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Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

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Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#141

Post by craftinator »

janoc wrote: post #67
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #12

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…

> Good luck detecting a mosquito optically from a distance of several meters using a cheap camera and Raspberry Pi.

Same thought as well. They must not have done the math on the optics... You'd have a much better chance using an acoustic array (mosquitoes put out a very distinctive sonic frequency), or even better an array of radar modules. There is simply too much noise and data in the visible spectrum to catch something that small without expensive optics and an expensive processor to process all of those pixels.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#142

Post by trulyme »

craftinator wrote: post #141
janoc wrote: 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…

> Good luck detecting a mosquito optically from a distance of several meters using a cheap camera and Raspberry Pi. Same thought as well. They must not have done the math on the optics... You'd have a much better chance using an acoustic array (mosquitoes put out a very distinctive sonic frequency), or even better an array of radar modules. There is simply too much noise and data in the visible spectrum to catch some…

This. Acoustic array sounds like a great solution for finding that pesky mosquitto that is hiding somewhere in the room. Anyone know how difficult it would be to make this?

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#143

Post by trulyme »

hutzlibu wrote: post #128
plutonorm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a mosquito can dodge a speeding blob of water? It can barely dodge stationary objects. It's basically a homing missle for co2

Depends on the mosquito I would say. I used to train martial art skills by catching mosquitos midflight. Most are indeed very lethargic, but there are some much more agile variants out there.

I assume you used sticks, karate kid style? :)

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#144

Post by klipt »

Jedd wrote: post #131
Animats wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, at 300mm range, it's just a toy, and mounting a 1W laser with a targeting system on a drone is a terrible idea. I can see ways to make this work, though. You need a good way to tell that you're on target. The way to do that is to use the vision system only as a search radar, to find that there's something to shoot at and approximately where it is. Then point the laser near the target, at low power, and start sca…

> An ordinary UV lamp with bug zapper will probably be more effective. Alas, as I discovered recently when looking at those nifty, cheap, USB-powered UV + fan mosquito killers -- mosquitoes aren't attracted to UV. Evidently they are attracted to CO2 and warmth, which are a bit harder to generate at 5V, sadly.

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!

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#145

Post by walrus01 »

janoc wrote: post #67
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 problem of processing the fire hose of data that is 4096x2160 at 60fps raw. and the hardware cost of a very serious workstation class PC capable of taking the capture at 1:1 realtime.

possibly a lidar based sensor or something might be more suitable to locating the x/y/z position of mosquitoes in a few meter area.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#146

Post by sillysaurusx »

1MachineElf wrote: post #134
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't post if because... it has happened before, and caused trouble? Curious to hear why you're running a clone of HN, and why you assert that some cool stuff shows up there before it does on HN.

I don't know why it cannot be shared here. Given the open source nature of PG's Arc and the fact that it's main repo comes with a HN clone, I'd be surprised if there was an impetus not to share forks of HN on here. But maybe the hesitancy to link the site has more to do with this statement on it's Welcome page: The initial impetus behind the site is a desire to try to recapture the early spirit of Hacker News. HN cur…

I don't know either. I just wanted to build something interesting. /place, for example, is a clone of Reddit's old /r/place experiment, which was pretty hard to get Arc to do. https://i.imgur.com/0KZSel7.png

But, I feel physically ill any time I mention it here, due to the risk. So I don't expect to talk about it again.

It does kind of suck though. Arguably the only reason that this story is on HN right now is because it was posted there first, and subsequently discovered. But I'm just happy to contribute back to HN in some small way, since HN added a lot to my life.

I wanted to thank you privately for your comment, but there's no contact info. So, thanks – truly. It meant a lot. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#148

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #113

Incidentally, this was first posted to a clone of HN that I run. I can't link it here, or in fact even mention the name. But if you go to my Twitter profile, it's my pinned tweet. So if you like reading this sort of thing, perhaps you'd also like seeing it 44 days before it premiers on HN. It was certainly one of the more interesting submissions. It was kind of funny, because the author posted it a bunch of times. I…

[deleted]

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#149

Post by souprock »

tyingq wrote: post #11

Good for a bit of mosquito schadenfreude...an experiment to create exploding mosquitos: https://entomologytoday.org/2020/03/19/when-a-mosquito-cant-...

The conclusion is wrong.

I personally witnessed a mosquito being made to pop by tensing a muscle. Note that I'm not claiming any specific mechanism of action, or that this is a common human ability, or that more than one species is vulnerable. I've seen it once.

The case I witnessed was 31 to 35 years ago, in camp with a bunch of boys. To help you guess at the species, I can narrow down the location to one of three places. In summer of 1985 or 1986, it could have been in Oklahoma or northern Texas. In summer of 1987 or 1988, it could have been in southern New Hampshire. The boy had very well defined muscles and minimal fat. He got the mosquito to land right in the middle of his biceps. He saved his strength, waiting until the mosquito was almost full before tensing his muscle. The mosquito did not immediately explode; it took a good long time.

Anybody else witnessed it? Anybody able to do it reliably? If so, can you describe the type of mosquito or where it lives or anything else that might identify it?

Re: Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser

#150

Post by beervirus »

jacquesm wrote: post #54

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).

Even 1/4 watt is not something you want shined in your eye.
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