Peeved at missing the opportunity a couple of nights ago to tick off an item on my bucket list. I wondered if using a magnetometer chip like this I could detect greater fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field that appear to be a precursor of Aurora borealis activity.
The idea would be to include the device in an existing arduino powered clock and flash up a warning message when activity is high and likely sightings good.
I could detect greater fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field that appear to be a precursor of Aurora borealis activity.
Don't think I've ever heard that theory.
zoomkat:
Don't think I've ever heard that theory.
I was looking to see if the Aurora would be visible the next night (alas not) and came across this
Interesting chart from AuroraWatch! The graphed variations in H seem to be as high as 10% of average and so just about any cheap magnetometer chip should be able to detect them. Sound like a fun project.
Hi, Did you ever get this project working ?
very interested 
Thanks
gtakarting:
Hi, Did you ever get this project working ?
very interested
As noted...it never will. It's not variations in magnetic field that cause auroras.
Just go to spaceweather.com, et. al.
But they are correlated so a magnetic storm detector is useful.
CME's batter the magnetosphere as well as inject large numbers of particles.
I think you get better results monitoring the electric field rather than a magnetic one.
You use a great big coil for this. Never done that myself but always wanted to do it.
Just a couple of observations: Aberdeen is pretty far north, isn't it? The nearer the poles the more obvious the effect would be.
Secondly, I'll bet "the field measured at ground level" isn't actually at ground level, but atop a tower, as distinct from a balloon, aircraft or satellite.
Friend of mine has seen it in Iceland, "a night to remember" he said.