Ticker for Lightning or other "temporary warnings/alerts" (and some lightning questions here as well)

[earlthesquirrel]

Howdy,

I'm finally adding in data from a lightning sensor (the I2C ones I've tried weren't all that great... Sparkfun noted that as well and they sell a SPI version...so I'm working with that).

I understand how to post "lightning_distance" and "lighting_energy" per count. But in Googling I'm basically seeing just summary graphs (with amount and average distance). That works in general (especially since I was somewhat puzzled as to when to "expire/remove" lightning from a map or the like... obviously on all weather maps there is some form of timeout when old lightning strikes are removed, but I've not seen any reasoning/algorithms as to what criteria they use to do that).

So, the example graphs work in general. Instead of posting something on the map, it would be nice to put up a ticker that said "Lightning detected, X km away" that scrolled. Something also I thought was taking weather alerts at putting in the links or the like as well.

Do you know of anyone who has added something like this that could be shown/hidden?

Other lightning questions now.: The weewx extended schema has :

'lightning_distance', 'lightning_disturber_count', 'lightning_energy', 'lightning_noise_count', 'lightning_strike_count'

Per strike I see it being somewhat easy to fill in distance, energy and strike count (strike_count being 1).
I can also track disturbers and noise events.

The question is for the three count values, do I just reset them after I report them? I could post a message every time a disturber or noise event occurs (same as how I was thinking for strike). But if I don't report them immediately, then my brain gets a little befuddled as to how I'd interpret "lighting_distance" if I waited for multiple strikes.

Is there anything written down somewhere that at least provides some guidance as to how the weewx community expected these to be used?