Boltek NexStorm Lite - Manual (Page 30)

Lightning Detection Software, Version 1.0
System tab
The System dialog provides you information about NexStorm memory usage, free disk space on the drive
where NexStorm is installed and allows you to adjust a few parameters related to the application’s
performance and behavior.
Archive maintenance – Autoclip
If you expect severe weather - enable this feature! The clipping of archives is used for keeping file sizes of the
currently used daily archive to controllable levels. With Autoclip enabled, the archive will be split into
manageable parts sized 4 MB each. Enabling this feature will greatly improve performance on all systems
once the archive starts growing. After a clip is performed, the part that was clipped will be renamed with a
sequential digit appended to its filename, i.e. 20030425_1.nex, 20030425_2.nex and so on. The counter data
in each archive will be valid up to the point the archive was clipped. The daily archive that was last used,
hence not renamed, will contain counter totals for the entire day.
You can at any time perform an immediate clip on the archive by pressing the Clip now button. This will clip
the archive without regard to its size so avoid performing this operation frequently.
Archive maintenance – Move after completion
This feature allows you to move a completed archive to another location on the same hard drive. Normally
you would create a subfolder in the NexStorm installation folder and configure this feature to move completed
archives to this location.
Daily archives are finalized at midnight each day and it is after this point in time that they will be relocated.
Don’t forget to select which folder to use as the archive storage by pressing on the Directory button and
selecting a folder or this function will not have any effect! Note that NexStorm will only move the previous
day’s archive if it is allowed to run past the point at which date change occurs.
Archive maintenance – Do not archive noises
Enable this option if you are not interested in archiving noise data. Not archiving noise data will render smaller
archives so this setting is particularly useful if your setup has intermittent noise problems which would cause
the program to store a lot of garbage data in the archives. You should strive for as noise-free environment
as possible when mounting your lightning detector antenna! Even moderate amounts of false electro-
magnetic signals (showing as strikes and/or noises on the NexStorm display) may adversely affect
ranging accuracy.
NexStorm VM Usage, System status, Memory Status and Internal memory buffer.
The virtual memory usage setting (VM) controls how much system memory NexStorm will allocate to store its
strike data in. All strikes and noises are stored into a memory buffer, the VM usage setting controls how much
system memory this buffer will use.
You can see how many strike records will fit into the buffer with your current VM usage setting by looking at
the Memory status/Reserved space entry. The amount of kilobytes these records occupy is visible directly
below. The percentage of virtual memory used is visible in the System virtual memory usage bar, this should
correspond to the setting you chose for VM usage.
You can also see how much of the entire buffer is currently being used by looking at the NexStorm buffer
usage bar.
Once the memory buffer is full, NexStorm will begin recycling it. The oldest strikes will be removed from
memory and new strikes will be put in the buffer in place of older ones. A buffer usage of 100% is in other
words nothing that will stop NexStorm from running, it just means that the entire allocated buffer has been
populated with data and is a perfectly normal situation. Old strike data is always saved to the archive so you
will not risk losing any data even when the buffer is filled to capacity.
Edition: 5/L1
2007-09-02
© 2007 Astrogenic Systems Table of Contents Page 30