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Solar Scare Mosquito 2.0

An IoT device to monitor and prevent epidemics such as Malaria, Dengue and the Zika Virus.

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Mosquitoes are a highly invasive species which pose one of humanity's greatest challenges. Mosquito-borne epidemics infect over 600 million people annually.
This solar-powered device eliminates mosquito larvae in stagnant water bodies such as water tanks and swamps. The system allows mosquitoes to lay eggs at dawn and dusk and the intermittent ripples during the day prevent larvae from breathing at the surface. In addition, a built-in microphone captures the wing-beat frequencies of mosquitoes that are naturally attracted to standing water, helping us to identify the species and sex of the mosquito. With a network of these connected devices installed among at-risk populations, we will obtain a real-time estimate of the presence of dangerous mosquitoes. Using this data, we will create the early warning system for all mosquito-borne epidemics. This project was endorsed by Bill Gates on social media in 2014, and we have come a long way from there!

"A picture is worth a thousand words", right? So here we go: 

BILL OF MATERIALS 

ITEMCOST (€)
1.Arduino MKR GSM 140059.90
2.
6V Solar Panel + USB Charger 24.00
3.6V DC Mini Air Pump5.00
4.Sound Sensor Module2.40
5.Water Level Sensor for Arduino4.00
6.1 Channel 5v Relay Module 1.20
7.3D Printing Filament 14.20
TOTAL (for one unit)€ 110.70

Wave Generator.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 4.17 MB - 10/05/2020 at 09:31

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Solar Lid.stl

Housing for the solar panel

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 649.69 kB - 10/05/2020 at 09:31

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Wave Piston.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 180.55 kB - 10/05/2020 at 09:31

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Sensor Lid.stl

Inner lid etched with our backlit logo

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 536.80 kB - 10/05/2020 at 09:31

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Air Pump Bracket.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 261.41 kB - 10/05/2020 at 09:31

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  • 1 × 3D printed casing + ripple generation unit + Blue Lotus engraved lid
  • 1 × Arduino MKR GSM 1400 A low-power board designed for IoT projects
  • 1 × 6V 3W Solar Panel USB Charger
  • 2 × Sound Sensor Module LM393 A microphone module compatible with Arduino
  • 1 × Water Level Sensor Module for Arduino For detecting the presence and level of water

View all 9 components

  • Latest News

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 14:05 0 comments

    Here are some recent articles published on top tech blogs, since the announcement of the Hackaday Prize 2020 finalists: 

    1. Hackaday: Improved mosquito birth control causes ripple effect
    2. Arduino: Solar Scare Mosquito 2.0 detects and destroys potential disease-carrying insects
    3. Hackster.ioThis Solar-Powered Device Kills Mosquito Larvae to Prevent the Spread of Disease

    These are being widely shared on various platforms which clearly reflects the widespread appeal for our simple yet impactful solution!

    The Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0 had litterally gone viral on the Internet with dozens of news articles published on it and was even featured on television in Brazil: 

  • Throwback

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 13:51 0 comments

    Since its initial conception, we have come a long way from the original idea behind the Solar Scare Mosquito. 

    Not only has the design evolved, but also the underlying theory, which is expected of any design process following the scientific method! 

    Some important researches on the topic and IoT-related technologies which we not available in 2014, have been incorporated in the new version. 

  • Bringing to light an underlying feature

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 13:44 0 comments

    While we are firm believers of the philosopy "Form follows function", we try to embed aesthetics into every detail of our solution. 

    The device lid with the solar panel is magnetically attached to the body, and can be removed and positioned away according to the availability of sunlight around the water body. 

    Under this lid, is a second lid which is etched with an artistic design of a lotus. At night, this lid is backlit with blue light, to evoke the image of a floating blue lotus on water. 

    Besides the visual effect, we chose to embed the blue lotus design since it has an esoteric symbolism in almost all ancient cultures, be it Egyptian, Buddhist or Hindu. 

    For the curious ones: https://www.petalrepublic.com/lotus-flower-meanings/

  • Deciphering the Buzz

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 13:30 0 comments

    The most common way to identify mosquito-species present in a neighbourhoud are sentinel traps which attract mosquitoes using a combination of CO2, odour and light. While this is the most accurate method, it is expensive, labour intensive and slow as it needs to be carried out in a lab. 

    There are also optical sensor-based solutions which are more accurate than microphone-based systems but they are expensive and not scalable. 

    Finally, researchers in Stanford University, Oxford University and University of Glasgow are trying to use smartphones to capture the mosquito wing-beat frequency to map their population. Like these cutting-edge independent researchers, we are also exploring ways to overcome the following issues with microphone-based identification and counting of mosquitoes: 

    • Minimising false-positives on account of background noise 
    • Distinguishing the buzz from multiple mosquitoes at the same time 
    • Taking into account (negligible) changes in the wingbeat frequency on account of ambient temperature, humidity, and maturity of a mosquito.

    Our main source of inspiration for the bioacoustic approach is this research at Prakash Lab, Stanford : "Using mobile phones as acoustic sensors for high-throughput mosquito surveillance" https://elifesciences.org/articles/27854

  • Inspiration from Microsoft Premonition

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 13:09 0 comments

    Just a couple of days ago, Bill Gates revealed an ambitious technology called Microsoft Premonition: https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/microsoft-premonition/ 

    "Today, more than ever, new global sensor networks are needed to protect our health, and the health of our economies and societies.

    Microsoft Premonition is an advanced early warning system that combines robotic sensing platforms, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and cloud-scale metagenomics to autonomously monitor disease-carrying animals such as mosquitoes, robotically collect environmental samples, and then genomically scan them for biological threats.

    Like weather prediction, its analytics pipelines uses cloud-scale computing, leveraging the latest advancements in Azure IoT and Azure Data Lake on Microsoft Azure. Today, Premonition’s pipelines have scanned more than 80 trillion base-pairs of genomic material from environmental samples for biological threats."

    This is a highly advanced technology and encompasses all epidemics including the likes of COVID-19. 

    We believe our low-cost environmental data capture solution can be complementary to such a platform being developed. Moreover, besides just monitoring the evolution of epidemics, our solution also prevents mosquito-breeding too.

    That's two birds in one stone!

  • In the spirit of Open Innovation

    Pranav10/05/2020 at 09:59 0 comments

    Mosquito-borne epidemics are one of humanity's greatest challenges, which cannot be single-handedly tackled due to their complexity and magnitude. Hence, in the spirit of open innovation, we would be delighted to collaborate on this project with the following experts:

    1. Conservation X Labs: Access to their "Sentinel System", which is an online toolkit to use machine learning for processing environmental data.

    2. Hackaday Prize Finalists: Learn from Aquametric - Cellular based stream monitors about their great live data dashboard and learn about Intelligent Wildlife Species Detector 's audio processing tech. 

  • A project first picked by Hackaday, then by Bill Gates

    Pranav08/31/2020 at 13:47 0 comments

    A few years ago, I had designed a low-cost, solar-powered device to eliminate mosquito-larvae in stagnant water bodies such as water tanks, swamps and micro dams.

    The project was first picked up by Hackaday from Instructables, then by Wired Magazine, and finally shared by Bill Gates on Twitter! 

    During the lockdown period in France, while witnessing a pandemic take over the world by surprise, I decided to take up once again this project, but this time to build upon it an IoT platform for an early-warning system for all mosquito-borne epidemics. 

    Wired Magazine Article: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mosquito-device

    Can't thank Hackaday enough for popularizing the Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0!

  • Mechanism for ripple generation

    Ashish Kapur08/31/2020 at 13:41 0 comments

    A linear actuating model for prototype V2 was being brainstormed to remove drift, but was set-aside for later iterations due to water-proofing issues.

  • Prototype 3D Design and Circuit

    Ashish Kapur08/31/2020 at 13:14 0 comments

    Schematic circuit diagram for solar scare mosquito prototype V2

    Credits to Satya and Kousheek from Technovation, at Instructables, for helping us with the 3D model and circuit https://www.instructables.com/member/Technovation/

  • Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0 Dissection

    Pranav08/31/2020 at 13:13 0 comments

    The Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0 was a frugal hack built with few means and resources. 

    It served the purpose well of being a solar-powered floating device with creates ripples in stagnant water to prevent larvae from breathing at the surface. 

    However, the system was neither robust nor ergonomic. The following circuit was used to run the device: 

    You can see how far we have come from this first frugal prototype to the neat, function-rich, 3D printed Solar Scare Mosquito 2.0. 

View all 10 project logs

  • 1
    Step by Step Guide for Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0 (old)

    You can follow the step by step guide to build the Solar Scare Mosquito 1.0 on Instructables: https://www.instructables.com/Solar-Scare-Mosquito/ 

    Disclaimer: There are certain glitches in the circuit described in the link above, it may be easier to achieve the same result using an Arduino as we have in the newer Solar Scare Mosquito 2.0.

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Discussions

infoprofess918 wrote 09/14/2022 at 13:38 point

Amazing project! Just want to know out of curiosity how does it detects whether mosquito larve is present in water or not??

  Are you sure? yes | no

ohuf wrote 11/11/2020 at 19:22 point

Hi,

If you need help, translating any part of the project into German, please let me know. Glad to help..

  Are you sure? yes | no

EK wrote 09/11/2020 at 02:12 point

Do you have additional information about detecting mosquitoes with the microphone? Would be interested to learn more about it. Good luck with this revision of your project!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Pranav wrote 10/05/2020 at 09:18 point

Hi, Erin! Here is a study which explains more on accoustical counting of mosquitoes and insects in general: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=abe_eng_pubs

  Are you sure? yes | no

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