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Wireless Networking Hardware Science

Wireless Sensor Networks for Killing Mosquitoes 143

Posted by samzenpus from the raise-the-bug-shields dept.
aaditeshwar writes "It looks like sensor networks have some applications afterall, other than the usual stuff for defense and US military! AmBio has created a wireless mesh network of bugspraying "magnets" that report back data on the temperature, air conditions, and wind directions, and a central controller uses this data to turn ON or OFF the magnets in different areas. They plan to cover entire cities with such wireless meshes, and create an anti-mosquito shield around the city!"
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Wireless Sensor Networks for Killing Mosquitoes More

Wireless Sensor Networks for Killing Mosquitoes

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  • And then (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When the bacteria eaten by the mosquitoes begin hurting us, everybody will realize that -after all- they were not just "bad".

    Typical biological intervention which reverts against us.

    • Re:And then (Score:3, Interesting)

      by quigonn ( 80360 )
      Dear Mr. Crackpot AC,

      Please have a look at some encyclopedia and get a clue. Mosquitos are typically nectar feeders, with only the females sucking out your blood. And they infamous for transmitting illnesses such as Malaria in some countries.

      Regards,
      [unreadable signature]
      • indeed, only female mosquitos suck (yeah i mean that literally and not literally).

        but he has a point, if the mosquitos disappear, there will be nectar left overs that they balanced over the years. now if a more harmful species will come to eat that nectar and gain some tremendous overpower with it, we might be in big trouble which could be not even comparable to our current "ouch that damn thing bite me" problems.

        try to look at the big picture, there are millions of mosquitos all over place and they probabl

    • Re:And then (Score:5, Informative)

      by Indras ( 515472 ) * on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:28AM (#14106990)
      When the bacteria eaten by the mosquitoes begin hurting us, everybody will realize that -after all- they were not just "bad".

      Typical biological intervention which reverts against us.

      Mosquitoes do not eat bacteria. They are nectar drinkers, with the female ones requiring an additional diet of animal blood.

      I'm racking my brain, but I cannot think of a negative reason to remove mosquitoes from cities. Other than reducing spread of West Nile virus and malaria, the only real effect would be a lack of bug bites and a reduced diet for spiders and birds that feed on them.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @08:58AM (#14107164)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:And then (Score:1, Insightful)

        by inf0rmer ( 545195 )
        I'm recovering from Dengue Fever, and I can think of nothing better than sending them into oblivion.
      • How about predators who live on mosquitos. Malaria and westnile can be killed by just taking away the Tiger (? Only this one, or also some others) mosquito. Other mosquitos might be annoying, but they do not transmit diseases.
      • Mosquitoes do not eat bacteria.

        In their larval form they eat algae [scienceplace.org]

        An algae bloom turns the shallows of a lake into an unpleasant greenish stretch of water. The algae that can make the shores of our lakes repulsive is exactly a mosquito's cup of tea. Not only do they eat algae but they are also a source of food for others in the food chain. Dragonflies, fish and birds eat them.

        So there you go, unfortunately they're a vital part of the ecosystem... (as are my other hated creature, the jellyfish)

      • As the saying goes, "there are no small changes in a complex system." Removing (or introducing) a species to an area on a scale as described nearly always backfires, resulting in a situation worse than before (think of pigeons and english sparrows in the United States, or cane toads in Australia).

        Removing all mosquitoes from the food chain may have far-reaching effects on other animals as well. At the present time, the system (i.e. nature) is so complex that we cannot possibly hope to predict these c

      • Some musquitoes eggs are useful. They enhance the ground in a swamp. Not all, but some.
        Beside that, it is never a good thing to completely eradicate a life form from some places. Allthough in some cases this comes in handy in order to fight deseases.
    • ...and another crackpot comment gets (max)modded insightful
    • Point one, mosquitos do not eat bacteria. Second point, mosquitos are very very bad news for third world countries. I see people talking about malaria and how many people it kills, but if you just get malaria you are lucky, in south asia you have much dangerous killers like dengue. If you are really really unllucky you will get brain fever, west nile fever, yellow fever.. the list is endless. It will be great if such webs are put up in slum areas and near water bodies.Kudos to them for bringing out such an
    • if type(mosquito) == parasite:
      slap(AC.face)
  • spammers, phishers, Nigerian 419'ers, and their ilk?

  • Fighting malaria (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:24AM (#14106978) Homepage
    This would be great in tropical countries. Mosquito-borne malaria is one of those diseases that affects a huge number of people (a majority in many countries), which is non-fatal but debilitating. It makes you sick every few months, and you spend a week or so in a terrible fever. Sometimes it's fatal but mostly it just makes people very weak, unable to concentrate on useful work, and so on.

    Of course there are hundreds of other diseases that weigh down people living in tropical countries but malaria is one of the big ones. Keeping mosquitos away from places where people live would be a great thing. I just hope the technology will become cheap enough to work in rural Africa.

  • Can the 3rd World afford it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:24AM (#14106979) Homepage
    This is a great application, and one which probably has the largest benefits for the 3rd World and developing world. As with drugs however the issue is going to be the cost to those countries of deploying it (and having the reliable power network to support it).

    How long before its cheap enough to not just be about making people in Florida feel more comfortable living in a swamp?

  • Whoops (Score:4, Funny)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:25AM (#14106981)

    I thought they meant real magnets. I was like "WTF do we have nano-robitic mosquitos now?". Glad we can all sleep safe in the knowledge that we will only be bitten by regular mosquitos.

    • Re:Whoops (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      Mosquito sized and even dust particle sized robots have been under development for a number of years now. If natural mosquitoes can bite you and unintentionally spread diseases, think about what robotic mosquitoes can do in the hands of the wrong person.
    • I for one welcome our nano-robitic mosquito overlords
    • I think they ought to go back to an idea I had years ago. In an early 1970s Scientific American "amateur scientist" column, there was an article on building your own 5Kw pulsed dye laser. I always wondered about taking the sonar range-finder from the old polaroid SX-70 camera, adding some electronics to allow it to discriminate between the target and other objects, and hooking that up to the pulse-laser. Of course, my target was going to be the squirrels eating my garden, but the principle is the same.

  • Now I just need a really long extension cord... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jimmyhat3939 ( 931746 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:25AM (#14106982) Homepage
    This sounds like it would work great for golf courses and country clubs (one of the sites mentioned in the article).

    However... they tout this as being great for third-world countries where malaria is prevalent. I'm sure this is the angle they'll use to get major media, since people ultimately aren't that drawn to devices that make live even easier for the country-club set.

    According to the article, you need both a 20-pound tank of propane and access to a nearby power outlet to make the machine work, not to mention wifi for the fancier parts of it. Seems like this could be a bit of a stretch in places like Central America and Africa where they're lucky to have running water and decent sanitation facilities. Maybe a better version of device could use the propane to power the unit, so that you don't need that power cord?

    Or else, I suppose they could just use the equivalent of the "Mexican National Extension Cord [headformexico.com]" to run the things.
    --
    Free 411! 1-800-411-SAVE [1800411save.com]

    • Seems like this could be a bit of a stretch in places like Central America and Africa

      Yes, in TFA a doctor says as a public health measure it would be much easier, cheaper and effective to spray the standing water where they breed rather than trying to suck them up later in this device.

  • Great !! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by amodm ( 876842 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:26AM (#14106983)
    As if interference from nearby wireless networks was not enough !! They're using 802.11b network. Do they realize that a 802.11g network gets very badly affected if there's a 11b network nearby ?

    Couldn't it have been done through wires, or bluetooth, or custom radio, or whatever....
    • A Mosquito Magnet [mosquitomagnet.com] is a propane powered device that attracts mosquitos by emitting a plume of CO2. The CO2 (and water vapour and scent additives) emulate the breath of warm blooded animals. The mosquitos are lured into the trap and killed.

      The clever idea here is to network a bunch of these mosquito magnets, and a bunch of sensors, together, using wireless networking to remotely monitor propane levels, control burn times, etc. A large area can be protected, and the machines don't have to be on when they

  • And the effects on other species? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Bradshaw ( 933608 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:29AM (#14106996)
    Great, we'll rid the city of mosquitos... What about natural predation and balance in areas where these systems are deployed? There are species that depend on the these "pests" for survival?

    http://www.mosquito-netting.com/predators.html [mosquito-netting.com]

    I know that there are concerns with insect born illness, but that these problems can and in my opinion be solved without wiping out an entire species from an ecosystem, no matter how annoying they are.

    Is it just me, or does this seem a little extreme...?
    • That's what I'm worried about too. In theory, this sounds like a good thing in certain circumstances, but what if everyone wants to make their town or village mosquitoless zone?

      Larger use would certainly have an effect on ecosystem.
      • I think that'd be ok. The amount of urban/developed land, compared to the total land mass of the planet, is pretty damn small. Even if we kicked those bugs out of all the cities, there'd still be plenty of other space for the mosquitos and dependent species to survive.

        If this crap works, I vote that New Orleans install some as soon as possible. The mosquitos have always been sort of bad here, and they got a whole lot worse after the hurricanes. All around the city and its suburbs, trucks drive through the s

    • Great, we'll rid the city of mosquitos... What about natural predation and balance in areas where these systems are deployed? There are species that depend on the these "pests" for survival?

      If they don't have mosquitos, let them eat flys !

      I know that there are concerns with insect born illness, but that these problems can and in my opinion be solved without wiping out an entire species from an ecosystem, no matter how annoying they are.

      I can think of several species I'd like to have wiped out of t

    • There are species that depend on the these "pests" for survival?

      There are indeed. For instance, the mosquito is a crucial part of the lifecycle of the plasmodium [ohio-state.edu]. If mosquitos are eradicated, then the plasmodium goes with it.

      Now, as far as I'm concerned, plasmodium sits just above HIV on the list of Species That Have Just Got To Go, but YMMV.



    • You'd have to live near a mosquito-infested area to understand. Imagine a black haze of mosquitoes as far as you can see in every direction. Keeping mosquitoes out of cities will definitely not affect their population outside of the cities in any large way. I'd also suspect that the method of trapping and destroying the mosquito itself is environmentally better than the current method of mosquito prevention (pesticides and surface water oils).

    • Personally, I'm not exactly shaking in my britches at this prospect.
      You have one heck of a lot more faith in us humans than I do if you seriously believe we could actually render mosquitoes extinct.

      Not to say that I don't think we could do it, it's just that if we manage to do that, I'm going to guess that we'll be more concerned about the planet we've rendered inhabitable.

      We are very very good at imposing negative impacts on macro fauna and the like, but we are not very good at wiping out the little bugger
    • I think you are overreacting. Mankind has been trying to eradicate all bugs for oh, roughly 2-3 million years and as far as we know, we haven't succeeded in eliminating a single species.

      I'm thinking that this may be a device to win a battle, but the bugs are gonna win the war.

    • Re:And the effects on other species? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's you. First, consider the ecosystem you're crying about. Cities. If you think there's an ecosystem in cities that humans can take care not to change, you're neglecting the tiny little technicality that any ecosystem that grows in a city grows entirely according to human activities. There is not some delicate balance of alley cats and feral children to protect in cities, but there are mosquitos that carry disease. To eliminate one species from this completely artificial human-centric ecosystem is tr

  • Holy Iron Insects, Entomology Man! (Score:3, Funny)

    by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:30AM (#14106998)
    AmBio has created a wireless mesh network of bugspraying "magnets" that report back data on the temperature,

    Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't know that mosquitos were magnetic. I guess I'll have to welcome my new magnetic insectoid overlords. I'm getting really sick of welcoming new overlord, but whatever.

  • Bats (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:33AM (#14107004)
    How does this system compare with just attracting bats to the area? Just attach little wooden bat homes near your golf course or whatever. Bats eat a lot of bugs.

    • Re:Bats (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:59AM (#14107051) Homepage Journal
      Bats eat a lot of bugs.

      So do fish. When I installed a pond in my front garden the mozzie population exploded overnight. The Mosquito lavae were breeding in the pond.

      So I put fish in the pond. The fish got bigger and the mozzies almost disapeared.

    • Re:Bats (Score:4, Funny)

      by kellar ( 932533 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @08:34AM (#14107105)
      yeah but then what do we do with the .... aw screw it, i'll just use an obligatory simpsons quote:

      QUIMBY: For decimating our pigeon population, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.

      Skinner talks to Lisa.

      SKINNER: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.

      LISA: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?

      SKINNER: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.

      LISA: But aren't the snakes even worse?

      SKINNER: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

      LISA: But then we're stuck with gorillas!

      SKINNER: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

      The family head back to the car.

  • The cancer rate in urban areas suddenly quadruples....
    • sounds like a nice idea: why not change the natural environment of western civilisation by pumping all kinds of exhaustions into the air, then add a random mass of radio waves and spice in all with massive magnetic pollution? test this, and if we see a flaw in this plan - say in 20 years - it will aready be too late to bother. nature took billions of years to shape our world. but we are way better. ps: I was told that sarcasm is hard to recognize, when written. I thought, I should mention it here.

  • Vapourware? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martinmcc ( 214402 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @07:48AM (#14107033) Homepage
    I watched a program about mosqitos recently, and they are actually pretty cool creatures. As mentioned before, it is only the female that drinks blood, and it is used for making babies (mosquito babies I assume, not human), not for everyday sustanance. When they drink your blood, they actually distill it in real time, excreting out what they do not need as they drink.

    But anyway, asides from the possible environmental impact it may or may not cause, does this not strick anyone as being highly unrealistic. How much would it cost to put up a city wide net of sensors and magnets, not to mention the power cost, replacing broken components etc. etc. Smells to me like a lot of vapourware.

    I think we should just all sit down with mosquitos and have a good long chat, I'm sure we could work out our differences and learn to live together in peace and harmony.

    • Re:Vapourware? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DingerX ( 847589 )
      Well, duh, it is vapourware.

      ... until they perfect the tracking mechanism to determine the precise location of each mosquito, and feed that into an IMDS (integrated mosquito defense system), that uses picolasers to fry those bastards outta the sky.

      Seriously, the world would be a better place without mosquitoes. Those of you in parts of the world where you don't have them, or you don't have many of them, really needn't comment on the environmental damage they['d do. The mosquito population can certainly st
    • "I think we should just all sit down with mosquitos and have a good long chat, I'm sure we could work out our differences and learn to live together in peace and harmony."

      Yeah... Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who die from malaria in the third world every year...

      These machines do work. That isn't to say that a network of them would be any more useful than using one as a point solution where there's a known problem.

       
      • "I think we should just all sit down with mosquitos and have a good long chat, I'm sure we could work out our differences and learn to live together in peace and harmony."

        "Yeah... Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who die from malaria in the third world every year..."

        Indeed. Get sarcasm much?

      • "I think we should just all sit down with mosquitos and have a good long chat, I'm sure we could work out our differences and learn to live together in peace and harmony."

        Yeah... Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who die from malaria in the third world every year...

        Sounds like a great idea. Jimmy Carter did something similar. Met with groups who'd never agree, and some that wouldn't think rationally if their lives depended on it. All in the name of peace. While north korea, israel/palestine,

    • Re:Vapourware? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 )
      As mentioned before, it is only the female that drinks blood, and it is used for making babies (mosquito babies I assume, not human), not for everyday sustanance.

      Great. So the mosquito bites me, gives me malaria, and uses the blood to make MORE MOSQUITOS. Now, if you'd explain to me why this is a good thing?

      That disease kills some 1.5 million people a year [who.int]. One million, five hundred thousand people a year, every year. That's death on a Holocaust scale, and not just for a few years but year on year with

      • The appropriate solution to your concerns is finishing development of a malaria vaccine. It will be cheaper, more effective and less harmful than trying to wipe out a whole chunk of the food chain.
      • Great. So the mosquito bites me, gives me malaria, and uses the blood to make MORE MOSQUITOS. Now, if you'd explain to me why this is a good thing? Improvements in the gene pool? Seriously though, you don't need to jump of the agressive defence so much, I just mentioned as an interesting tit-bit, not as an arguement for or against any particular point. That disease kills some 1.5 million people a year. One million, five hundred thousand people a year, every year. That's death on a Holocaust scale, and no
        • "widescale culling should take place without very careful consideration of the possible knock-on effects."

          That's idotic. That process only invites ignorant criticism like yours, and allows people with a lot to say, but little of substance to roadblock the process.

          No thanks, I'll let nature sort it out. What makes you think any kind of consideration will come to a correct conclusion anyway? It seems you think people can predict the effects of something like this.
          • "
            "widescale culling should take place without very careful consideration of the possible knock-on effects."

            That's idotic. That process only invites ignorant criticism like yours, and allows people with a lot to say, but little of substance to roadblock the process.

            No thanks, I'll let nature sort it out. What makes you think any kind of consideration will come to a correct conclusion anyway? It seems you think people can predict the effects of something like this.
            "

            Your first sentance seems to suggest that yo
      • Wouldn't it be safer to move your finger a little to the left and press the "Instantly Exterminate All Malaria Parasites" button?
    • When they drink your blood, they actually distill it in real time, excreting out what they do not need as they drink

      We used to play a game when I was younger. If you were bit by a mosquito in the right place, you could flex your muscles and tense the skin around the mosquitos beak. If you did it right, the mosquito would keep filling until it exploded (although in most cases you just got a bigger nasty itchy mark).

      Seems to be that mosquitos can't exactly extrete out blood as they're taking it in, other
    • I also watched a program about mosquitoes the other day called "Monty Python's Flying Circus - Mosquito Hunters", here's an excerpt: "Roy: (voice over) The mosquito's a clever little bastard. You can track him for days and days until you really get to know him like a friend. He knows you're there, and you know he's there. It's a game of wits. You hate him, then you respect him, then you kill him. (Cut to Hank Spire who stands peering toward the horizon. Suddenly he points.) Voice Over: Suddenly Hank spot

  • Not all bugs are mozzies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martinX ( 672498 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @08:15AM (#14107075)
    Not all bugs are mozzies. If it kills all bugs, what happens to the critters that live by eating bugs?

    I remember reading (somewhere on the innanet, so it must be true...) that the so-called mozzie zappers weren't too discriminatory. ~95% of the bugs caught in them weren't mosquitoes, but were bugs that had been attracted by the zapper's (deliberately attractant) light. This in turn was adversely affecting the local frogs. Less frogs meant more mosquitoes... and so on.

    OTOH, my fly catching bottle smells like poo but catches nothing but flies :-)
    • If these "nets" are being put up around cities, then chances are, that the animals that live off the mosquitos won't be present in large numbers. Insect populations are fairly robust, remember when DDT spraying was routinely done over large parts of the wilderness - the mosquitoes are still here.
      The main predators of mosquitoes are fish (larval/egg stage), bats, some various insects and mainly of coarse, the dragonfly!

      This sounds like a fairly safe application, but should always be observed, just in case.


    • If you had read the article, you'd have seen that the device is not an indiscriminate bug zapper. It has a mosquito-specific attractant.

  • Great, what kind of chances does the average Joe geek have for making a house-area one of these out of old HDD magnets? Or something? Sounds like a fun project...

  • Birds (Score:2, Informative)

    by se2schul ( 667721 )
    ... and the number of birds who feed on the bugs will be cut dramatically throughout the cities.
  • Most cities don't have a bug problem. Rural areas on the other hand.....

    • Re:Is this needed in cities? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The city of Winnipeg, Manitoba goes to great lengths to kill mosquitoes. They employ insecticide foggers that are quite controversial. Why do they do all this? The consequences of the poisons are seen as less of a risk than the consequences of West Nile virus.

      http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/wnv/ [gov.mb.ca]
  • Simply described, the magnet emits a humanlike scent that includes carbon dioxide and moisture to attract bloodsucking insects. When the bugs flutter past, they're sucked into and suffocated by a vacuumlike device.
    In a long term process, does this could somehow have an effects on human health?

  • I'll settle for spraying morons with bug spray, even.

    I would like something to get the gnats out of my room, actually. Maybe it would help if I emptied the garbage (daily)?
  • Wouldn't mosquitoes get trapped *inside* the net if its covering an entire city??
  • I find it a great way to unwind whenever there are too many bugs buzzing around my place I reach for the badminton racquet and go on a genocidal bug swatting rampage through the house.. its great fun and solves the bug problem for a while.. side effects include getting a good workout and having to buy more lightbulbs..
  • there are lots of other meaningful uses of mesh networking. http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005910.html [wifinetnews.com] look beyond 3G and there are lots of possiblities.
  • How bad can the mosquito problem be in larger urban centres? In most larger towns and cities I've been in, there are very few mosquitoes due to the pollution and lack of standing water. If this was rolled this out over the Rural areas, NOW we're getting somewhere, because when I play paintball at the field which is in the middle of butt-fsck nowhere, it takes 100% Deet bug spray to keep the little buggers (heh heh) off of you, and that doesn't last very long.

    My $0.02 CDN

  • Couldn't we . . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by unknownideal ( 881232 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @10:20AM (#14107395)
    . . . just make smaller, nano-mosquitoes to bite the regular mosquitoes and teach them a lesson?
  • a wireless mesh network of bugspraying "magnets"

    First of all, these don't "spray" bugs, in the pesticide sense.

    They burn propane and mix it with octenol (basically a mosquito pheromone) to very specifically attract breeding (and thus blood-feeding) female mosquitos. No actual pesticides involved.


    So to those who worried about bacteria, birds, frogs, and other bugs - This pretty much ONLY catches and kills female mosquitos (though possibly a few other biting flies). Nothing else would deliberately s
  • In case you were wondering, it isn't a magnet at all. Mosquitos are not suddenly made of iron. It is a trap using bait and suction. Just thought I'd save you the time of RTFA.
  • Aren't there better things to do with that bandwidth? Like, oh I don't know, maybe Internet access.

    I was part of a team that deployed about 2500 WAP's across the US for a company, and the biggest problem was other 802.11b devices chattering in the bandwidth. Enough of these things in a city, and sure you'll reduce the number of mosquitoes, but you'll never have any wireless ethernet access in that bandwidth. Remember, these things will probably have to use all the channels, just like any other wide-
  • Yes, mosquitoes are a huge nuisance to humans, but what will getting rid of them do to other ecosystems? Spiders, for one, feed on mosquitoes. I hope they've done their homework on this one.
  • Its public ignorance responsible for the widespread propagation of mosquitoes. Even surrounding a city with some form of mosquito net will not help matters.

    People leaving stagnant water in their yards, whether its a bird bath or old tire sitting in the corner is where mosquitoes breed. The city sewers and various waterways also contribute to the problem.

    I.e. there is little to nothing you can do short of poisoning the environment to get rid of mosquitoes.

    The city would be better of issuing public educatio

  • Stop, Think, Laugh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Thursday November 24, 2005 @12:23PM (#14107825) Journal
    Up here in mosquito infested Minnesota, we will try just about anything to reduce the hordes of the buzzy little buggers that make our life miserable. In untreated areas of the state it is not too uncommon for people to stay inside on nice summer evenings because the mosquitos are horrible. Because I love the outdoors and cherrish my time out of the city, I'd try and do just about anything to deal with the buggers. I fog, I spray, I light those citronella candles and burn those coils, I apply repellent and I'll still get chased inside about twilight!

    This is because Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes AND 100,000 swamps, we get enough rain so low spots become puddles. We are prime mosquito breeding territory! What makes life so wonderful for us here is also perfect for mosquitos.

    Those propane burning things work but only in small areas and only in still weather when their exhaust can placidly spread out far enough to attract mosquitos. A gentle breeze will render the machine utterly ineffective. How often is the air still in a summer environment when mosquitos are most active? As the heat of the day disipates, gentle breezes almost always kick in, sometimes becoming not so gentle breezes. I'd put my money on these machines being truly effective perhaps ten percent of the time when you really, really need them (which is only about 10% of the day so, .10 x.10 =.01 or more simply, about one percent of the time!)

    In the daylight, or after dark the mosquitos are pretty dispersed. It is only in the evening hours that they get really bad. These mosquito magnets have been around for a few years, they are expensive and they burn propane which isn't cheap! Now this company wants to build a network of them? Perhaps a network large enough to cover a community? Wouldn't it be cheaper, more effective, and more environmentally friendly to issue everyone bottles of repellent? I like the stuff in the yellow and green can from 3M but 100% DEET works pretty well too.

    In my opinion, this concept of a computer controlled, propane powered mosquitio magnet net is the dream-child of some marketing exec. It is false science of the worst kind, sold as being believable and effective. It is snake-oil being sold by modern day snake oil salesmen!

    All you can do is laugh. P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute.
  • Why not use some 1200 baud simple radio modem operating on some license free band, like 27 MHz CB. It would be much simpler I guess
  • You all know that the mosquito sprayers will eventually be spraying a pleasant population subduing mist. Remember the ending of that movie I won't mention by name for those who haven't seen it?
  • I've been involved in mosquito repellant trials, as a test subject.

    Yes, there are people who will donate their blood and time to counting and collecting all thee mosquitoes that bite them in the middle of a bog, with only whatever snake-oil product we're given to defend us. Most of our group is composed of entomologists, though, so we're weird like that.

    So far, we haven't seen any significant results with similar (non-topical) products- we'll be seeing about this one next summer, I suppose.

    I highly
    • Agreed. As long as you don't go spraying it everywhere, causing runoff and the bad effects, you can use DDT very effectivly. Limited spraying around habitat entrances, impregnated curtains, etc can seriously help control malaria in countries such as those in Africa.

      Countries where mosquitoes aren't an annoyance, countries where hundreds, thousands die from malaria and other mosquito vector borne diseases.

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