Gas-Powered Fly Swatter Slightly Over-Engineered

July 10, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 10 Comments

Any good flyswatter ought to be able to break through a hefty piece of wood. At least, that is how [Finn] explains the design philosophy behind this enormous, overpowered flyswatter. Although we don’t know if everyone needs as robust a machine as this to deal with a minor annoyance like a house fly, we can certainly appreciate the over-engineered, extremely powerful (and dangerous) machine that can swat flies but also break through a two-by-four with ease.

The build comes to us in two parts, with the first part documenting the construction of some of the parts of the flyswatter, including the piston-driven gas cylinder. As a bit of a tangent, [Finn] first tests this part by using it to shoot lemons at pieces of plywood. After this initial testing of the gas cylinder, a cam mechanism is installed on the top, and the gas cylinder is slightly modified to pull on a piece of Dyneema rope attached to the cam. At the other end of the rope is a long metal lever with the flyswatter on the end, in this case, made out of a sheet of laser-cut plate steel.

With the addition of a few safety features, like a spring-assisted bumper to keep the flyswatter from swinging too far and hitting its operator, the machine is ready for use. It also eventually received some other upgrades as well including extra weights to prevent the flyswatter from bouncing after firing and a reinforced metal rod to hold the flyswatter after its demonstrations on various dimensional lumber destroyed it. In all likelihood, this is the largest insect-control device we’ve seen since this microwave-powered bug zapper. Now if you are building an insect…

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Bare-bones Musical Tesla Coil Is Tiny And Tinny

August 21, 2016 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

We’ve seen musical Tesla coils aplenty on these pages before, and we’ll be the first to point out that [Kedar Nimbalkar]’s musical high-voltage rig doesn’t quite qualify as a Tesla coil. But it’s dirt cheap, and might make a pretty cool rainy-afternoon-with-the-kids project.

Chances are good you have the parts needed for this build lying around the house. All that’s needed is an audio power amplifier and a high-voltage source. [Kedar] used a Class D amp board and a 3V to 7kV high-voltage module sourced from eBay for a couple of bucks; if you really want to go cheap, tear down that defunct electronic fly swatter gathering dust on top of your fridge and harvest the high-voltage module inside. The output of the amp feeds the high-voltage module, the HV leads are placed close together to get an arc, and the glorious high-fidelity sound will wash over you. Or not – sounds pretty awful to us. Still, it looks like a fast, fun build.

If this project gets you in the mood to go the full Tesla, check out this coil big enough to produce 12-foot arcs, or even this musical Tesla hat.

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Hacklet #9 Bugs And Fire

August 1, 2014 by Adam Fabio 6 Comments

This week on the Hacklet, we’re spending some time looking at bugs and fire! First up we have [Noel] who is saving the bees with Bee-O-Neo-Tweet-O. Bees are incredibly important, both to Earth’s ecosystem and the food chain we humans need to survive. Unfortunately bees are also sensitive to some of the chemicals humans dump into the atmosphere. Sometimes it results in colored honey, but more often than not it’s detrimental to the bees.

Neonicotinoids are a class of insecticide that has been causing problems to hives near where they are used. [Noel] is banking on sensors created with bismuth electrodes to detect the chemical near the entrance to hives. The data can be collected by beekeepers all over the world and sent to a central server. He’s using an Arduino Yun as a WiFi connected base station. Each individual hive has an Adafriut Trinket and a 433MHz radio link to send data to the base. [Noel] is even hoping to detect individual bees by the sound of their wings beating.

[Ken] is keeping his own bees, and wants to monitor more than just chemicals. His honeybee hive monitoring system keeps track of the temperature and weight (and thus the honey produced) by his hives. Rather than buy an expensive load cell setup, [Ken] modified a standard digital bathroom scale to suit his needs. The insects connect to the IOB (Internet of Bees) with a bit of help from the Apitronics platform and a BeagleBone Black. Ken even added a solar-powered weather station with the Apitronics system.

[Mike] is taking a slightly different approach. He doesn’t want to save the bugs, he wants to kill the ones that bug him! [Mike] doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, so he’s created Lazy Killer 9000 for easy bug killing. Lazy Killer uses the business end of an electrified fly swatter to do its work. This project wouldn’t be complete without an Arduino, so [Mike] is adding one, as well as a WiFi shield. The entire system will have a friendly interface to turn the juice on. One of the best features of Lazy Killer is the internet connected kill count. [Mike] knows that there aren’t any bugs in the vacuum of space, so he’s entered Lazy Killer in The Hackaday Prize.

From bugs, we move on to Fire! [mr.jb.swe] needed a reliable portable power source. He found it in LiFePO4 batteries, but still needed a way to charge them. Toward that end he’s created The Multicharger, a watt meter and charger which can be powered from solar, wind, or thermometric power. A Powerpot X provides the fire and the power to charge the batteries. [mr.jb.swe’s] charger converts that into the standard constant current->constant voltage charging system needed by lithium chemistry batteries. The Multicharger isn’t a complete battery management system yet, but it’s well on its way.

Unity candles have become a staple at wedding ceremonies.[Quinn] has taken things to the next level and beyond with this take on the classic unity candle. This candle throws fireballs 30 feet into the sky! We covered the candle back in June, but [Quinn] has been busy since then. With over 20 updates, [Quinn] has created one of the most well documented projects on Hackaday.io. Of course, being that this project is dealing with propane and monstrous fires, [Quinn] mentions you shouldn’t try unless you really know what you’re doing. Don’t set any brides on fire! That’s it for this week’s Hacklet! Tune in next week, same hack time, same hack channel, for more of the best of Hackaday.io!