface visible on screen, the screenshots will be captured even if the application is minimized to the
taskbar or system tray. You can set how often you want a screenshot to be taken by adjusting the interval
setting. If you wish to save each screenshot you can configure NexStorm to name each screenshot image
uniquely by checking the ‘Append date stamp to filename’ checkbox, this will give each screenshot a unique
filename based on the date and time it was captured.
Image formats
NexStorm supports several image formats that your screenshots can be saved in. The available formats and
their respective pros and cons are listed below:
Windows Bitmap (BMP) This is the native windows image format. The number of colors in the image is
variable and adapted to your monitor’s settings.
Pros : High quality.
Cons: Large file size, not compressed. Not guaranteed to be viewable on the Internet
except with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
JPEG Widely used format for photographic images, supports True Color.
Pros: Includes compression adjustment, good format for digital photography.
Cons: Lossy compression scheme, causes smearing of image colors if used with
compression. Not ideal for computer graphics like diagrams and maps. Uncompressed
JPEG’s get very big, comparable to BMP format.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics, pronounced ‘ping’) This is the best option for publishing
images on the Internet. PNG fomat is very versatile and can be used for both line art and
photographic images.
PNG 8 bit Supports 256 colors and should be only be used with PC screens that are set to 8 bit
colors. If you use the 8 bit PNG format to capture screenshots that contain more than 256
colors you are likely to see color conversion artifacts in the resulting image.
PNG 24 bit Supports 16 million colors and can be used with displays that use High or True color
settings.
Pros: Adaptable compression level, will yield maximum possible compression
automatically. Lossless compression scheme; Will not lose color information when
compressed (no smearing). All modern browsers support viewing of the PNG format.
Cons: Not as widely known as its competitor, the GIF file format. Lacks the GIF's capability
of containing animation sequences.
Select which format you wish your screenshots to be saved in by checking the appropriate radio button. PNG
is the recommended format to use when publishing your screenshots on the Internet! It will render your
screenshots with maximum quality and minimum file size.
Edition: 10
Figure 29. Data export, Screenshot configuration tab
Screenshot — additional settings
Save interval
Adjusts the screenshot capture and save interval. If Controls upload is disabled, the set interval will be
overridden by the interval set on the Data transfer tab.
JPEG compression quality

Set the compression quality with this slider. Depending on the number of colors used in your map, you should
be able to obtain good quality images using a compression factor of 70% or higher. The higher compression
factor you choose, the larger will the resulting image be.
Screenshot save directory

Sets the directory where screenshots will be saved. If not explicitly set, screenshots will be saved to
NexStorm installation folder.
Screenshot filename
Sets the filename for all of your screenshots including the ones that become uploaded by the data transfer
feature.
Append date stamp to filename

Will give each captured screenshot a unique filename by the appending date and a time to the base filename.
WARNING! Enabling this feature will cause NexStorm to generate lots of screenshot files! Depending on the
configured save interval this may fill up your disk quickly.
Screenshot copyright string

Allows you to enter a copyright string that will be drawn on the exported screenshot.
Position on map
Selection of one of four corners of the map where the copyright string will be rendered.
Edition: 10
Capture map only

If enabled, the data portion of the user interface will not be visible in the saved screenshot
Stats bar
If enabled, the screenshot will contain meta-data (strike rate, range, plot mode, persistence and screenshot
date/time) at the top of a map-only screenshot.
Enable
Enables or disables the screenshot feature. When you check this checkbox you will notice that the Capture
label in the main user interface will change its status to reflect the currently selected setting.
Edition: 10
TRAC REPORT
Thunderstorm Ranging and Acquisition
Thunderstorm Ranging and Acquisition, or TRAC for short, is a sub-process in NexStorm that contains all the
logic behind computing where thunderstorms are located and analyzing their characteristics. TRAC can also
produce a text-based report based on its findings to show you details about individual storms. The TRAC
related On-map ident feature uses TRAC data to display important information about a thunderstorm in coded
format directly on the map. If the On-map ident is enabled, each storm will have a tag attached to it, this tag
will show you the storm's identification number, its polarity, current strike rate and the strike rate trend over
the last few minutes.
When TRAC has detected what it believes to be a structured thunderstorm system, it will start tracking it until
the storm dissipates or the tracking could not be maintained for other reasons.
Targets
A tracked thunderstorm is called a target and the location of each target will be drawn on the map if the Plot
TRAC targets feature is enabled (see Configuration). Targets can have different colors depending on the
intensity of the storm being tracked. The symbols and colors that are used for drawing targets on the map are
to some degree user configurable. The intensity level and the corresponding default color setting are
described in table 3.
TRAC Target colors and intensities
Color Strike rate/min Classification If two targets collide, they will merge. The least active target will
in that case become a part of the more active one. The 20
Green 1-10 Weak minutes trend parameter will be reset at that point to allow for
Yellow 11-49 Moderate recalculation of the new storm's actual intensity level. Strikes
Red > 50 Strong or Severe that fall near a target are instantly coupled with it, these strikes
are called correlated. Strikes that fall too far away from any
target are classified as uncorrelated.
Table 3
Storm severity classification is an inverse function of distance to a thunderstorm so the figures shown in
tables 3 and 4 will not apply for more distant storms. The figures presented here are based on “ideal” storms
that are within 150 km range (93 miles). The more distant a storm is, the lower the strike rate will be needed
for upgrading its severity classification.
TRAC Report
TRAC will periodically generate a report based on current activity. This report can be viewed in tabular format
from within NexStorm by opening the TRAC Report dialog (Ctrl+T) and optionally saved to disk in plain text
format. The viewable report is updated approximately every 10 seconds. You can also set automatic saving of
reports to occur in intervals down to 5 minutes with the AutoSave feature or make an immediate save by
pressing the Save button. When automatic or immediate saving is performed, there will be two reports with
identical contents saved to disk, one with and one without a date stamp appended to the filename. The report
without a date stamp is used for exporting purposes such as uploading it to the Internet or for viewing over the
intranet.
All reports are by default saved to the NexStorm reports subfolder, this cannot be changed. The reports
subfolder will be created when the very first save is performed after installation.
If TRAC Report AutoSave is disabled and the Include TRAC Report in transfer feature is enabled in the Data
export dialog, a non-date stamped report will be generated and saved to disk each time an upload or copy is
about to occur.
Edition: 10
TRAC Report dialog

While a thunderstorm is being tracked it is also being continuously analyzed. You can view the results of the
real-time analysis in the TRAC Report table. The table contains the following data fields:
Ident Identification code, a letter followed by a dash and one or more digits.
Detected Time when the storm was first detected.
Bng Bearing to storm target.
Dist Distance to the storm target (units are according to the Map graphics configuration).
Active Time of last recorded activity.
Intensity Intensity classification (also see color of this particular table row) can be: Weak
Moderate
Strong
Severe
Trend Rate per minute trend over the last few minutes, can be: Undetermined
No change
Increasing
Decreasing
Rate/m Last recorded strike rate.
Edition: 10
To view the peak strike rate, accumulated totals and strike distribution details for a specific storm, click on the
row of interest in the report table, the area below the table will then be populated with additional data.
Figure 30. TRAC report dialog with storm M-3271 highlighted
Each row with contents in the TRAC Report dialog table will be colored accordingly to indicate the intensity of
a storm, similar to the target symbols. Contrary to the TRAC target symbols however, the report table has the
ability to distinguish between strong and severe thunderstorms. Table 4 contains details about the color
coding.
TRAC Report colors and intensities

Color Rate/min Classification
Green 1-10 Weak

Yellow 11-49 Moderate
Red 50-124 Strong
Orange >125 Severe Table 4
Flip tag button

The Flip tag button is used if you want to change the position of where the ident tag is displayed, by pressing
this button the position of the tag will toggle between upper left and lower right corner of a TRAC target. Tags
can also be positioned at the upper right or lower left if the target is close to the edge of the map display
where it would otherwise disappear from view or be clipped. In those cases, pressing the Flip tag button will
toggle between the currently used positions. Note that this button is available both in the TRAC Report dialog
and through the On-map ident settings under the TRAC settings tab.
For additional configurable TRAC settings, refer to the Configuration dialog section, TRAC settings.
If you are using the Boltek LD-250 detector, classification of stroke type and polarity is not available and
cannot be shown in the TRAC report. Because of this, the On-map ident tag will show a star (*) in place of the
polarity sign.
Edition: 10
SEGMENTED RANGING CORRECTION KERNEL

In contrast to the non-linear General ranging correction that adjusts ranging of strikes for all directions, the
Segmented ranging correction allows you to calibrate ranging on a per sector and distance segment basis.
The segmented ranging is linear, one unit of correction is equally worth no matter if the total calibration value
is high or low.
Kernels
The Segmented ranging consists of 56 adjustable cells (8 sectors with 7 distance segments for each sector).
When put together, these cells are called a ranging kernel. A kernel can be saved to disk and loaded at a later
time. Once you change a kernel and save it, that particular kernel will be used by NexStorm for ranging until a
different kernel is loaded or the kernel parameters are reset. You can have several kernels saved on disk but
only one at a time can be used for ranging. Custom-made kernels should be stored in the \rkernel subfolder in
NexStorm installation directory.
You can name each saved kernel differently, assign a revision number to it and write a short comment to
keep track of changes you have made. To set a revision number or write comment for the currently loaded
kernel, open the Kernel info dialog from within the Segmented ranging correction dialog.
Linking
When calibrating, you can link a sector or a distance segment so that the changes you make are
synchronized for the whole sector or the distance segment in all sectors. You can also crosslink a sector with
a distance segment or vice versa. Any change of value you then make will apply to all distance segments for
that sector. Similarly, changes made to a distance segment will apply for all sectors if the distance segment is
crosslinked with a sector.
Figure 31. Linked ranges and sectors in the Segmented ranging correction kernel
Edition: 10
To fully understand the implementation of this feature it is recommended that you experiment with it by
enabling and disabling linking while changing the values. After you are done experimenting you can reset the
kernel to reset all ranging correction values to zero.
Ranging kernel sectors are automatically de-rotated which means that you do not have to account for any
antenna alignment you have made while calibrating ranging. This means that you should modify ranging
kernel sectors where storms are actually being shown on the map, without having to account for any antenna
alignment that was made previously.
Calibration values
One unit of correction is equivalent to approximately one kilometer for the raw component of the strike signal.
However, because TRAC modifies the location of each strike before it is plotted, the unit-to-distance
relationship will always be altered to some degree, either upwards or downwards.
Negative values (blue color) will bring strikes closer towards center, positive values (red color) will push
strikes out towards edge of the map.
Enabling 2x effect boost will double the power of each unit of measurement. The actual ranging kernel value
will not change, only its power.
How to calibrate
The recommended procedure when calibrating ranging is to first adjust the General ranging correction so that
NexStorm ranges strikes as accurately as possible; then use the Segmented ranging for additional
corrections required for the ranging to become optimal. Remember to have a great deal of patience when
calibrating, this is not something you can expect to complete in a couple of days. It is of little use to calibrate
on single, sporadic strikes or very weak storms. NexStorm accuracy normally increases with increased
lightning activity so your best bet is to calibrate on storms that individually have strike rates of 5 strikes per
minute or above.
To verify the new calibration settings you must allow the program to process several strikes before any
changes will become evident. Calibrating ranging on real-time storms can therefore be time-consuming so the
preferred way of doing this is by using the Replay feature.
Edition: 10
Software technical support
Before contacting support please visit our website and support forum to see if the problem you are
experiencing has already been reported, or if there are software upgrades, solutions or workarounds available
that may solve your problem.
You should also always try to replicate the problem with NexStorm running standalone on the computer
where the problem was initially observed. This is to rule out any incompatibilities caused by other applications
that may be running on the same computer as NexStorm.
If all else fails and you are unable to solve your please contact us for support. Our support email address is
techsupport@astrogenic.com.
Do not forget to include your NexStorm serial number in the email subject line
or your email will not be processed!
Edition: 10
APPENDIX A – PLACE MARKER LAYER FDB FORMAT
Below is a short example of a flat file database containing location data for the map display Places layer.
#Map origin (center point)

MAP_CLAT=59.59
MAP_CLON=18.01
#Symbol and Label colors

SYM_COLOR=0xEEEEEE
SYM_OUTLN=0x222222
TXT_COLOR=0xCCCC66
TXT_OUTLN=0x000000
#Symbol and Label font selection

SYM_FONT=Wingdings
SYM_FONTSZ=9
TXT_FONT=Tahoma
TXT_FONTSZ=8
#Semicolon separated list of places

Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Örebro;59.22361;15.03806;400.0;K;0x51;L;0
Västerås;59.617;16.533;400.0;K;0x51;R;0
Oslo;59.91;10.75;1200.0;K;0x6C;R;0;-2;0
Place file data should be stored in a plain text file with the file extension ”*.txt”. Note that comments can be
added by preceding text with a hash mark. Comments must start on a new line and will run until the end of
that line.
General parameters
A description of the general parameters follows below. Note that location coordinates are given as floating
point values (Degrees Decimal format) and that floating point values must use a period sign as decimal
separator. Be aware of that all parameter names are case sensitive!
MAP_CLAT and MAP_CLON

Defines the map center point origin with latitude and longitude coordinates. These values are used as the
base for calculations on where on the map to position the different location markers.
SYM_COLOR, SYM_OUTLN, TXT_COLOR and TXT_OUTLN

Assigns colors to the place marker symbol, its outline, the text label color and text outline. To disable outlining
for symbols and/or text, set SYM_OUTLN and/or TXT_OUTLN to -1. All colors are given as a hexadecimal
triplet (0xRRGGBB) which is similar to the standard HTML format.
SYM_FONT, SYM_FONTSZ, TXT_FONT and TXT_FONTSZ:

Sets which font to use for place marker symbols and text label, and the respective font sizes. Note that in
order to use a font it must be installed on the computer.
Edition: 10
Place marker parameters

A description of the elements contained in the semicolon separated list follows below. Note that coordinates
and ranges are given as floating point values. Floating point values must use a period sign as decimal
separator.
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Place name which will be shown on the text label associated with this place marker
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Latitude in decimal degrees format. Use negative latitude for places south of the equator (Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa etc.)
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Longitude in decimal degrees format. Use negative longitudes for places west of the Greenwich meridian
(Ireland, USA, Canada etc.)
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Visibility range maximum in kilometers or miles. The place marker will not be drawn on the map if the
NexStorm zoom level is set above this number. In this specific example Stockholm will not be visible when the
zoom is at 1200 km range, but will be visible anytime the map is zoomed to 700 km range or closer. Each
place marker can have its own unique visibility range.
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Distances units for the visibility range maximum setting. Possible options are K for kilometers, M for statue
miles. If set to K then the visibility range is assumed to be given in kilometers and similarly, if set to M in
statue miles. NOTE: Case sensitive!
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Place marker symbol character code (ANSI character set). Codes for various symbols can be obtained using
the Windows Character Map application (Start menu\Accessories\System tools). A suitable symbol character
set is Wingdings but any similar character set can be used as long as it is installed on the computer running
NexStorm.
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Label alignment. Possible settings are, L=Left, R=Right, T=Top and B=Bottom. The text label will be aligned
around the symbol marker according to this instruction. NOTE: Case sensitive!
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1
Bold text flag; 1 (one) means Enabled, 0 (zero) means Disabled. Will enable or disable use of bold text for this
place marker's text label.
Edition: 10
Optional place marker parameters
Stockholm;59.4;18.03;700.0;K;0x6C;L;1;-5;1
The last two numbers for each place marker parameter entry, element 9 and 10, are optional and used for
instructing the place marker rendering subroutine to nudge the text label vertically and/or horizontally in
relation to the marker symbol, thereby enabling fine alignment control between the two. This may be required
for some font combinations. The vertical nudge value is always given first, followed by the horizontal nudge
value. Negative values will nudge the text label up or left whereas positive values will nudge the text label
down or right.
In the example above the text label will be nudged 5 pixels upwards and 1 pixel to the right in relation to the
associated place marker.
Note on selection of maps

The places map layer was primarily designed for use with a CVM vector map installed and any other use is
not officially supported.
This feature can however also be used with raster based background map images as long as the map
projection does not deviate too much from the equidistant projection used by the CVM map. For instance, one
of the most commonly used projection formats, the Mercator projection, will in many cases work well.
Edition: 10
APPENDIX B – UPLOAD AND COPY ERROR CODES AND MESSAGES
These are the error codes and corresponding messages that can be shown while NexStorm’s networking
features are active. The program module causing the error is listed within parenthesis.
Error Description Source

9 General connection exception (FTP thread)
10 Unable to establish FTP connection (FTP thread)
11 FTP Handle is null (FTP thread)
13 FTP Handle is null (FTP thread)
16 Recovery attempt failed (FTP thread)
20 FTPUploadData failure (FTP thread)
21 FTPUploadData, TRAC report failure (FTP thread)
26 FTP general exception (FTP thread)
30 FTPGetCurrentDirectory failure (FTP thread)
35 FTPPutFile failure (FTP thread)
37 Disconnect failure (FTP thread)
38 Connection termination failure (FTP thread)
40 FTPSetCurrentDirectory failure (FTP thread)
60 Data export procedure failed (Main thread)
80 File copy failure (FTP thread)
81 File copy failure, TRAC report (FTP thread)
82 General File copy exception (FTP thread)
85 Mutex timeout expired, screenshot/data (FTP thread)
86 Mutex timeout expired, TRAC report (FTP thread)
90 FTP connection busy (FTP thread)
Error details
Error 9, 10
These are internal application errors that occurred due to external circumstances. If NexStorm should report
one of these error codes, try reproducing the error by running the application standalone on the PC where the
error occurred. These errors can occur because of a shortage of system resources which could indicate that
another application running on the system is not releasing resources or freeing memory as expected (a
memory leak).
Error 11,13
These error codes will almost always indicate a problem on the receiving side, i.e. the FTP server. If your
Internet connection is working properly and your username and password are set correctly then the problem
is not local to your PC. Verify that the target FTP server is operational and not overloaded with traffic and that
your Internet connection works properly, specifically over port 21.
Error 16
Should an unexpected upload interruption occur, NexStorm will attempt to re-establish connection with the
FTP server. Error 16 indicates that the recovery attempt failed.
Error 20, 21, 35, 40

Always related to NexStorm failing to connect to the a server or write files on the server. The error number will
depend upon at which stage in the upload process the error occurred. Verify that your username and
password are correct, that the server permissions allow writing of files in the target directory, and that the
upload destination settings are correct in NexStorm.
Edition: 10
Error 30
If NexStorm is configured to upload the TRAC report, two file transfers in succession will occur for each
scheduled upload. In between these successive uploads, NexStorm will attempt to verify that the connection
is still available by polling the FTP server for the current directory. If this request fails for any reason, the error
code 30 will be flagged and the upload in progress will be terminated.
Error 37
Occurs when the FTP connection reserved and used by NexStorm was unexpectedly released by the
operating system, or that an external application acquired the connection handle by force.
Error 38
Indicates that NexStorm failed in releasing the FTP connection handle. This error will often be preceded by
error 37 and may indicate that the Windows network connection subroutines are not in a healthy state.
Error 60
Occurs when the nexstorm_arc.dat datafile is locked for writing. Make sure this file is not write protected or
used by another application. You can also try to delete this file from the NexStorm folder and see if the error
persists.
Error 80, 81
Similar to errors 20 and 21, these will occur when using the Copy feature. Indicates NexStorm failed to copy
files from source or to destination. Check permissions and Copy settings. Ensure that none of the files that
are scheduled for copying are locked by other applications.
Error 26, 82
An exception occurred while attempting to copy or upload files. If you get this error frequently, verify that your
server login settings are valid and also check that your network connection is not dropping intermittently.
Error 90
Indicates that NexStorm was unable to obtain a FTP connection because the system has signaled all
available connections as busy. This usually happens if the amount of available concurrent outgoing FTP
connections is reduced and one or more applications running on the system already has reserved the
available connections.
Error 85, 86
Mutex timeout expired. These are extremely unusual internal errors that can occur if your NexStorm becomes
overloaded. Shut down other programs to allow NexStorm to perform its tasks unimpeded, or upgrade to a
more powerful computer if you want to keep running other software in parallel to NexStorm.
Edition: 10
APPENDIX C – FLASHGATE IPC-1 SPECIFICATION (Strike data)

FlashGate IPC uses regular Windows interprocess communication techniques for communicating NexStorm
real time data to external applications. Data is stored in shared memory of the system running NexStorm. This
area of shared memory is overwritten every time new data becomes available. It is up to the implementing
application to read the data and to possibly pass it on to another area of the shared memory.
This and the following appendix describes the format of the strike and TRAC (storm) data put in shared
memory by NexStorm. It is not intended as a tutorial in computer programming. Source code for a sample
FlashGate client written in Borland C++ Builder 5 is provided on the NexStorm CD-Rom, \src folder.
Shared memory identifier (name) NXFGIPC_SHMEM_0822931589443_238731_GATE0

Reader/Writer semaphore names "Reader Semaphore", "Writer Semaphore"
Shared memory storage format string[1024]
Recommended interval between polls 15 ms
Stored string contains comma-separated values as listed below:

Data type Name Values
unsigned integer count 0-4294967294
unsigned integer year
unsigned integer month
unsigned integer day
unsigned integer timestamp_secs seconds since midnight
integer TRACbearing 0-3600
integer TRACDistance km
integer RAWbearing 0-3600
integer RAWDistance km
integer TRAC_X 0-1000 generic
integer TRAC_Y 0-1000 generic
integer Correlated strike 0-False, 1-True
integer Reserved Not used
integer StrikeType 0-CG, 1-IC
integer StrikePolarity 0-Pos, 1-Neg
Signal is noise if any bearing or distance has a value of -1
Signal is heartbeat if any parameter excluding timestamp_secs or RAWbearing has a

value of -9 (or 0 for unsigned integer types)
FlashGate IPC-1 heartbeats have the same format as regular data and can be used to monitor the application
health. They occur at approximate intervals of 1.5 minutes so a watchdog type IPC client needs not to
continuously check the shared memory.
In case of a heartbeat pulse, the RAWbearing record will contain antenna rotation (001° to 360°). Any value
between 1 and 359 must be compensated for in the IPC client implementation!
Edition: 10
APPENDIX D – FLASHGATE IPC-2 SPECIFICATION (TRAC data)

Shared memory identifier (name) NXFGIPC_SHMEM_5216659004766_091723_GATE0
Reader/Writer semaphore names "Reader Semaphore 2", "Writer Semaphore 2"
Shared memory storage format string[2048]
Recommended interval between polls 30+ ms
Stored string contains comma-separated values as listed below:

Data type Name Values
unsigned integer count 0-4294967294
unsigned integer current_timestamp seconds since midnight
integer detect_year 4 digits
integer detect_month 2 digits
integer detect_day 2 digits
unsigned integer detect_timestamp seconds since midnight
char ident_char A-Z
integer ident_number random
unsigned integer lastactive_timestamp (timestamp when last active)
integer storm_bearing 0-3600 (rotated)
integer storm_distance km
integer storm_X 0-1000 generic (rotated)
integer storm_Y 0-1000 generic (rotated)
integer curr_strikerate strikes/min
integer max_strikerate strikes/min
integer category 0-3 (see code-key below)
integer trend 0-3 (see code-key below)
integer tot_strikes
integer pos_cg_strikes
integer neg_cg_strikes
integer pos_ic_strikes
integer neg_ic_strikes
integer conf_close_alarm close alarm distance (km)
integer conf_severe_alarm severe alarm strike rate
integer conf_cell_alarm severe stormcell strike rate
integer trig_close_alarm 0 - silent, 1 - triggered
integer trig_severe_alarm 0 - silent, 1 - triggered
integer trig_cell_alarm 0 - silent, 1 - triggered
Signal is heartbeat if any entry except current_timestamp or storm_bearing has a value of -9 (0 for
unsigned integer types, ‘?’ for char types). Parameter storm_bearing will contain antenna rotation (001° to
360°). If all detect_... parameters contain 0 the message is a TRAC target deletion notification.
ident_char and ident_number will in these cases hold the TRAC idenitification of the deleted target.
FlashGate IPC-2 heartbeats have same format as regular data and occur at random intervals depending on
the amount of lightning activity. Note that the storm bearing and X, Y coordinates are rotated in FlashGate
IPC-2 so no consideration has to be taken for antenna rotation as is the case with FlashGate IPC-1.
Storm category classification codes (parameter category):

0 – WEAK (strike rate 0-9 per minute inclusive)
1 – MEDIUM (strike rate 10-49 per minute inclusive)
2 – STRONG (strike rate 50-124 per minute inclusive)
3 – SEVERE (strike rate at or above 125 per minute)
Intensity trend indicator codes (parameter trend):

0 – UNDETERMINED
1 – WEAKENING
2 – NO CHANGE
3 – INTENSIFYING
Edition: 10
Intentionally Left Blank
Email your support questions to techsupport@astrogenic.com (include NexStorm serial number in email subject line).
Users of NexStorm™ Demo are not eligible for support from Astrogenic Systems.
NexStorm™, StormVue™, NexDrive™, NexMap™, CVM™ are trademarks of Astrogenic Systems.
Astrogenic Systems web site https://www.astrogenic.com
Edition: 10

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Version 1.9.

Photo credit: Relko Vazic, Astrogenic Systems ©2005

TERMS AND NOTATIONS USED IN THIS MANUAL.......................................................................................6

NEXSTORM DIRECTORY STRUCTURE.......................................................................................................... 7

NEXSTORM MAIN WINDOW............................................................................................................................ 9

NEXSTORM AND BOLTEK LD-250................................................................................................................ 11

NEXSTORM MENU SYSTEM.......................................................................................................................... 15

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS DIALOG........................................................................................................... 21

TYPE DIFFERENTIATED STRIKE RATE GRAPH......................................................................................... 45

USER INTERFACE POP-UP MENUS............................................................................................................. 48

VECTOR MAP CONFIGURATION.................................................................................................................. 50

DATA EXPORT OPTIONS.............................................................................................................................. 54

SEGMENTED RANGING CORRECTION KERNEL........................................................................................ 62

SOFTWARE TECHNICAL SUPPORT............................................................................................................. 64

APPENDIX A – PLACE MARKER LAYER FDB FORMAT.............................................................................65

APPENDIX B – UPLOAD AND COPY ERROR CODES AND MESSAGES...................................................68

APPENDIX C – FLASHGATE IPC-1 SPECIFICATION (STRIKE DATA).......................................................70

APPENDIX D – FLASHGATE IPC-2 SPECIFICATION (TRAC DATA)...........................................................71

TERMS AND NOTATIONS USED IN THIS MANUAL

NEXSTORM DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

\driver Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista/7 installation program for the Astrogenic

\rkernel Segmented ranging correction kernels (filename *.krn).

Windows 7/8/10 notes

(Above, USERNAME is specific to your Windows user account)

NEXSTORM MAIN WINDOW

Figure 1: NexStorm main window

The Plot mode indicator can either be Strike or Density. To toggle

NEXSTORM AND BOLTEK LD-250

Figure 3. LD-250 mode activity frame

Figure 5: NexStorm map with place markers

NEXSTORM MENU SYSTEM

A note on map rendering order

Figure 6. Map snapshot dialog

Hide when minimized

Startup delay period

Segmented Ranging Correction

Menu: Trend graph

Increase time scale

Decrease time scale

Trend graph settings

Astrogenic Systems website

Product registration webform

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS DIALOG

Map graphics tab

Figure 7. Configuration dialog, Map settings tab

Distance rings configuration

On-map strike presentation

Map AutoRange settings

For more information about TRAC, see the TRAC section.

Data graphics tab

(Shortcut key Ctrl+G)

Strike and noise alert indicator settings

Strike rate trend graph configuration and colors

System clock color

Strike symbols tab

Strike symbol configuration

Strike history color codes

Density plot tab