We began researching the AS3935 lightning sensor around a year and a half ago. It’s one of the few miniature modules capable of tracking lightning storms.
We’ve long been puzzled by its susceptibility to interference—whether it’s calibrating the antenna, avoiding noise sources, or tuning those cryptic noise parameters.
Recently, we seem to have made some progress. We physically isolated the sensor from ESP32 components as much as possible, which helped reduce interference from 2.4GHz signals.
By tuning a more balanced noise floor threshold, we avoided a lot of false positives.
Finally, we implemented automatic antenna tuning during startup, ensuring the sensor is able to detect lower-frequency lightning activity.
Right now, a thunderstorm is rolling in overhead—and we’ve successfully captured lightning events.
It may never be perfect, but it’s certainly fascinating.
We plan to build a DIY version of this sensor and share it with the community, inviting others to join in on the adventure.
We’ll call it the FSL1 Sensor, and it will be the next addition to the SCREEK DIY Sensor family.
At least, if we have the courage to complete the final manufacturing steps.
Wow, in that exact second, a lightning bolt streaked across the sky — the display showed it was 1 km away, and then came a loud rumble of thunder.
Watching it happen in Home Assistant… what a strange and surreal feeling :)
