Laser Defense System!!!!

[discothefunkyhippo]

on a miniature scale

I found this really sweet app for my iPhone this week that streams TED talks one right after another. If you don't know what TED talks are, I would definitely check them out (TED.com). Anyway, I was reading stuffs on this forum and listening to TED talks paying half attention to both... then all of a sudden I heard the words galvanometers and laser in the same sentence! After I settled down, I began to pay attention to something that sounded totally awesome. The quick and dirty is that someone built a system to track and zap mosquitos using lasers...yes lasers. One of those kids who like to pop balloons and burn through CD cases got bored and took it to the next level.



If you are impatient skip to ~12min. into the video for the good stuff. Enjoy.

[Jem]

Interesting video, even better if it can be scaled up.

I saw another mosquito laser defence system a few weeks ago. Apparently mosquito's won't cross an infra red barrier. Their idea was to scan a cone of infra red laser light (perhaps above a bed or across a window), and the mosquito's wouldn't cross the barrier. This was a non-lethal system designed to act like a mosquito net. The idea was to produce these systems cheap enough so that people in Africa and other mosqito ridden countries could stick them on the ceiling above their beds for protection.

[Stoney3K]

Interesting video, even better if it can be scaled up.

I saw another mosquito laser defence system a few weeks ago. Apparently mosquito's won't cross an infra red barrier. Their idea was to scan a cone of infra red laser light (perhaps above a bed or across a window), and the mosquito's wouldn't cross the barrier. This was a non-lethal system designed to act like a mosquito net. The idea was to produce these systems cheap enough so that people in Africa and other mosqito ridden countries could stick them on the ceiling above their beds for protection.

What are the power levels needed for something like this? Scanning a cone of infrared light right into the path of a human getting in or out of bed doesn't sound exactly eye-safe.

[norty303]

Scanning a cone of infrared light right into the path of a human getting in or out of bed doesn't sound exactly eye-safe

Acceptable risk, rather than dying from malaria perhaps?

[Jem]

I'm not sure of exact power levels, but from what I read I don't believe it has to be that high. It's more a case of the mosquito's 'seeing' the IR, it doesn't cause them damage but rather acts as a barrier of some sort... Wait, I found the article...

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/11/infrared-laser.php

[mixedgas]

This keeps coming up, including a request from one of the principals in the project appearing on PL and wanting to know how to get the price of decent galvos with a high pointing accuracy down to 25-50$ a set for 10,000 sets.

10K sets is probably twice or triple the ENTIRE yearly Chinese production of Galvos.

Its not practical compared to the cost of insecticide, calculate the number of galvo pairs you need to cover half a sphere. Remember, only one mozzie with the parasites has to get through, so your Pk (Probablity of a kill) for N incoming mozzies has to be damn good.

When I did the basic math I had a good laugh. You might cover a doorway or a window for a reasonable cost. A piece of plastic mesh does that with a much higher (Near Unity) Pk.

They seem to think that several 300 mW 405 nm diodes is a defense.

The whole reason this keeps coming back up is high initial funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Remember its one targeting camera and lens per galvo set. That lens needs two or more motors just for zoom/focus, This is going to get VERY expensive, Very Fast.

Pesticide would work better. So would be some scheme like breeding mosquitoes that reject the parasite.

This fails for the classic reason a missle defense system is only good for a few incoming missles, countering one "golden BB" is easy, countering a shotgun blast of BBs is not.

If you could convice me that 99% of mosquitoes approach at the same low flight level all of the time, well... Maybe. Then you'll end up selective breeding the ones that fly a "Pop UP" manuver, which was the countermeasure invented for ship mounted gatling guns. Fly up, and dive down to hit the soft stuff.

PS, to the O.P. This is not a dig at you, this makes people think. SO your NOT wrong for posting it again. :-)

LOL.

Steve


Steve

[discothefunkyhippo]

@Jem

Pretty sweet man. I like the video... The guy was all like "I wanna use my knowledge of astrophysics to actually do something".

@Steve

I didn't know that it was posted before, but thank you for the info. Genetic engineering is the new black, and it would be possible to eradicate malaria in a myriad of ways down that road.

[planters]

In one of the Laserscope related posts I remember reading about the effectiveness of the aerial 532 in attracting and killing mossies on summer evenings. I had a bunch of barn flies do the same. Rather than targeting and all the related software and hardware, what about a few 445s and a "pinball" array of mirrors as an alternative to the classic bug zapper for backyard "deployment"? Not better, just more fun and marketable.

[White-Light]

I guess if you were just emitting a cone over a bed you could do it with one set per bed /leaping area depending on how wide the scan would need to be.

But as you say Steve, a decent set of galvos isn't going to come in at $25-50 when you consider that reliability is going to be a high request given that servicing won't be practicable and that dust in the environment will be high.

In a very hot country last thing you want is hot galvos so that's going to mean a hermetically sealed enclosure with galvos running icy cold in huge heat at a fraction of their rated speed to keep heat production down.

That kind of sounds like a 60K set of Eye Magics or Cambridge running maybe 20K in the hermetically sealed and probably tec cooled enclosure.

That in turn sounds like a Euro 1,500-2000 set of galvos for EM's and maybe twice that for Cambridge!