I am from south India My neighboring village is suffering from mosquitoes
So I want to help them by making a project with picaxe or other ic .I want rotate a dcmotor after five days what will be the code if I use picaxe 28 X1 (in this project i want place water in a bowl .Mosquito lay eggs in it they will hatch in to larva .in 5 to14 days larva will be mosquitos,before that (after 5 days) the water in the bowl should be filtered to 2nd bowl and kill the larva in the 1st bowl and again place the water again to 1st bowl. with this project I think I can kill 1000 s of mosquitoes and will be a great help to the people.
I applaud your desire to help the people of your region. Some practical questions/observations:
If there are other sources of still water, the number of mosquitos you will prevent hatching seem small just using a bowl.
Reducing locations where there is still water (puddles, open containers left out in the rain, etc.) may be more effective.
I have heard that mosquitos won’t lay eggs on water that is regularly disturbed; a system that circulates water in ponds, fountains or other nearby bodies of water might be better.
Making sure everyone is aware not to leave standing water around is important.
That said, you could use a microprocessor to control a pump that would run water through a filter to kill the mosquito eggs laid there. Determine what size pump you need. The Picaxe will not be able to drive the pump directly. You’ll need a relay or other control mechanism to switch the power. Possibly something like this:
Picaxe digital output > Transistor to drive relay coil > relay > pump
I hope that is clear. If not, I can draw you an example circuit diagram.
Start be figuring out the physical requirements (filter, pump, water containters, etc.). Make sure that your pump can provide enough pressure and flow to go though your filter. The amount of water you need to pump and the speed will dictate what sort of pump you need. The voltage and current requirements of the pump will dictate your power supply and relay requirements. The relay will dictate the transitor you need to drive it.
The code could be a simple timer. When X hours have passed, you turn on the pump by setting the digital output. Let the pump run for a set period of time, then turn it off and reset the counter until the next time.
You’ll need to know how long to run the pump. You can test all that without the microcontroller. In fact you could do this all with a simple electromechanical timer, and no Picaxe at all. However, if you are looking to use the Picaxe as a learning experience, have fun. As little Picaxe 08m should be more than adequate for the job.
Picaxe Manual 1 describes all the different Picaxe chips. Picaxe Manual 2 explains the programming. Picaxe Manual 3 explains how to hook things up.
I had the same thoughts that Andrew mentioned after reading your initial posting and was running some ideas through my head on the way to work tonight. I was thinking something along the lines of a custom made tub with water and some type of solenoid driven dump valve in the bottom that would empty the water into another tub with the water having gone through the filtration step in between. Once the filtered water was in tub number 2, a small electrical driven pump could recycle the water back to the opposite tub. As far as controlling the whole device, I would think something along the lines of a yard water sprinkler system would be a close to ready made solution. I’m no expert on any of this but do understand the concepts for the most part. My short coming is always the implementation.
I too applaud you for you wanting to help the people in region and wanting to save lives. Best of luck to you.
When I first read this post, the same objections as Ignoblegnome came to me. But I can see the point of building an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and then killing them off before they hatch. The more mosquitoes laying their eggs here, the less there will be in other small ponds of water. I think it’s a great idea and well worth trying out! I don’t think you can use a simple timer as Ignoblegnome suggests as you have to reverse the pump. As I understand your concept you want to have two rater big bodies of water and every 5’th day pump it from one to the other and back again in 5 days. With a filter slightly above the pump intake you don’t have to drain out all the water and worry about priming the pump. The mosquitoes left on the filter will just dry out and die, and probably be food for the next cycle of larva. I think I would go for a solution of two pumps. http://cgi.ebay.com/Aquarium-Water-Pump-Submersible-DC-12V-Fountain-Pond-1A-/220813217721?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33697e4fb9 Each placed below the filter to pump into the next tank. Instead of timing it you could just use a level switch to cut off the pump http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Liquid-Water-Level-Sensor-Horizontal-Float-Switch-/250857517423?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a6845f16f You still need to have transistors driving the pumps but the project should be very easy to put together and we here at LMR will help you in any way we can. This is a great project Unni so please see if you can make it work.
Thank you to all for the support.I have a little knowledge in eletronics (But i made a picaxe 28 board by itching, so I preffered picaxe) .Now I am enquiring (not reserching) the facts about the mosquitos,I made a manuly working one without a pump .In it I used a flush valve,in the base my search i think that the size ,depth and shape of the bowl is important.Mosquitos lay eggs in coconutshell ,small ponds made of useless plastic sheets .This area has hevey rain, landscape is watery and people are ignorarent (more over they are pretending).Now the scientits says that the anafalis mosquitos have mutation that the larva can live in the water in the well!!!.
And oddbot , we tested ur idea in small ponds gambusia is good for that, but how can we put small fish in a spoon of water and in coconut shells?
I think Andrew’s plan and ignoblegnome’s may be colabarated
Ignoblegnome, pls send me the circute of eletromechanical timer
If you are using a flush valve and allowing gravity to move the water from one bowl to a lower bowl, you might be able to actuate the flush valve with a servo. A hobby servo (if you don’t know) is a DC motor with built-in gearbox and control electronics. You can use the Picaxe ‘servo’ and ‘servopos’ commands to move an actuator using a servo and flush the bowl. This saves you the cost of at least one pump. If you want to pump the water from the second bowl back up to the first bowl after cleaning, you’ll still need one pump for that.
Regarding an electromechanical timer, I had in mind the type that plug into an AC wall outlet and can switch the output on or off based on the time of day.
I’m not sure if this sort of thing is available to you. What kind of power sources will you have? Will you have AC house power or only batteries? Is it sunny enough to make solar power an option to keep a battery charged?
This is a good start. How big is each of the bowls for containing the water? The volume of water to be pumped is important, because it will tell us what kind of pumps you need. That will tell us how much power you need (pumps will probably be the biggest power drain).
I also want to keep in mind for this project where you will get your parts. I wouldn’t want to lead you down the path of needing parts that are very expensive or hard to get where you are. Can you research what kind of shops you have available for electronics, solar panels, batteries, etc?
I’m thinking for batteries you want something that is designed to be used outside. Are you near the coast? A store that sells marine equipment for boats may be a good source for a good “deep cycle” marine battery. They are rugged and can handle many charge-discharge cycles. 12V batteries are common here in the US for such things. Is it the same near you?
In the diagram above, your pumps and the microcontroller would be the loads.
water cooled computers sometimes use fairly strong water pumps. Many water pumps that I have seen are meant to be powered from AC. Some water cooling systems convert the pumps to use DC, typically 12v DC. I don’t know how easy they would be to acquire where you are though.
I will include a link to the type of pump I am talking about only for example purposes, Swiftech pump. I do not, however, believe that the pump I linked to is intended to be submerged. I could be wrong though.
of course robots are the coolest way to kill mosquito’s, but you might also consider trying to find some guppies and release them in the waters out there. guppies are famous for eating mosquito larvae.
also u might want to look into carnivorous plants of the species: ‘Drosera’ and ‘Pinguicula’.
At first I want to make just a prototype .Volume of the bowls should be 2 Ltr .small pumps like that anderson show in the comments.I dont know such shops near to me .12 v bataries may be get here.At first a simple model then improvise it thats my plan
You will use two digital outputs of the Picaxe to control the pumps, one for each pump.
So you need enough power to run two of these pumps, though possibly not at the same time. That should not be difficult with the type of 12V DC battery we have discussed.
Look at Picaxe Manual 3 for the circuit describing interface to a relay. You’ll need two of these circuits to run two pumps.
The 1N4001 is a diode. It protects your circuit from damage when the coil in the relay switches off. The BCX38C is an NPN transistor. When the output pin of the Picaxe is set HIGH, it will turn the transistor on. This will turn on the relay, which will turn on your pump. Set the output pin LOW to turn your pump back off.
For the relay, I suggest an automotive 12VDC relay. It is overkill for the amount of current your pumps will use, but they are probably easy to come by, and they are ruggedly constructed.
If you have any trouble finding either the 1N4001 or BCX38C, there are safe substitutes we can help you find.
You can use Picaxe digital inputs to check if your bowl is empty of water. For the level sensor Geir suggested a float switch valve. This is also a good recommendation.
For this particular switch, when the bowl is empty, the ball falls and the switch is disconnected. When there is water in the bowl, the ball floats and the switch is connected. Read the section of Picaxe Manual 3 on interfacing switches. Pay attention to the part about switch debouncing. There is also a Picaxe ‘button’ command that incorporates debounce features.
a pair of metalic strips, one tied high, maybe through a resistor and the second to a digital input on the PICAXE. No water = no conductivity = low input on the digital pin.
So far, I think Geir’s suggestion is the best. I don’t think she needs to know the level of the water, only if it is empty or not. The simple float switch is the type used in sump pumps. It is rugged, reliable, and cheap.
I don’t think she needs to worry about debouch in this circuit as there is no need for accuracy. What I would do is to; when the time comes to move the water, start the pump and monitor the switch in a loop (no need for interrupt as there is nothing else going on). Then when the state changes run the pump a couple of seconds more so it doesn’t start oscillating when the water in the pipe rushes back into the tank when the pump stops.
