Lightning shutter trigger

Finally, today, my son and I were able to test in real conditions the lightning shutter trigger I had designed and built for him in last December. I had been able to validate every functional block of the trigger (auto adaptation to ambient light level,  lightning detection, camera shutter triggering) during build phase. Nevertheless, I never consider that a device is working properly without having let it tested under real conditions (said in other words: unit testing and integration testing have to be confirmed by user validation).

We had been waiting for a thunderstorm for five months. And today was the day! Here are some of the pictures my son took around noon:

The camera is an Olympus E-420. Settings were: speed 1/200, aperture f/7.1, focal length 14 mm. Speed should have been a little bit less: pictures are too dark. Anyway, for a first attempt, that's not too bad . Next time, my son will do better.

The third picture is interesting: it shows that detector sensitivity is quite good.

Location: Saint-Cézaire, South-East of France.

UPDATE: the day after, it appeared that detector sensitivity is not so good...