DIY bug zapper: an update.

     It has been a while since my bug zapper was deployed and many things have happened since. So here I will share what sort of stuff I've tried with the zapper to make it more effective and what I've found out in the process.

    When I first put the zapper up I had to figure out how to bait the flies into the trap, but what do I use? First idea was to use a solar powered garden light as could be seen in the original post. This didn't really work that well and bugs weren't really inretested in the light emitted by the LED. So I had to come up with something better. Since the horse flies love meat I thought I'd put a piece of sausage on a plate and place it inside the zapper. This also didn't work so as a last ditch effort, and since I knew horse flies are also attracted to CO2, I put some yeast along with the sausage and poured a little water to moisten the bait up. And guess what? It still caught nothing. Well at least my shed smelled of bread now. At this point I thought maybe I should place the zapper on the dog house where the fly activity should be the highest. But as soon as I put the zapper up on the dog house my dog noticed the smell and got very intrigued. So much so that he even tried to get up on the dog house, apparently, unlike the horse flies, he really liked the smell. Too bad this was exactly the opposite of what I want so I had to relocate the zapper away from my dog.

    By this point I had still caught nothing, surely there had to be a way to lure the flies into my trap, and oh boy was there a way... After relocating the zapper as I passed by the dog house I noticed a buzz. It looked like my dog pooped out one heck of a stinker and the horse flies were all over it. This was it, this was the secret sauce to complete my trap. So I quickly put the turd on a plate and placed it inside the zapper. This time there was nothing to entice my dog to reach for the zapper so I placed it back on the dog house. As soon as I stepped away from the zapper I heard SNAP SNAP SNAP SNAP. Finally the zapper was working and the flies could not resist the stink of the turd. 

    At this point the trap was working flawlessly, the power supply had enough evergy that you could hear the flies getting zapped no matter where you were. There would always be the sound of flies getting zapped in the background and it was glorious. After a day or two the turd had dried up and was not attracting many flies anymore, so of course did the obvious thing.... and watered the turd to make it stink again. After watering the turd the flies came back to the trap and the zapping continued for the next couple weeks. I think I watered the turd a total of ~5 times. As time went the number of flies decreased, my dog still got pestered by flies but nowhere near as much as before. Some more weeks passsed by and the weather cooled down enough for the flies to go away and my dog could finally catch a break and recover. 

    During "the zappening" my trap did come into a few problems, mainly flies getting stuck in the cage and conducting just enough to load the power supply down but not enough to cook and burn up the fly. Most of the time these were easy to clear up just by tapping the cage with something non-conductive. This would shake up the cage and disrupt the connection between the fly and the cage. After a tap the cage would sparkle as the flies that were stuck to it would burn and the trap would return to normal working order. This shorting problem was down to my cage design. Since the flies had to get in between the two layers to get zapped they would get stuck there and occasionally short the two layers out.

    So in the end the zapper was a success, and I think my dog thinks so as well. He's recently turned 15 in human years, and I'm not sure how many dog years that is but he's certainly feeling his age and needs all the help he can get. Also who would have guessed that the most palatable thing for flies is a steaming turd? Perhaps it should have been obvious?

Anyways, that's it for now and thanks for visiting my blog.