I found this wasp nest under my porch yesterday. I usually handle these things with some wasp spray. This guy is about 6" diameter and they seem pretty aggressive.
I have this long porch, and it’s just high enough to crawl under, but I really don’t want to fight wasps on my back under my porch.
So I had this crazy idea… What if I attached an FPV camera to my RC car and drove around under there to look for more? What if… I attached the can to the car and had a servo to spray it. Crazy, or epic?
heebie jeebies, I had sooo many wasps digging in the grass the other day I am on full alert to find where the heck they went or came from. I unfortunately have to inform you if they take the car and camera you will need to burn the deck…I suggest two nozzles maybe even two different kinds of spray to be thorough.
We get a lot of wasps here. We have a pear tree and two apple trees. I think that’s their main food source. I’ve taken out a lot of the honey comb looking nests and the mud ones, but nothing this size. I’ve never been stung, so I was also thinking about getting tested at the allergists first before I attack them.
How would I control the spray can? The RC car I’m thinking of using is pretty small. I might have to go buy a smaller can of wasp spray. The one I have weighs as much as the car. This stuff is the foamy stuff and it kills quick and knocks them right out of the air.
I’m going to dust off the FPV monitor and see if I still have a working VTX and camera.
Servo arm to the nozzle, gears if you really need to. Drive to aim. Quick and dirty swap out the steering servo for the trigger and just drive in a straight line.
FPV gear all still works. It runs a little warm. I soldered on an LED too.
I have a bunch of radios and the car doesn’t have a very open system. I think I’m going to just add another radio system to control the servo. Not ideal, but it might work.
The car is a hobby king thing “Rocksta Basher” if you’re curious. It’s small, but it has a big gear ratio on the drive train, so it will be slow but strong.
Off to the HW store looking for some spray that I can attach a servo to.
Oh, that’s nice looking. I am glad that little servo has enough juice. I think I am basically going to do something similar, mount the servo and the 3D printed parts to the can and zip tie the can to the car.
I also saw this, which looks about right too:
I could even attach the servo via string and just change the size of the servo arm if it wasn’t working right.
I’m more of the ‘explosives’ type… I’d just use the RC car to drag the can until it’s under the wasps nest. Then I’d lay on the ground and shoot the can with my pellet gun. Small boom later and everything should be gone.
I just have to keep watching… Maybe we could get it made into a movie? I’d mount the can next to the cam such that the spray will go in the same direction the can will spray. Move until you are directly below the nest, the nest will center nicely in the display, and squirt. You may need to bring it back and clean the cam lens to see how well it worked.
I don’t have a go pro or anything. I can record the NTSC after it’s been transmitted to my FPV monitor, so I’ll have that.
I was thinking it would make sense to have the can go along the length of the vehicle for mounting purposes (longitudinally) and it’s a tiny camera, so yeah, I want to point it about the same direction as the spray. Not directly under it though, because I don’t want a bunch of pesticide covered almost dead wasps on my stuff… So like a 45 degree angle.
The print Nathan pointed me to is almost perfect, but it doesn’t have room for the nozzle, so I either need to chop down the nozzle, or get some more CAD going.
[attachment file=109414]
It’s looking more and more like this might actually work.
I’m assuming that 1) That’s not nearly as fun and 2) The wasps aren’t that stupid and they are going to find me anyway.
I could really have dealt with this in about 5 minutes. But I would probably be stung at least once. I don’t actually have a good idea of how many wasps are in the hive ATM.
I could also wait until the first freeze, and just knock it down then.
All things I’ve thought about. But probably not as much as I’ve thought about having a teleoperated ground vehicle with a remote trigger on a can of wasp spray.
I actually recommend the mini ramps or the micro rambo. Instead of dual endstops, you get -1 endstops per axis, which is just enough for killing wasps. I’m assuming you’ll also want a laser beam?