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Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

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231–240 of 262 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#231
post #40

What about a triple beam setup? The individual beams would be only half or a third as powerful, making them safer to human eyes. Only where they cross they would carry enough power to zap the mosquito...

This laser is 200 times too powerful to be considered "mostly safe" for human ayes (cat 3R) and 1000 times too powerful to be considered safe (cat 2). I toyed with the idea but it's hazardous in any usable setup. If you'd like to do it moderately safe I'd stay away from lasers. Use a power LED and parabolic reflector to make the beam as incoherent as possible and then focus it with optics to create very narrow focal…

I must admit I was just thinking out loud, not bothered by any relevant knowledge.

Thank you for your thoughtful explanation.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#232

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…

Yeah, this doesn't really scale. For safety, I think using multiple coordinated laser sources would be better (making them all converge at a single point). That, plus obviously a wavelength not dangerous for our eyesight. Angular precision is an issue, but one could probably go around it by using a closed-loop control system that targets before increasing the power. Targeting is hard as well, if you want a reliable s…

I'd prefer an indoor 'killer drone'. Something like a little quadcopter, remote controlled in realtime to the target by whichever means, shredding it with one of its rotors.

Bzzzt.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#234

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.

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

The problem with blinding pilots is actually reflections off clouds, which is not really intuitive.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#235
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a arrogant anglocentristic point of view? Why do you assume everyone in the world has native english speakers as friends, willing to do free proofreading?

I found a bunch of people to proofread my work for free. Why would you assume everyone charges for everything?

"Why would you assume everyone charges for everything"

Where did I do this?!?

I know people who do this, but I know many native english speakers. People in russia for example might not have that opportunity.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using a cheap camera even if you had a RED Komodo feeding uncompressed 4K DCI 60fps video to a pci-express bus capture card, the sensor resolution and tiny size of mosquitoes means that unless the lighting conditions are just right, and the mosquito is somehow highlighted against a background, it's going to be very hard to pick them out at distances of 2 or more meters. and that's before you get into the software p…

Would targeting the distinctive mosquito whine be feasible? You could have several bluetooth mikes scattered around the room for good triangulation

Bluetooth has too much latency, 50-100ms even quite optimistically. There are a lot better ways to have a custom solution.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#237
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some blog posts about building mosquito traps that generate CO2, I think they use yeast to do it and can be pretty effective!

I saw those videos. The problem is the maintenance, adding yeast and cleaning the trap. Imagine scaling to multiple traps in a house or the garden. On the other side, burning methane generates CO2: CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O. Methane is distributed nearly everywhere in my country for cooking and heating. That at least solves the problem of refilling. I guess we should burn a very small amount of methane to lure mosquit…

> Imagine scaling to multiple traps in a house or the garden.

If you have a mosquito problem, refilling your traps is the least of your worries.

(These types of traps are commercially available and quite effective.)

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using a cheap camera even if you had a RED Komodo feeding uncompressed 4K DCI 60fps video to a pci-express bus capture card, the sensor resolution and tiny size of mosquitoes means that unless the lighting conditions are just right, and the mosquito is somehow highlighted against a background, it's going to be very hard to pick them out at distances of 2 or more meters. and that's before you get into the software p…

Hmmmm, I wonder... The paper claims "1 - 5mm" for a mosquito, which seems plausible. Lets pick 5mm out of pure optimism. The new(ism) HQ Raspberry Pi camera modules are 12megapixel ~4000x3000 pixel sensors, if you assume you could recognise a mosquito based on it's flight/movement pattern rather than needing to have an image of the mosquito, maybe having a 2x2 pixel resolution of it might be enough, so you could use…

Great post. I think line laser though is just a point source that spins, creating an illusion of a plane. So it only looks like a line but is actually a moving point. So if the mosquito travels its own length+the line thickness in a time that is less than the time between laser passes, it won't be touched by the laser.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using a cheap camera even if you had a RED Komodo feeding uncompressed 4K DCI 60fps video to a pci-express bus capture card, the sensor resolution and tiny size of mosquitoes means that unless the lighting conditions are just right, and the mosquito is somehow highlighted against a background, it's going to be very hard to pick them out at distances of 2 or more meters. and that's before you get into the software p…

Mosquitos, as we all know, have a highly distinctive auditory signature. A phased microphone array is the only sensible approach to localized mosquito detection. It would probably work reasonably well. The problem is that the entire field is patent encumbered, because Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures has done some research on it, and no on in their right mind would go up against those guys.

Maybe some kind of audio resonance could be used to prevent then from flying or at least annoy them.

It would probably be louder than desired, though, unless ultrasonic.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why don't terrorists and angry people use this?

Because there had never been actual deaths to it?

It has caused career-ending eye damage though - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/ba-pilots-eye-...
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