I’m looking for help with a project that will provide a way to locate mosquitos. Yes I am serious.
Remember this is not the army. We don’t “locate and destroy”. We’re following the Unix philosophy of doing one job and doing it well. This job is to “Locate“.
It should be simple.
It should be cheap to make and cheap to run.
There is no requirement to identify species, gender, age, colour, etc. Let “if it’s acting like a mosquito then it’s a mosquito” be your mantra.
Let’s be clear, this is just to locate them not to terminate them with lasers, automatic weapons, flame throwers, etc. If you want to do that later then be careful. For now the task is to locate them and signal where they are. When they move, locate them and signal where they are.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this project, but it needs to be done.
If you have any ideas on how you would go about doing this, then I’m very interested in hearing from you.
Sounds like a great idea, I’m not sure what are you planning with the info once you “locate” the mosquito. I guess you are only planning to supply the information and let the user do whatever they want with it, use the laser, captivate the mosquito, splat it, etc…
Here’s a question about your project.
What is the biggest area you’re planning to locate the mosquito in? A house? A Park?
Do you want to locate them one by one, a few, hundreds?
I’m asking because this fact will dramatically affect choosing from the possible ways to do it.
I’m not an engineer but from my general knowledge I can only think about two ways technology provides you, which I’m not sure if it’s feasible for this use at all.
1. Ultrasonic, similar to how you see a baby inside his mother’s belly, or how bats “see” with their ears, analyzing the way the echo of the sound waves comes back.
2. Based on mosquito sound itself, but you’ll need a very sensitive microphone and a very sophisticated way to filter all other irrelevant sounds captured from the environment, which in terms of very high definition microphone, could be very very noisy, so you need to find a way to pinpoint the very single noise frequency you’re interested in. You could also be able to determine if it’s a male or a female mosquito as their buzz sound is different.
3. Thermic camera? If you manage to settle on the heat footprint of a mosquito (if there’s such a thing…) You could detect it wherever you want, including through obstacles.
Again, I think the range and topology may be a big challenge here, so if you’re trying to find a mosquito in a house, you’ll have to install a sensor on every room, and make sure the sensor can detect a mosquito behind a cupboard, for example, which I don’t believe it will be easy.
I hope my inputs can help you develop the idea
Exactly.
Let’s assume the easiest situation for now, so assume a baby’s bedroom.
Just one.
A simple “There (was/was not) a mosquito detected since I as activated” would be a good start.
Yes I know and only the females bite but don’t let the fact make the project more complex.
If identifying a mosquito by sex makes it more complicated then ignore the fact and identify all mosquito’s.
If it’s cheap enough then fine, and it can also me moved.
NO !!! Keep it Simple. If it stays behind the cupboard then fine by me. When it comes out then tell me about it.
So I guess you’re talking about an invisible wide spacial “mosquito net” like dome, that is pulled on the baby’s room space to detect and alert about the presence of a mosquito?
That could be great indeed.
Another idea I thought of is to use some kind of movement or volume detector, similar to what house and cars alarms use, perhaps a laser curtain?
But in this case, the software that uses the sensors will have to know to set a room footprint for things we know are there and we don’t care about, the baby moves, there are toys and furniture around, perhaps a fan is working, the curtains moved by the fan breeze, etc.
Once the baseline is set, it may alert on any event that goes over the threshold that was set up.
Again, I only have ideas, but I don’t have a clue about HOW can that be done…
I think you should try starting by researching on the many available types of sensors you can use to detect such a small insect, perhaps a combination of two of them will give better and more accurate results, and not alert you about some other same size flying harmless insects.
Great suggestions thanks. I’m going to ask around about what sensors are available.
Ken.
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/23/die-bloodsuckers-pew-pew/
Yes I had seen the Ted Talk but unfortunately that project is not Free or is it Open.