“Where I live, from spring to autumn we have to compete for territory against tiger mosquito.
Local stores offer a impressive list of anti mosquito devices, candles, including sophisticated traps sold a few hundred euros, I even found one sold 2000 - this give you an idea of how desperate people are to get rid of those invaders.
One of my favorite weapon to fight against mosquito is this cheap electric swatter, but to make this fight even more rewarding I thought I should upgrade my weapon.
In this instructable, I will show and explain how to hack an electric swatter to :
- add electronic to detect kills.
- add a 4 digit counter.
- make it usb rechargeable.
- add sound for a better experience.
My thought was that when an insect hits the wire mesh of the swatter and the electric arc occurs, there must be some electric variation on the swatter circuit. If I could find a place in the circuit that is readable by an arduino or attiny (that is between 0 and 5 volts) it would then be easy to count and display a score and to play some sound.
We can easily add sound/music capabilities to an attiny with a dfplayer module
Score would be displayed with a 4 digits 7 segment display which as an onboard tm1637 which allows to drive the display with only two wires (two IO pins of the attiny)
Because those electronic modules run at 5V and the swatter are usually running from 2 x 1.5 v batteries, I also upgraded the power part of the swatter with a usb rechargeable battery.
In other words, the upgrade is made with off-the-shelf electronic modules that are easily found, it is simple electronic, the only “complexity” is in the signal computation, but this is handled by the attiny through programming.
In this instructable I assume you have some knowledge of ardiuno and how it is programmed, if not you can find good tutorials on arduino site or explore arduino project on instructables.com
One more thing before starting, safety: electric swatter use high voltage (hundred of volts on the mesh when button is pressed) even if current is very low, be carrefull not to touch it or its internal circuit when battery is connected.
The Sticker says Caution keep away from children (and yourself)
For this Ultimate Mosquito Swatter Mod for Gamer you will need :
- an electric mosquito swatter (there are several type of swatter circuit, this instructable and the program I suggest is adapted to one type of swatter, check the step ‘Open the swatter’ to verify your swatter matches what I use)
- digispark pro (convenient board with attiny, easily found online)
- dfplayer (easily found online)
- resistors: 1Ω, 1kΩ
- 8 Ω speakers
- sd card (a small capacity should be enough to hold a few sound files)
- li-ion rechargeable battery : salvage battery
- battery charger, something like this one
- potentiometer (I used a 1MΩ, it is not very important but a high value will limit current consumption through the potentiometer)
- Four digits LED display with tm1637 (make sure it is a 4 digit display + the TM1637 and not a 4 digit display only)
- capacitor : 470 µF
- on/off toggle switch
- push button
- wires (reuse old phone or ethernet cables)
For the tooling part, you will need a soldering iron, a hot glue gun and a 3D printer (or some creativity to modify the swatter handle…)”