Insect detecting sensor.

Hi Aryaman,

We had a similar question on the forum a while back. You might want to check it out and see if it has any ideas that might work for you.

https://www.element14.com/community/message/134424/l/sensor-that-can-pick-up-insect-activity#134424

John

sir , I am a school student & not so far experienced .

I just want to know that is there are any such sensor are available , which can detect insects type of small organisms ,if you know any such sensor available in market then please name it or send the link to buy it .

cstanton , maybe a future design challenge subject?

I don't think there are commercial off-the-shelf sensors available for the general public.

Some attempts are made to detect musquitos using sensitive microphones. And insects via pattern recognition.

I haven't found practical useful ones though.

A university split-off posts that they made a sensor that detects specific ones: Insect Detection – Sensor Development Corporation .

It may become a challenge without perfect outcome, but maybe some interesting approaches ...

e14phil is your Design Challenge person

Hi Aryaman,

I can't find any off the shelf insect detecting sensors any where. I really don't think such thing exists.

Small sized moving objects can be detected using a laser and a photo diode. But this set up doesn't give guarantee that it only detects the insects. Circuit will alarm you when the photons emitted from the laser is not landing on the Photo Detector.

If you want to make sure that the system detected an insect then you need to provide some intelligence to the system. Normal cameras wont work because insects are hard to get focused. May be  wing flapping sound can be detected using a sensitive microphone and it can be used to identify the insect.

But generally insects killers works by attracting them to a trap. Considering the insects size this gives more accuracy. Keeping the detector somewhere in the room reduces the probability of detection.

I have got an idea!

All insects got wings! If you can sample the data at the photo detector at higher rates, we can detect the laser beam getting cut due to the wing flapping. There by you can confirm some flying insect has detected. Also make a Laser-PD ring to increase the chance of getting the insect detected.

use the link john shared as the reference.

But as Jan suggested it's an idea for the next design challenge.

Regards,

Aswin

Infra-red and lasers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

thank you sir

thank you sir for your response and all others who have responded .

Actually I was working on a science project , in which I am trying to design a low cost Agricultural drone , since they are very costly and farmers of my country can't afford it and my country India is a Agricultural country , so we need it a lot .

And this year we are getting a lots of minus points in the field of agriculture , so I was trying to design it to help my country men .I was almost done , it can spray fertilizers spray seeds and everything but the problem came when I started thinking about pest killing program in low cost . without it , it's incomplete .

it's very depressing to hear that it's not possible .

but anyway thanks for your response .

As far as I know there is no "Sensor" for insects specifically.

One idea that I have had is to detect the insects "with extreme prejudice". Anyone who has been in the vicinity of a bug zapper knows immediately whether there are insects present or not. The sound of high voltage arcing through their bodies is a dead give away. If we were to monitor the high voltage we would be able to see the individual discharges in the voltage spikes present. Now if you want to monitor the level of an insect population for scientific purposes and not affect the population this would not be a good method but if your purpose is to monitor, detect and kill the insects I submit that monitor, kill, and then detect serves the same purpose.

John

In air these small insects emit most of the sound between 20 and 60 kHz. I guess a wideband microphone (MP23ABS1) can do the job of detecting insects in a room, but won't give any information about the location of the insect.