Author Topic: Radar to detect mosquitoes?  (Read 12962 times)

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Offline PartialDischargeTopic starter

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #25 on: July 31, 2020, 08:10:39 am »
Hawk-Eye system used in tennis etc is said to be accurate to <4mm and is using only high-speed cameras and image processing. I think that tracking a tennis ball in a court is the same order of difficulty as tracking a mosquito in a regular size room.

Besides the yellow color of a tennis ball and its 20-30 bigger size, the main problem I see is that tennis matches are played in sunlight and mosquitoes do their work at night.
 

Online magic

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #26 on: July 31, 2020, 08:14:13 am »
No, they really thought they would be conquering malaria.  I know several people involved. And the patents, maybe.

But on your last point, I've edited it to make it more realistic: Never take anything coming from America at facevalue
Eh, fair enough :D
Maybe it was the plan before the budget blew up or maybe the people you knew (engineers?) had different concept than the for profit company that hired them.

It's Myhrvold by the way and some Microsoft coworkers described him as an eternal megalomaniac, so who knows, perhaps these guys were serious. It seems like every other company wants to change the world these days, simply making money doesn't cut it anymore.

Besides, from the description, I think IV's modus operandi is roughly "patent a PoC of just about anything conceivable" and license it when / if ever the technology becomes economically viable. So who cares that nobody can afford it, meh.
 

Online Siwastaja

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #27 on: July 31, 2020, 09:07:03 am »
Triangulating sound method works for a single target.
I doubt it would work if there are a number of mosquitoes in the room.

FFT it before triangulating, I'm sure mosquittoes are buzzing at fairly slowly drifting frequency (which you can lock into and track despite the drift), and each have a different frequency. This is the feeling I have trying to sleep despite mosquittoes: different pitch everywhere, can track every moment quite accurately with the human auditory system. Obviously this only works with fairly limited number of mosquittoes and requires a bit of luck so that they don't happen to fall within too close frequencies to begin with, but I would guesstimate this could work quite well up to maybe 5-10 simultaneous mosquittoes.

In any case, the range of such system would be limited (square law of amplitude), so you would use a distributed approach and use multiple such systems independently covering different areas. They could share information whenever a mosquitto is getting near to the end of the range of one system.

As a side note, before starting to automagically kill insects, make sure they are not the pollinating kind. For example, UV light attracts insects that are genetically programmed to go for flowers (with their UV signals), these insects are extremely important for the ecosystem and fairly beningn. The bad guys you want to get rid off are those who come for your blood, and these detect CO2, body temperature, and so on.

If all this sounds too easy, here's a true engineering challenge: before zapping the mosquitto with laser, figure out how to remotely test the flying mosquitto for malaria, and only zap it if positive.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 09:12:48 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline nfmax

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2020, 09:38:41 am »
Given the size of a mosquito and the speed with which it moves, that would have to be one heck of a camera to be able to pick them up, especially at a distance of a few meters.

Swallows manage it though (Yay swallows!)
 

Offline janoc

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #29 on: July 31, 2020, 03:07:12 pm »
Hawk-Eye system used in tennis etc is said to be accurate to <4mm and is using only high-speed cameras and image processing. I think that tracking a tennis ball in a court is the same order of difficulty as tracking a mosquito in a regular size room.
The key difference would be that a ball has already a contrasting color. But, if one can't paint mosquitos, there is always option to paint the room!

Ummm, not at all. First, the Hawk-Eye uses 6 to 10 cameras for the tracking. High-speed, high resolution expensive cameras tracking a ball of a contrasting color against the uniform color of the court in an extremely well lit environment. Also the fact that the ball is round and uniformly colored simplifies its detection immensely. Conditions about as good as it gets.

Compare that with tracking an essentially black mosquito against non-uniform and uncontrolled background, in a poorly lit room (so you have a lot of image noise). From my experience with optical tracking systems (both using and building them), I can guarantee you, that you wouldn't be able to reliably track a fly (10x larger target than a mosquito) optically even against white walls in a well lit room from a distance of few meters using common machine vision hardware. The bug would be the size of one or two pixels and lost in the noise.

If you don't believe me, take your photographic camera or smartphone (which likely has a much better lens and resolution than machine vision cameras do) and try to photograph a fly or a mosquito on a wall from several meters (without zoom, obviously). And see how big the critter will be in the resulting image, if it will be visible at all. For any sort of reliable detection you need the resulting "blob" of color to be at least (ballpark figure) 10-20 pixels across, likely more because the image will be averaged/filtered during the processing and very fine details get lost.

And now imagine you are doing this at perhaps 1/4 resolution because machine vision cameras rarely exceed 2000px per line. Both because of costs and also because the gear required to process such enormous images in real time (unlike taking a static photo) would be extremely non-trivial. The high resolution (e.g. 15 megapixel and more) cameras also tend to have a slow framerate, making them unsuitable for motion tracking.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 03:15:38 pm by janoc »
 

Offline Marco

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2020, 03:52:52 pm »
The idea is to identify it in a narrow corridor between an emitter and a retroreflector, plenty of contrast.
 

Offline _joost_

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #31 on: July 31, 2020, 04:04:16 pm »
Bats detect insects with sound waves they emit bouncing back. Frequencies with a wavelength larger than the insect do not bounce back but rather curve around the insect. Rather then emitting a single frequency bats send out a chirp which allows them to estimate the size of the insect by the frequencies and strength of each bouncing back. Different bat species have different chirp frequency ranges.

To compute the frequency needed to detect a 5mm insect, this is computed with: f = v/lambda with lambda being the wavelength and v the propagation speed which is the velocity of sound in this case. So for lambda being 5mm this comes down to: f = 330m/s / 5.10^-4 = 660kHz. This is the lowest frequency needed to detect a 5mm insect, higher is fine also.

To be able to place an insect at a specific location, you need at least 2 detectors (ears) so that a phase correlation can be made between the sounds received. For practical application, the spacial distance between the receivers, the transmitter and where the insect is all need consideration and optimization. E.g., an insect on a line/cone somewhat in the middle between the two receivers will be easier to detect than way off to one of the sides. Additionally detectors/emitters may be needed or some sort of apparatus that lets the emit/detect contraction scan the room (like a radar).

The problem you will encounter with this type of detection is that your ultra sounding receivers and emitter need to be extremely (phase) accurate. The cheapo distance type thingies you often see in Arduino like kits aren't going to work for you. Small phase offsets quickly lead to large distance/angle estimations. So your ultra sonics are going to cost you a pretty penny.

So why not a camera as some folks suggested? Simple compute the phase angle you'd need for a 5mm insect at distance x and determine the pixel resolution you need (I'd leave it to you to compute).

In case you wonder; I developed an ultrasonic detection method for pipe vibrations for industrial applications. Not quite the same as your insect problem but has similar aspects to it. I was able to detect (very) small vibration levels (orders of magnitude smaller than 5mm) at considerable distance from the pipe.
 

Offline PartialDischargeTopic starter

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #32 on: July 31, 2020, 04:25:17 pm »
To compute the frequency needed to detect a 5mm insect, this is computed with: f = v/lambda with lambda being the wavelength and v the propagation speed which is the velocity of sound in this case. So for lambda being 5mm this comes down to: f = 330m/s / 5.10^-4 = 660kHz. This is the lowest frequency needed to detect a 5mm insect, higher is fine also.

So in part you're implying that bats probably use higher frequencies that those usually reported in studies I've seen(100-300k). Some birds are just incredible in how specialized they are:

-Bats (although bats are mammals) in detecting flies and mosquitoes
-Eagles can spot small animals kilometers away
-Owls are totally silent when flying
-Woodpeckers can carve through wood by banging their heads against it, no trauma suffered.
 

Offline max_torque

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #33 on: July 31, 2020, 04:27:58 pm »
I suspect that detecting mosquitoes is much like detecting submarines, in that it is far easier to just let them come to you, than try and find out where they actually are!

The "convoy" system used to protect merchant shipping in WW2 worked because it attracted the subs to it, meaning they were easy to attack!

So what you need is something mosquitoes are attracted too?
 

Online Berni

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #34 on: July 31, 2020, 05:51:51 pm »
I suspect that detecting mosquitoes is much like detecting submarines, in that it is far easier to just let them come to you, than try and find out where they actually are!

The "convoy" system used to protect merchant shipping in WW2 worked because it attracted the subs to it, meaning they were easy to attack!

So what you need is something mosquitoes are attracted too?

This is actually how i deal with them.

If im awake and hear that dreaded high pitched buzz i just stay still while keeping my hand near by and listening closely to try and track its location. Once i feel it land i wait for a fraction of a second for a bit of a false sense of safety before quickly swiping by with my hand. Tho its still not perfectly reliable, so it often takes more than one try to catch it.
 

Offline bson

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #35 on: July 31, 2020, 08:20:54 pm »
I remember seeing a video (not sure if it was from the same company) where in a window frame there was a setup with some mosquito detector (again, don't recall if it was radar or video detection), then burning down the mosquito with an automatically aimed LASER.
My guess is the one in the video isn't aimed.  Instead it's used at low power to detect an insect purely by breaking it, at which point it pulses it briefly, and once only, at high power.  Something like this would be most useful where people can't get their hands or eyes in the beam.
 

Offline LaserSteve

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #36 on: August 02, 2020, 02:06:40 am »
The laser zapping of mozziess thing comes up like clockwork a couple of times a year. Yes, you can use a zoom lens to find mozzies, tell from the wing beat rate if they are male or female, then run a co-linear beam of violet or near infrared light right back down the lens and blow the wings off.  If your demo mozzie are in thick in an aquarium with a lightly colored background downrange.

Here is where it falls apart.  The lens field of view and eye safety. 

1. Thirty to sixty sets of lenses and galvanometer
Scanners per installation to cover a hemisphere.

2. Even so called low power  "eyesafe" lasers ( near to mid infrared) adsorbed by the cornea and not making it to the retina  are still dangerous in this task. It takes x amount of millijoules to fry a wing off a fast moving skeeter and paradoxically an eye is still far easier to damage then the tiny body parts.

Mother nature can make skeeters faster then the fastest galvos can target  them. A friend makes the fastest and there is no way he can get them down to the targeted 20$ a pair.

3. Skeeters can just fly over the "cone of no escape" and off to their next target. Required power goes up dramatically with range as the beam expands.

4. Having a Nominal Ocular Hazard Range of 800 feet to tens of kilometers is a problem. After all, how do you  have villagers running around yet have a system that meets the standard for laser safety of less then a one in a million possibility of eye damage per exposure?

Yes . You could sweep a big beam around the sky and kill bugs, but it is horribly dangerous, horribly inefficient, and other methods are far cheaper. 

One system can protect a doorway as designed and published,, but is the low Pkill and eye hazard worth it?
Well it can protect a doorway till you stand in it.

Steve
« Last Edit: August 02, 2020, 02:14:32 am by LaserSteve »
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #37 on: August 02, 2020, 02:22:52 am »
Perhaps the easiest way to kill the mosquitoes would be to fly a small drone at them and let the propellers slice them up.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

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Offline RoGeorge

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #38 on: August 02, 2020, 06:19:23 am »
The most effective way to catch mosquitoes indoors, without chemicals and without walls smearing, is with a vacuum cleaner.  The mosquitoes can't cope very well with strong wind, or air currents.  There are some recent designs of quiet vacuum cleaners.

Once you detect the mosquito, aim an air vortex to them, to push the mosquito near the window frame, then make the window frame as an air sucker, like a vacuum cleaner.   ;D

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #39 on: August 02, 2020, 07:15:21 am »
Hitting them with a short but very strong puff of compressed air might work too (by dismantling their wings for example, but I never tried).

Such a device will need to detect the insect, then to aim at it with an air nozzle, then to open a compressed air valve for just enough time, so a short "bullet" of compressed air to escape and hit the mosquito.

Offline Mecanix

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #40 on: August 03, 2020, 10:50:47 am »
Reminds me of an old Ted Talk closing with the "Laser'in Mozzies" topic. A system (hack?) made out of old consumer electronics parts, apparently! Your guess is as good as mine as whether that is all true, or for a good show, you to judge!

https://youtu.be/hqKafI7Amd8?t=883
« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 10:54:17 am by Mecanix »
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #41 on: August 03, 2020, 04:00:20 pm »
It's my belief that most of these active approaches are doomed to fail.  The higher tech they are, the more they are doomed.  Frankly, DDT in small amounts is the most effective and cheapest way to go.  While people will shudder over the suggestion, it's use would be orders of magnitude less than the widespread spraying that lead to it's banning. I recall seeing an analysis of such use and the claim is that it would not lead to the environmental damage that got it banned.

On active approaches - the vacuum scheme works pretty well when teamed up with an attractant.  You can buy (used to be able to?) a device that uses CO2 from burning propane as the attractant and a vacuum to pull them into a fine mesh bag where they desiccate and die. I don't know if the level of CO2 needed is too high for residences though we are all producing it and that's how the mosquitoes find us. I'm certain no insurers would cover a company making such a product though.

[edit] hmmm, such devices are sold today - have no idea how effective they really are, though.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 04:04:04 pm by phil from seattle »
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #42 on: August 03, 2020, 04:59:27 pm »
I have some mosquito repellant spray thats made with a bunch of aromatic oils of plants. Its got a very strong lemon smell but it works really well. It repels ticks too. (it helps to also wear long pants and put rubber bands around the legs). Spray the repellant on that. It lasts all day long.
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Offline Marco

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #43 on: August 03, 2020, 05:06:33 pm »
Frankly, DDT in small amounts is the most effective and cheapest way to go.

Just use the pyrethroids instead, works just as well outside of Africa and Asia and is actually legal.

In Africa and Asia there's resistance, but there's resistance to DDT there too so that doesn't matter much.

Developing resistance against lasers is a lot harder.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 05:11:33 pm by Marco »
 

Online Berni

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #44 on: August 04, 2020, 05:13:33 am »
I have some mosquito repellant spray thats made with a bunch of aromatic oils of plants. Its got a very strong lemon smell but it works really well. It repels ticks too. (it helps to also wear long pants and put rubber bands around the legs). Spray the repellant on that. It lasts all day long.

Yep that lemon smelling mosquito replant spray does work well. Just make sure to hold your breath when spraying yourself with it. It has a really strong smell and breathing in the spray cloud practically makes you choke. But once its on the skin it doesn't really smell that much anymore and does keep them away for the night.

Just because its a natural plant extract rather than a synthetic chemical doesn't suddenly make it harmless. There are plenty of natural substances found in animals or plants that will kill you even in tiny amounts. Tho don't think any of the popular bug replant sprays are any harm.

Best solution is still a bug screen over the window so that they can't get in at all.
 

Offline Mechatrommer

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #45 on: August 04, 2020, 12:24:33 pm »
some chaps around here dont have few mosquitos in their house/room/lab and dont know what a malaria and dengue are. i hate mosquito bite (itch) thats why i have to live with prallethin and d-phenothrin. if i know vaccum cleaner is more effective i've already done that many years ago. if there is laser turret design to kill mosquitos or anything small that fly i'm all in.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #46 on: August 06, 2020, 01:49:46 pm »
I have a device that contains a UV lamp and a strong fan. It sucks the mosquitos into an screened area where they cant escape and they just dry out and die.. Then later you empty the dead ones out.  I also use a high voltage bug zapper. Between the two of them it covers me fairly well. Disadvantage is the areas where these two devices live has to be dark or their UV light attraction aspect does not work. So basically they both work best at night.
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Offline Jan Audio

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #47 on: August 06, 2020, 02:17:06 pm »
Ofcourse you need white paint else they hide.

When can i order this ?, i need it.

Are you saying bats use microwave ?
Need to copy the bat maybe it works, the bat scans not a complete room.

Is there a expensive better verion of the HC-SR04 inside a bat ?
 

Online DC1MC

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Re: Radar to detect mosquitoes?
« Reply #48 on: August 08, 2020, 08:33:25 pm »
Your 60GHz radar is. (almost) ready:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/08/08/0241202/researchers-build-a-low-power-radar-on-a-cmos-chip

Of course, before tracking mosquitoes, it will track you, because this where all the reasarch seem do go nowadays, better tracking devices  :rant:.

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