Ultrasonic Mosquito Killer

by Constructed in Circuits > Electronics

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Ultrasonic Mosquito Killer

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Killing Mosquitoes By Playing Cardi B
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Mosquitoes SUCK!

Besides the annoying itchy bumps, these blood sucking heathens bring some of the most deadliest diseases to humans; Dengue, Malaria, Chikungunya Virus... the list goes on!

Every year approximately one million humans will die due to these flying beasts. Due to their pesky nature, the average human sees a mosquito and immediately tries to swat it. The somewhat vicious ones might use a bug zapper to kill the pest. I on the other hand, designed a device which kills them by playing Cardi B on a loop at a frequency that ruptures their organs.

Now, lets see how such a device was made.

Supplies

To build this you will need almost the same exact supplies as my ultrasonic sound gun. The electronics are taken straight out of the ultrasonic sound gun and used for this project.

1. Piezo Elements: https://amzn.to/342iYNA

2. Electronics Kit: https://amzn.to/2S5mhhf

3. Bluetooth Module: https://amzn.to/2G8boIV

4. Motor Driver: https://amzn.to/2G8boIV

5. 12v Battery

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Trials and Tribulations

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First I my plan was simple: Kill mosquito larvae with soundwaves. In order to make them suffer, play terrible music. I tried this by catching some mosquitoes and playing Cardi B on a loudspeaker on loop. I came back after a couple hours and nothing happened.

New Plan...

Next I took apart my ultrasonic sound gun. Instead of the ultrasonic array, I used some jumpers to hookup Piezo modules. In order to not short out the circuit in the water I sealed up the modules with some silicone. I then did the same thing playing the same music through the ultrasonic sound gun and when I came back the mosquitoes were dead!

Success!

An Enclosure!

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My original plan was to 3d print a boat and put all the electronics inside and hang the ultrasonic modules beneath like a sonar. Unfortunately, my printer had other plans and halfway through I ran out of filament.

I began looking for the next best thing and found a Chinese food takeout container. I took the electronics out of the sound gun and placed them into the takeout container. To make the circuit work slightly better, I tuned the 555 timer circuit in order to resonate at the mosquitoes organs about ~15-30khz. Although this wasn't as effective as I thought so you can just use the same circuit on the ultrasonic sound gun and it works about the same.

To add the piezo modules I used some marine adhesive and glued them to the underside of the takeout container. I'm guessing this messed with the frequency slightly and solved my question above.

Done!

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That's It!

I tried this in empty ponds running for a couple hours and it really does kill mosquito larvae in the water! No nasty chemicals or treating the water! You can pretty much take this with you anywhere and drop it into a small body of water and it will kill all the mosquito larvae through the power of sound!

The only problem is that because of the sound waves propagating underwater, it will most likely damage the sensitive organs on other forms of wildlife such as fish frogs turtles and so on. When using the mosquito killer I only tested it on empty bodies of water and you should too.

I could make this project better by tuning the frequency to only target mosquito larvae (maybe) and adding solar so the battery can charge, but that's way too much work for a side project then I'd like to put into this.

Thanks for reading!