Killing Mosquitoes With Cardi B

Keeping a bird bath or a pond in your yard is a great way to add ambiance and style, but both of these things can be a haven for mosquitoes. Popular methods of getting rid of them are often with harsh pesticides, but [Shane] has brought us a more environmentally-friendly way of taking care of these disease-carrying insects by looping a Cardi B playlist underwater, killing the mosquito larvae.

While the build does include some other favorites such as “Baby Shark” and would probably work with any song (or audio of sufficient volume) the build is still pretty interesting. It’s based on a 555 timer circuit which powered an ultrasonic sound gun, but was repurposed for this build. The ultrasonic modules were replaced with piezo modules which were waterproofed with silicone. The sound produced vibrates at a frequency which resonates with the mosquito larvae and is fatal to them. [Shane] put the build into a small boat which can be floated in any pond, bird bath, horse trough, or water feature.

The major caveat to this build is that it may be damaging to other beneficial animals such as fish or frogs, so he suggests limiting its use to uninhabited stagnant water. Either way, though, it’s a pretty unique way of taking care of a mosquito problem not unlike another build which takes care of these insects in water a slightly different way.

31 thoughts on “Killing Mosquitoes With Cardi B

        1. I’ll have to try again without BT. I need the BT for the septic tank (no frogs in there, heh) and when I started there weren’t as many frogs in the ponds and I saw mosquito larvae, so I dropped some BT in there as well, which did the trick and I haven’t observed negative consequences…

      1. Would be awesome to have a dataset of the signals that effect everything in the environment to narrow down which frequency(s) are only or best specific to the target to -static or -cide the invasive nuisance. Seems like an awesome research project… any donors? :-|)

      1. I’m not trying to get rid of the frogs, just shut them up for a while when they get too rowdy. Clapping shuts them up for 10-20 seconds. So I figure it must be possible to find some frequency and pattern that keeps them silent. Maybe simulate a snake hiss…

  1. As cool as this project is, and I do appreciate the clever nature of this hack, I think I would have just added some mosquito fish or guppies to the water and let nature do what nature do.
    Of course, here on HackaDay this approach makes more sense.

      1. I’m not familiar with that one. Might be worth a look, thanks.

        I have kept fish as a hobby for many years, and was previously aware of the mosquito fish. I assumed that its close cousin the guppy would be similarly effective if the conditions were right.

    1. here in MN the mosquito fish is listed as an invasive species and its illegal to introduce them anymore, the state used to use them for natural mosquito control but has reversed that due to damage to native species. might want to check local laws before before adding non-native fish to a pond.

  2. The sound produced vibrates at a frequency which resonates with the mosquito larvae and is fatal to them. Hertz? Obviously a 555 is all that is needed to make whatever that frequency is.

    Phish instead of Cardi-bravo. Trey’s licks have them dancing underwater to their doom. No really, fish.

    1. The problem with fish is that they will not survive long in small water vessels but the mosquito larvae do. There are other ways to take advantage of ecology against the mosquitoes – one is water fleas (daphnia). Daphnia breathe from water like fish, not air from the water surface like the mosquito larvae, so water getting hot in the sun or too much rotting mud on the ground will extinguish the tiny crustaceans. I have an 80 liter mortar trough as a mini pond in the garden. Since I moved it such that a bush casts shadow on it over noon and remove most of the fallen leaves regularly, the mosquito larvae are gone but the water is crowded with dahpnia, busily eating the algae so the plants stay nice and clean, too. That seems to work on large scale, too: search for Ines Krögers work on ‘Sustainable control of mosquito larvae’.

  3. I wonder how long it takes to do the deed? And how often does ot need to be run? It might be that it just needs to run for 5 mins once a week in which case a couple of solar cells could charge a super-cap or two and …… set and forget.

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