A 'personal lightning detector' (seriously)

(Credit: OhGizmo)

This item ranks right up there with the "qStart," that device that reminds you which side of the road to drive on.

The "StrikeAlert" describes itself as "the world's first convenient, dependable and easy-to-use personal lightning detector." During a thunderstorm it supposedly gauges the distance of lightning based on the decibel level of their crackle up to 40 miles away, according to OhGizmo.

Forgive us, but we must ask: Do we really need a gadget to tell us that lightning is approaching? Would it not be more prudent, say, to just weather the storm indoors? The $80 it costs to get one of these, in our opinion, would be better spent on an AM radio, canned food and a deck of cards.

[logan1337]

Whatever happened to counting the delay...

...until the thunder?

[kg2v]

This is really most useful for golfers, soccer players and the like. It doesn't use volume, but RF strength. The thing is, typically uou can only hear lightning in the 6-10 mile or less range, and these will warn you out to 24 miles.

They are considerably cheaper than the triangulating ground based systems (they run almost $400 and up).

If you're running say a soccer tournament with 200-300 kids playing, you want as much warning as you can, and you want to know of the storm is moving towards your site, or away

I know that a lot of the bigger groups have someone sitting at a laptop with the local radar running - and I know the big golf tournements have fancy detectors brought in