Mosquito Magnet

[mpswin]

I wonder if Dave could do a tear down on one of these. They are quite secretive about schematics and block diagrams. It is a very unique system using propane burner and thermo electric power generation. Love to have a schematic, but not sure if I can reverse engineer one.
Mike

[bilko]

Mosquitoes are attracted to C02 and infra red, same as animals and humans emit. The propane burner will produce the CO2, haven't seen the device so can't speculate further.

[mpswin]

You can Google Mosquito Magnet to get a general idea of design and function. This is a sophisticated system designed and patented by American Biophysics in the 1990's. The company has since gone out of business; it has licensed the patents to another company. These devices work great, but are finicky and hard to maintain. I asked for the schematic from a licensed servicer, but they were sworn to secrecy in order to receive the schematic from current licensee.

[amyk]

The good thing about patents is that they're in the public domain; and by extension, any schematics in them...

http://www.google.com/patents/US6145243
http://www.google.com/patents/US6286249

In general it's very hard to find schematics of consumer equipment these days; they are kept confidential most of the time.

Edit: I just realised the schematic in that patent above has part numbers too!

[mpswin]

Thanks, that will be a great help. Later models may have some modifications, but they should be minor. Thanks again.