10 responses to “EEVblog #191 – Mouse Trap Triggering”

• Nick August 1st, 2011 at 21:49

  Another, more elegant, solution would be to catch your house mice first, mark them with RFID tags and release them again (very sporty, isn’t it?). Then, all it takes is use a simple RFID reader to activate the trap. Additional bonus: you don’t catch your neighbor’s mice or other rodent whatsoever.
  It’s more elaborate method than the heating resistor approach, but could easily lead to a 1,5 hours EEVblog!!
  Nevertheless, great idea and nice tutorial. I wonder if anyone has ever looked at the humble resistor’s datasheet before.

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• adam lumpkins August 1st, 2011 at 23:30

  dave, I did some work with graphite It works great as an ignter….. there are many different sizes. I had some luck useing them as resistors just thought i would throw that in there

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• John August 1st, 2011 at 23:50

  Ahaha, even the end credits got fed up with Dave’s babbling.

  “I just wanted to show some things on resistors… AAAND CUT!”

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• Ondre August 2nd, 2011 at 04:37

  Hehehe, good one Dave! Totally reminds me of my first experiments with electronics 15 years ago when I built a time fuse for firecrackers! I used copper-constantan wire, which could be wound easily around the fuse of the cracker, instead of a resistor.
  Needless to mention that the actual timer was based on the humble 555. All slapped together in a tiny tin can, BIG FUN!

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• Yi Yao August 2nd, 2011 at 10:56

  Man, sounds like someone’s asking Dave for help for their homework…

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• WestfW August 2nd, 2011 at 12:57

  A solenoid based approach would make “reload” a much simpler operation. Which may or may not matter… There used to be a board we sold that was laid out to have a series of resistor-sized fuses between the board and some cable-connected daughtercard. We discovered that using small-values resistors instead of the (expensive!) fuses resulted in an additional feature – you could smell them burning after an overcurrent event; a sort of “olfactory failure indicator”…

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• WestfW August 2nd, 2011 at 17:11

  BTW, this has particular application to spring (or rubber) powered, electronicaly triggered parachute ejection for water, model, and amateur rockets. To increase your comfort level, you can one of the low-melting-point, extra-high-strength polymers for the string (ie “Spectra”) Watch your knots, though. When you’re on the wrong side of a powerful spring is a bad time to notice that polymer string is “slippery.”

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• VK6MRG August 3rd, 2011 at 14:42

  Hi Dave,
  I fould this and thought you might get a laugh!
  http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Remote-Control-TV-DVD-SAT-VCR-Calculator-Wrist-Watch-/190452671345?_trksid=p4012.m8&_trkparms=algo%3DMW%26its%3DC%26itu%3DUCC%26otn%3D15%26po%3DLCA%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D1792069553925797604&_qi=RTM883560

  Love the show, keep up the good work!
  Matt

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• Kodon August 4th, 2011 at 03:33

  You gotta be shittin’ me.
  I’m sorry Dave but your blog is no good anymore

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• Frank August 29th, 2011 at 19:54

  Shape memory alloys would make a good resetable electronic trigger…

  http://www.musclewires.com/

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