Mon bloc-notes

Today, with my youngest son, we were able to test in real conditions the new version of the lightning shutter trigger, thanks to a thunderstorm which appeared in the beginning of the afternoon.

The idea was not to spend time on picture quality, but just to check trigger sensitivity. And the results are good: every lightning flash was detected, even two ones that happened in our back and one that we did not see! Additionally, I realized that there is no need for an opamp in the circuit: for every picture, the trigger sets itself in non amplified mode (I implemented an automatic switch between amplified and non amplified mode).

As I wrote in a previous article, one of the distinctive features of IoT projects is that they require integration of technical blocks originating from three different domains: electronics, communications and software. And inside these three domains, various different subdomains are usually involved: analog and digital electronics, wireless communication modules, protocol stacks, embedded software, user interfaces, database management, analytics, geospatial data, etc.

Therefore, when developing a new system, it's almost impossible to only rely on technical blocks developed in-house, or that you have been already using for a long period: you have to integrate some new components provided externally. And usually you'll discover that provided documentation does not say everything about components characteristics and behaviour.