Ambient Weather WH31L Lightning Detector for Models WS-2000, WS-5000

Easy to setup with my existing weather station. Seems to detect and display lightning strikes and distance with accuracy when compared to weather stations and news in my region.

I purchased this to add to my WS-5000 weather station. It seems amazingly sensitive and from what I can tell, pretty accurate. It will start registering lightning strikes before I can hear the thunder and when I check the radar I see the storm on the radar approximately where its reporting. I do notice that its less sensitive when storms are to the northwest of us but assume that's because we live on the side of a mountain and there's a mountain range between us and the storms. My only complaint (and this may be with the WS-5000 console and not the detector) is that I cannot see individual strikes when they are happening so fast. I can watch the console and see the counts click up, but can only see the last strike. So I can never really see how close the strikes are unless I just happen to be at the console when the closest strike occurs.

I own the Ecowitt HP2560 base station and WS90 weather station. I tried the Ecowitt WH57 lightning detector and experienced the dreaded false positive strikes that didn't stop regardless of dip-switch settings. I just figured my urban setting just had too much EM interference. However, I learned that this Ambient Weather lightning detector would be recognized by the Ecowitt base station work seamlessly, so I decided why not and purchased it. It's more expensive than the Ecowitt and doesn't come with the radiation shield, but the shield can be purchased separately. After installing this into the radiation shield that came with faulty Ecowitt WH57 I sat patiently waiting for false strikes. They didn't come. About two hours later, a thunderstorm passed about 15 miles north. It registered the strikes from 14 miles away. I'm currently getting a storm and it's registering every strike. No false strikes at all! This thing is a keeper! Maybe it's just a crap-shoot on these units, I don't know. But perhaps the QA on the Ambient Weather version is a little better perhaps. They are made by the same manufacturer as the Ecowitt cousins, but for whatever reason the Ambient Weather version has better ratings and less reports of false strikes. So, if you have an Ecowitt station and are hesitant of the Ecowitt lightning detector due to the ratings, give this one a shot.

This device accurately detects the proximity of lightning activity in the nearby area, and works as a storm warning safety feature. Recommended add-on for Ambient Weather WS-2000, and WS-5000 weather stations. Note: Accuracy of this device is only for proximity detection, and does not provide directional detection. If directional detection was a feature, I would have given it a higher score. It does, however do a good job of detecting nearby lightning activity.

I received this yesterday and it already detected a few lightning strikes. Another poster noted that the device wasnt detecting any lightning. You need to DOUBLE CHECK your dip switch settings from the factory. It is NOT consistent with the manual. The manual said that the switches should all be in the down position by default, but when I received my unit, the switches were all in the UP position. If I had left them, it wouldn't have detected squat. So double check the position of your dip switches before you use this unit. Dont rely on the default settings in the box.

I added the WH31L to my Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station. If you read the documentation it suggests not placing it inside of a building because it will attenuate the detection range. (As an RF engineer I totally get-it, their statement is accurate). What I did was to double sided sticky-tape it to the center of a window pane in one of my upstairs bedrooms where the window faces west. I set the sensitivity to the maximum because there are no electronics nearby.. By the way, do not set it to maximum if you have something like a laptop or computer within five or six feet of it. That will make the detector go crazy from all of the RF interference and the little fogged out area on the detector will just turn solid red as if it was detecting one constant lightning strike. Today we had our first thunderstorm and I used the Ambient Weather app on my phone with alerts set for lighting detection turned on (It SMS messages me). As soon as I got the first notification I checked the Ambient Weather app and it detected lighting at 24 km (roughly 19 miles). I compared that to the Lightning detection network (you can use Weather Underground to see something really close to that) and the strikes were about that distance away. In the hour long thunderstorm I detected more than 422 lighting strikes. Some were very close (less than a km) most were further away. I did not see many beyond 24 km so that gives you an idea of what detection is like from a second story window with no metallic objects nearby. I am very pleased with the detector. It integrated easily and only required two Lithium AA batteries (not included with this sensor, some other Ambient Weather sensors come with batteries, this one does not).

Good product. Seems well designed and easy to mount. The instructions are easy to follow and it found it self on my weather station without any interaction from me except for putting in the batteries. Super easy! Definitely recommend.

Simple install and works perfectly! I just put batteries in the sensor and the base station just installed it on its own! I did get the mount to protect it and was able to mount it right with all of the rest of the sensors.

Funciona a la perfección

Muy buen producto. Vale la pena el costo que tiene. Detecta rayos hasta una distancia de 40 kms. Además se conectó de inmediato a la consola ws2000