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Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

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Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#101
post #94
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck detecting a mosquito optically from a distance of several meters using a cheap camera and Raspberry Pi. Oh and you want to do from a moving drone. That will certainly make it work! Just look at the images in the article - the guy's best result was detecting a black speck appearing on a nearby white wall with some 60-70% reliability (based on his own numbers). So you would be missing a lot of mosquitoes - bu…

All you say is so true... That would make you a spoil sport, burst my bubble... I am going to have a little cry in the corner now. I really wanted a AI powered, laser equipped, mosquito hunting drone for my house. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Shrug, add a nice zoom lens to make it's effective range several meters instead. Of course it would be far sighted but maybe you know most mosquitos will be several meters away anyway. Or have 3 cameras, one for the cm, one for the m and one able to zoom many meters to look at known problem spots like puddles or a bird bath.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA might take objection too. Some places won't let you have lasers within a certain range of an airport. Also, what happens if the mosquito turret mistakes a 747 for a mosquito? Sounds like an effective way to blind pilots. Cool idea though, might be fun indoors if your house is fireproofed.

> Sounds like an effective way to blind pilots. Don't pilots have protective windows?

Protected against weather and sunlights but not against dumb kids with eBay lasers yet

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#103
post #67

This work (I think) worked with the mosquitos 30cm away with a servo scanning Pi Camera (1080p) and a 1W laser. To work in the real world - cover a whole room or terrace - presumably a much higher resolution camera (or much faster scanning system) would be required. Even a 1W laser is dangerous to eyesight, if it was being fired at targets mingling with people. The system could be mounted on small drones that would p…

Good luck detecting a mosquito optically from a distance of several meters using a cheap camera and Raspberry Pi. Oh and you want to do from a moving drone. That will certainly make it work! Just look at the images in the article - the guy's best result was detecting a black speck appearing on a nearby white wall with some 60-70% reliability (based on his own numbers). So you would be missing a lot of mosquitoes - bu…

The way to do this is to attract the mosquitoes by slowly letting out a bunch of CO2, that way you need to search a much smaller area.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#104
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pre-print, made available early, and English is not the author's first language. I think you're being a bit harsh.

How am I supposed to know the author is non-English speaker? Unfortunately it is true with at least academic articles typos and grammatical errors are it will be perceived as low quality article.

One click on the authors name gave:

“Mr. Ildar Rakhmatulin South Ural State University“

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#105
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omg, people take these comments seriously ?

On Hacker News? Someone has probably already tried it. Possibly even more than one person — I mean, the linked paper isn’t even the first time I’ve seen research into the idea of anti-mosquito lasers, so anti-mosquito water cannons have probably been tried too.

Guilty as charged.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#106
post #76

Not automated but one of my all time favorite methods of taking out flies and wasps was the Bug-a-Salt. Guy had a fun idea, spent a ton to make it a reality and appears to still be making it many years on. Kudos to him. https://www.bugasalt.com/

I have one of these for killing black flies that wander into my house. It's not the most efficient way to kill flies I've found, but it's definitely the most satisfying.

Exactly. Sometimes fun wins!

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#107
Nathan Myhrvold (of Microsoft fame) tried to build a laser to kill mosquitoes, ~11-12 years ago. He even gave a TED talk about it [0].

It seems that the project eventually failed to achieve anything of sufficient value. [1]

[0]: https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_z...

[1]: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/laser-shooting-mosqu...

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#108

This is a nice little firestarter. I've had this idea many years ago and my solution to that problem was to use two or more lasers of lower power that all shoot at the same point in 3 dimensional space. If you guess wrong then at least you won't set your house on fire (or blind someone).

The FAA might take objection too. Some places won't let you have lasers within a certain range of an airport. Also, what happens if the mosquito turret mistakes a 747 for a mosquito? Sounds like an effective way to blind pilots. Cool idea though, might be fun indoors if your house is fireproofed.

I thought this was for indoors, outdoors mosquito is food for other animals. Also gotta be a sick 747 flying upside down.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#109
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pre-print, made available early, and English is not the author's first language. I think you're being a bit harsh.

How am I supposed to know the author is non-English speaker? Unfortunately it is true with at least academic articles typos and grammatical errors are it will be perceived as low quality article.

The academics I know ... and I know quite a few ... are understanding about people writing in languages other than their native language.

Perhaps you should just go with your original thought and not read anything if you find any kind of grammatical error.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#110
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. The method I devised to get rid of these large black flies from indoors: Open a door and simply herd/walk them out by making yourself big. It's surprisingly easy - so much easier than trying to swat them. They seem to instinctively avoid things moving towards them, and because of that they're pretty easy to herd.

Target “shooting” with a canister vacuum provides a decent fun:efficiency ratio.

That's a fun idea - I'll try it this this upcoming summer.
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