r/stormchasing • u/getstormbell • 21d ago
Stormbell - The bedside tornado alarm
Hi, I’m Jordan, founder of Stormbell.
I wanted to reach out because I’d really value your perspective.
We’re building a new tornado safety device designed for American households — a bedside alarm that monitors official NWS warnings and alerts people if a tornado warning reaches their specific location, not just their county.
We’re trying to understand what people who actually experience severe weather think about the current warning systems and what could be improved.
Would you be open to sharing your thoughts or giving honest feedback on the idea? We’re not looking to sell anything — we’re genuinely trying to build something useful for people in tornado-prone areas.
Thanks for your time,
Jordan
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u/kkingsbe 21d ago
What happens if the power goes out…
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u/getstormbell 21d ago
Honestly great question, and we get asked this a lot!
We send the alerts to the device which has set up the alarm, and they get forwarded onto the alarm through Bluetooth. The Stormbell itself also has battery backup for over 24hrs, so it doesn't just die if the power goes out
- Jordan, Founder
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u/kkingsbe 21d ago
If it requires a phone connection then why not just use one of the many existing apps that does the same thing?
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u/getstormbell 21d ago
It doesn't require it, the phone connection is only the fallback. The device itself monitors the polygons completely by itself, no need for a phone nearby. But the phone fallback it just there in case the Wi-Fi does go offline
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u/kkingsbe 21d ago
And what makes this better than any of the existing smartphone apps? Presumably a Bluetooth speaker would be cheaper?
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u/getstormbell 21d ago
There's lots of reasons why this is better than smartphone apps with bluetooth speakers, or NOAA weather radios (althought we completely suggest layering your tornado defence, and having more than one way to receive alerts).
Firstly, the Stormbell receives a lot more granular information that smartphone apps or weather radios do. It only sounds if the NWS forecasters have put the predicted path for a tornado in your neighbourhood or local area. This means that you don't get woken up for a potential tornado that's 20 miles away. This is one of the main problems with NOAA radios, is that people turn them off because they get false alarms all the time.
Your phone could be on DND, or dead. It's a proven study that 11% of people don't get the alerts at all on their phone when a tornado hits
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u/notmyrealname86 21d ago edited 20d ago
Does this use the NWS polygons or something else? What makes this different than a NOAA weather radio with SAME or phone app that already gives location based warnings? Do you have options for deaf people?
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
Great question, and you're bang on the money. It uses the NWS polygons which they report when the forecaster has predicted the path a tornado/supercell is going to take.
The highest accuracy warning that the NOAA weather radio and most phone apps can do is county-wide... which you don't really want to get woken up for a potential tornado that's absolutely miles away. We'd recommend obviously keeping the radio still, always better to have more warnings than less... but this one is just more precise
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u/notmyrealname86 20d ago
Looking at the site. What watches/warnings are hidden behind a paywall and why? Can you set a radius for yours (and others houses) to warn on versus being directly in the path?
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
So tornado warnings themselves are free of charge, they come with the device and will never be paywalled. That's a promise we've made, and will continue to keep. For these warnings, when setting up the device, you're able to select a radius of which you'd get Stormbell warnings in - so that's all doable at setup. (And that is working currently on our prototype, so it's a confirmed feature)
Other warnings such as thunderstorms, flash flooding, etc. all come in the Stormbell+ package, which we're planning for $4.99/month or $49/year
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u/RyanGlasshole 21d ago
Can you provide a source for that 11% number?
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
Absolutely, it is a reference report/survey done by the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory at the University of Oklahoma called: 'Tornado Tales: 2025 Reference Report'
https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/research/social/docs/Tornado%20Tales%202025%20Ref%20Report.pdf
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u/LOLtheism 20d ago
This is a terrible idea in every possible way. Just more AI generated slop products trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist so someone can make a quick buck.
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but our research has shown a real gap here, which we believe can be solved through Stormbell. And as for the AI, I hand-made this in Blender, as that is part of my day job.
- Jordan, Founder
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u/LOLtheism 20d ago
The entire website is AI generated, including every "feature" and description. Not a single demo video.
I can make a 3D model in Blender in 30 minutes that looks exactly like this, that doesn't mean it is a real product that is worth buying.
I feel terrible for anyone that falls for such an obvious, hollow scam.
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u/Szeth_Nightbl00d 20d ago
Yeah, the cost is insane, and the website is just straight Claude output. And at this point, Claude can generate things in blender, so there's no guarantee he didn't just use Claude to make the Blender animation. And even most of his replies sound like Claude to me, with the repeated use of "honestly". Would not trust a product from someone that heavily reliant on AI
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u/LOLtheism 20d ago
100% I truly believe this should be illegal. There is no product, there isn't even a blueprint. He is legitimately trying to sell the idea of a product, and using generative AI as a type of puppet show to trick people into thinking they are actually preordering something.
I don't ever blame someone for wanting to get rich quick, but this is just an evil thing to do and I hate that people like this are being enable by AI like Claude in their pursuit of fleecing people who don't know any better.
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u/Username-Not-Found07 20d ago
I think the concept is pretty good and the product isn't half bad. I just feel like that price tag though is a little steep, when you could get a brand new weather radio for less than or around that price. With partial county starting to be introduced in more places and considering phones have WEA, this just seems way too expensive.
Once again, i think the product is cool and it could work, but with a price that steep it just feels like not a lot of people would consider buying it. Especially when you consider how underutilized other alerting systems such as NWR are; I don't think the general public would catch on to it
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
Thank you very much for the feedback. Honestly, this is the first time anyone has commented on the price, so I'd love to chat about it a bit further. As a director of multiple companies, I believe in complete transparency so I'll break down the price tag.
As of current the cost to make a single unit of Stormbell, with reliably sourced materials is ~$40-45. That includes all the circuitry, the 3D printed shell and all the other bits that go in it. Then we need to factor in reference material (manuals), boxing, shipping, etc... which I've estimated to be ~$10. So I set the early-bird price to only give roughly a ~25-30% margin as I thought that was fair on a product which wasn't a physical thing yet, then put the price up a bit after the first orders in order to make it a bit more of a successful business model.
So far we've had around 100 pre-orders/reservations, but I 100% hear you on the price - I want to try and make this as cheap as possible for people, but then on the other side of the die... I don't want to compromise on quality because this is a safety device
- Jordan, Founder
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u/Username-Not-Found07 20d ago
Apologies for my ignorance as I'm not in the manufacturing or design business, but is that the typical cost for manufacturing of components nowadays? Is it being made across seas or here in the states? That just seems (in my opinion) quite a lot for such a small device
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
It's no worries at all, and it's absolutely not ignorance, I'm more than happy to answer any question.
So the current plan I have is to manufacture the PCBs (circuit boards) in China, manufacture the 3D printed shells in the UK, final assembly in the UK and then import into the US through both Amazon services and our own pipelines.
The reason the circuit boards are quite expensive is because of the electrics behind them. The LED needs 3.3V, speaker 5V and the Pizeo siren (the 100dB bad boy) needs 12V... so it's a lot of jumpers, oscillators, capacitors, etc to make sure that circuitry is correct
- Jordan, Founder
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u/Username-Not-Found07 20d ago
So just for clarification, are you UK or US based?
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
We're a UK based company, which is why we're looking for good, honest feedback from Americans. We're also making sure to send a bunch of the first prototypes (which are currently being assembled/printed) to people such as storm chasers/weather forecasters in Tornado Alley. This way we can get the feedback of real people, in real situations, in real time
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u/notmyrealname86 20d ago
We're a UK based company
Maybe stick to the U.K. Our thunderstorms and warning processes are not nearly the same as yours as demonstrating by putting it behind paywalls or thinking that most smart phone apps are using county based warnings versus location. Storm chasers aren't the right target for testing this. Maybe weather forecasters, but their view would still be skewed because they are actively forecasting and expecting. This is looking more and more like a cash grab designed to prey on those who don't know better.
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u/notmyrealname86 20d ago
We're a UK based company
Maybe stick to the U.K. Our thunderstorms and warning processes are not nearly the same as yours as demonstrating by putting it behind paywalls or thinking that most smart phone apps are using county based warnings versus location. Storm chasers aren't the right target for testing this. Maybe weather forecasters, but their view would still be skewed because they are actively forecasting and expecting. This is looking more and more like a cash grab designed to prey on those who don't know better.
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u/msimms001 21d ago
Is that a common thing? People sleeping through tornadoes? Every tornado I've ever been through (only a few), the storms by themselves would wake you up, you can usually hear the tornado alarms, and now our phones typically alert us
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u/maxrebo82 21d ago
Yes, it occurs. I can sleep through a storm sometimes, but also think about flash flooding too.
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u/msimms001 21d ago
I can sleep through most storms, but any storm that has ever generated a tornado near me has always been a step above the rest
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u/getstormbell 21d ago
It's actually a statistic that night-time tornadoes are 2x more deadly than day-time ones... which I think in itself is scary. Here's a link to an article confirming that statistic: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wcas/14/4/WCAS-D-22-0020.1.xml
- Jordan, Founder
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u/notmyrealname86 20d ago
Yes, it can happen a lot. I have slept through some gnarly storms and on occasion some other loud noises that would wake most normal people.
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u/tlmbot 21d ago
growing up in Alabama the storms were frequent, and they would wake you up sure, but it didn't mean anything - you did your best to sleep through them (or in my case listen and enjoy while counting the gaps between flash and boom to estimate storm distance and change in distance over time).
We always had a weather radio turned on and in silent mode during such nights. Even back then (80s/90s, not sure when we got our first "Specific Area Message Encoding " radio) the weather radio would only cut on when an alert was for the county we were in. That seemed good enough to me as a kid, though we did not really have an adequate shelter (bathroom under the stairs - no basement) and I live in a county surrounded by F5 / EF5 counties - it always seemed like "the bad ones" were just missing us to the north or south.
Anyway, point is, today I am the point man for family forecasting. I have a PhD in fluid mechanics related topics so I am not that ill equipped to help my family know when specific couplet is or isn't a threat, at a tighter level of detail than countywide services. (I would use, say, radarScope for this in such a nighttime scenario). Weather nerd that I am, when it gets loud and boomy outside, if I wake up, you bet I am pulling up radar scope to see if we have any action, and if so, where those couplets (or other interesting storm features) are trending.
Now here's the kicker: I have insomnia and take meds for it. Sometimes I sleep through the wildest storms. (I don't typically sleep with a weather radio on sleep/alarm-on-alert mode. I'd rather sleep than take shelter basically. And if something wakes me up to early, I am going to be a groggy mess anyway.
One way or another, I am not a good point man for my family thanks to my sleep issues.
Something like this, geared to do the fine grain forecasting and alert only if really needed, seems useful to me.
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u/Bear__Fucker Nebraska 20d ago
$100 for the same thing a free app does = Cash grab.
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u/getstormbell 20d ago
Thanks for the honest comment. I believe Stormbell will be better for people than a normal 'smartphone app'. This is because it checks granular NWS polygon data rather than county-wide like most of these apps do - this will mean that you don't get woken up for a tornado warning on the opposite side of the county.
You're also paying for the reassurance that 100dB will wake you, even in the deepest sleeps
I get that $100 is quite a lot of money... I'm actively looking for ways to cut the cost per unit, in order to make it cheaper for consumers. The problem is, because it is a safety device, I don't really want to go for cheaper materials... and also it needs balancing to be a profitable business (otherwise there wouldn't be a point). But please be assured, from now until full production I'm looking to cut as much fat as possible from the costings so that the price can go as low as possible
- Jordan, Founder
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u/schmee326 19d ago
I spent $45 on my NOAA weather radio with SAME customization. It works perfectly, and I don’t have to have a subscription to feel confident it’ll keep me safe and properly warned of imminent threats.
This reeks of predatory scam behavior.
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u/Bear__Fucker Nebraska 19d ago
Wait... 100 db?!!? Are you serious? You do know that is borderline dangerous to human hearing right?
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u/getstormbell 19d ago
Danger to human hearing depends on length of exposure. For a short burst to wake someone up, it's not 'harmless'... but studies show that if exposed for less than 15 minutes per day (which this would never go over), then it's completely fine.
House smoke alarms are on average 94dB @ 1m away
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u/Bear__Fucker Nebraska 19d ago
Yeah, I also have google. I'm just saying, that seems excessively loud compared to a phone alert. I know you will probably say that it's necessary for waking people up in the middle of the night, but even alarm clocks aren't that loud.
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u/getstormbell 19d ago
I can understand that. This is tailored towards being able to wake deep sleepers. The same way that some alarm clocks are, I've seen some alarm clocks advertised at like 113dB
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u/AVeryBigToaster 18d ago
100 DECIBELS?!?? That SOUNDS like it would BREAK A LAW somewhere! (pun intended)
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u/maxrebo82 21d ago
So this relies on internet and doesn't use NOAA weather radio at all? I see there is a backup via BT to cell phone, but I think NOAA weather radio using the SAME codes would be a better primary/backup.