On March 18 2009 17:53 fight_or_flight wrote:
If I just had access to a powerful enough laser, I could totally make my own sentry. Here is a kid who made one that fires a paintball gun. All you need is a laptop, a couple of servo motors, a camera, and either matlab or labview.

hahahahah ohh the amount of fun you could have with one of those :D

Mortality

United States4790 Posts

March 19 2009 00:54 GMT

#47

'Tch. Needs more firepower. I don't want to hear about destroying individual mosquitos; I want to hear about destroying forests full of mosquitos! Nevermind the collateral. This is serious business damn it!

fight_or_flight

United States3988 Posts

March 19 2009 02:12 GMT

#48

On March 18 2009 22:42 TheFoReveRwaR wrote:

Show nested quote +

My thoughts exactly. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of making it only target female misquitos. Africas eco system is already fragile enough.

Well not so much the hazard or hurting people but the highly cost inffective. Unless of course you want a feel good, media friendly project and you're a high tec software/technology mogul. And your wife is a bleeding heart save the world type person and you want to make her happy too. Oh wait!

I really wouldn't take this idea too seriously. I doubt it will ever be operational.

When I look at a technology and ask if it's viable, there are some questions I ask:
1) does it take a large amount of energy, and is therefore inherently expensive?
2) does it require technology which is not available today?
3) are the materials/process required to produce it inherently expensive or exotic?

If the answer is no, then that means that the only thing keeping it from becoming a reality is simply your inability to come up with a clever enough way of doing it.

For example, you could have a ring of weak lasers converge onto a single point in space (thats how they do fusion). Observation lasers could be used calculate the exact point of the mosquito in space. All these could be built onto a single chip. Perhaps a single laser source could be used, and DLP technology be used to cause the split beams to converge.

Perhaps an infrared laser or a UV laser could easily kill mosquitos yet be harmless to humans.

Perhaps a phased array of ultrasound transducers could be used to target a single point in space, in conjunction with a laser sight.

Perhaps you could restrict the drone to target only mosquitos directly above it or directly in front of a brick wall or other inert surface.

On March 19 2009 09:54 Mortality wrote:
'Tch. Needs more firepower. I don't want to hear about destroying individual mosquitos; I want to hear about destroying forests full of mosquitos! Nevermind the collateral. This is serious business damn it!

Its difficult to grasp the power of automation. Like programming, if you can solve the base case (a single mosquito) then you can scale it up enormously.

TheFoReveRwaR

United States10657 Posts

March 19 2009 11:41 GMT

#49

Actually there are other factors. Think about the upkeep costs for keeping that level of technology functioning properly for example. Especially in a poor uneducated country with limited resources. You'd have to provide salary, room and board for a educated high paying highly technical job.

Whereas with other low tech options that do not require such skilled labor you could find local workers to preform all the necessary tasks. Much much cheaper.

fight_or_flight

United States3988 Posts

May 07 2010 06:27 GMT

#50

To all the skeptics and naysayers....after slightly more than a year after I posted this thread, here is a guide on how to create a laser defense perimeter around your yard using off-the-shelf parts that will kill mosquitoes. It can even be made to target only female mosquitoes, if you like.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/backyard-star-wars

jaybrundage

United States3921 Posts

May 07 2010 06:33 GMT

#51

This would make a camping not suck so much:D

pyr0ma5ta

United States458 Posts

May 07 2010 06:43 GMT

#52

Yes, but can it shoot down Marauder or Viking missles?

Incanus

Canada695 Posts

May 07 2010 06:54 GMT

#53

On March 18 2009 16:53 fight_or_flight wrote:

Show nested quote +

You just know people online would be targeting children and small animals though.

It's like Ender's Game. You THINK you're targeting mosquitoes, but you're actually fighting a war in the Middle East.

deL

Australia5540 Posts

May 07 2010 07:10 GMT

#54

On May 07 2010 15:54 Incanus wrote:

Show nested quote +

It's like Ender's Game. You THINK you're targeting mosquitoes, but you're actually fighting a war in the Middle East.

Ender's Game <3

Man it's disappointing to see that this is old news - it means they haven't uprisen and rebelled against their human tyrants yet, malfunctioning to instead make people burst into flame ;(

MercerX

United States32 Posts

May 07 2010 07:28 GMT

#55

ya i wanna see a video of it or i don't give a fck

Hyde

Australia14568 Posts

May 07 2010 07:47 GMT

#56

On May 07 2010 15:27 fight_or_flight wrote:
To all the skeptics and naysayers....after slightly more than a year after I posted this thread, here is a guide on how to create a laser defense perimeter around your yard using off-the-shelf parts that will kill mosquitoes. It can even be made to target only female mosquitoes, if you like.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/backyard-star-wars

I just read it and I think it's pretty cool and it would be so great to have one when holding a bbq. Too bad it's so expensive to build haha.

On May 07 2010 16:28 MercerX wrote:
ya i wanna see a video of it or i don't give a fck

While there isn't a video of it actually targeting and firing at a mosquito, there is a short video of what happens to the mosquito when it's hit by the laser at different frequencies.

Ganondorf

Italy600 Posts

May 07 2010 08:23 GMT

#57

Yeah all that theory, they say they bought all the components, yet no video (only one where they were just testing the laser). So it failed to work ?

vvvVec

Norway85 Posts

May 07 2010 12:17 GMT

#58

This is friggin awsome, i <3 u, human engineering.

Hesmyrr

Canada5776 Posts

May 07 2010 12:28 GMT

#59

On May 07 2010 17:23 Ganondorf wrote:
Yeah all that theory, they say they bought all the components, yet no video (only one where they were just testing the laser). So it failed to work ?

Video's probably coming up in 2011, or 2087 from future people mocking our ignorance and skepticism. Don't risk it.