Wasps vs. Robots

I’m sad to say the wasps may have one. At least, I may have to remove them with my arms first instead of using a robot. :frowning:

I actually had all the items together, and they were “working” but there were two major problems:

  1. The car is too small for the 18 oz can. I predicted this, but I thought maybe since this car is a rock crawler, it’s crazy torque would be ok. And it is capable of pulling it and driving a little bit, but it tips over when I put it on the grass.

  2. The actuation of the sprayer doesn’t push hard enough to actually spray. It’s not applying force directly at the nozzle, and I could fix that with more CAD, but I’ve got a lot going on, and the kids need to be able to play in the back yard.

So I’ll keep thinking about this, and I might try to fix problem 2. If I do, I can maybe use my older car (which is a 1/10th scale and more capable). But that will have a couple of new problems.

In the mean time, I think I am going to just spray the wasps (a couple of times, and remove the nest with a hockey stick) and when I think they are dead, I’m going to use my little rock crawler with a camera to look under the porch for more.

I’m sure you want pictures, right?

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https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2024364

 

Time to get printing!

Have a look at this: https://www.recordere.dk/2018/08/saadan-kommer-du-af-med-hvepse/

It is in Danish, but have a look at the video.

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Translated:

"
When Steen declares war on wasps, he goes all-in.
The Sisters, though not a bunch of wasps, have decided to build a wasp in my gas meter cabinet … There must be space for all of us, and we lived in fine harmony.
Until I was stabbed - And that means WAR!

But what do you do when you are a little stupid when it comes to wasps? Fortunately, I have a good imagination and a well-equipped workshop, so some evenings design and construction work have resulted in this fine machine:

Pic

I designed the robot on the chassis of a remote controlled car so I can drive all the way to the wasp nest. With remote control I can control the nozzle and trigger the poison syringe.

After all, it’s not fun if I can’t see what’s happening, so I’ve added a FPV (First Person View) system to the robot so that with my FPV goggles I can get the experience of being very close - Without being stabbed!

The first battle was fought and ended in a defeat for me. I had great fun and some wasps died, but the wasp nest is still active. The reason for this is that with the current machine I cannot spray directly into the wasp nest and have to settle for the ones that flew out.

The battle may be lost, but the war continues unabated. I’m just making some adjustments to the robot and then the next battle will come. Stay tuned!"

That is pretty cool. The pan tilt is pretty neat. The servo he used was much bigger to be able to pull the trigger. Having the can that angled is nice too. Damn, I so want to keep working on this. It’s just too hard to sacrifice summer. Thanks for sharing.

Went is the quad copter version of your sprayer coming out?

That nest sounds like a Bald faced hornets nest. I had a nest like that above my shed door last year & 2 of them stung me, so the next evening after dark when they were all comfortable in bed, I sprayed them.

I hope this works:

 

 

Watching that gave me goose bumps…Dude regrets that for sure.

Ive been away a while, came back and this was the top post. Now im over here like. Also not sure what happened to my last post. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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I didn’t work on it this weekend. We went camping. I think the wasps have read these posts because they were out in full force at the camp site (which is at 9000ft. Altitude, c’mon wasps!). There were enough of then that 4 of them killed themselves while trying to eat food that was being cooked.

My daughter, who is 1.5yo had one land on her face. She was a little snotty and she smashed that guy rught into her nose. Got a sting. She was fine right after that, and didn’t seem as upset as her parents about it.

Today I dug through my parts and pulled out my good ol’ traxxis rustler. Connected it up with a new radio and it seems to be working fine. I guess I just have to figure out how to fit a better servo or better lever arm on the spray and we’re back in the competition.

I decided to drive my car without the wasp spray around and see if there were any more footballs under my porch, and just to take a look at the first nest. I had a sneaking suspicion something was up because I didn’t see any wasp activity this week.

Sure enough something decided it was big enough for lunch.

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So I’m not going to need the wasp spray. I am still going to keep working on fpving my rc cars. This is bringing a new element to them and it’s really interesting. The only trouble is, if they every get stuck under the porch. Someone has to go get them…

I’ve started looking at Ardu-rover.

Something actually eats them!? Dude your yard is nightmare fuel for sure…

My kids aren’t scared, Ryan…

We have racoons, snakes, skunks, squirrels, foxes, and up the hill a bit, bears and mountain lions. I’m guessing it was a racoon.

I’m a sissy with bugs and animals…or in general.

Dang eating them can not be fun, I can only imagine a few make it out and attack like crazy.

I would guess the tastiest part are the grubs or larvae or eggs or whatever. I wonder if there are species where the venom doesn’t affect them so it’s more like a couple of tiny pin pricks. IDK.

Here’s the quote I found:

From small mice to large bears, other creatures that eat wasps are mainly interested in the larvae rather than the adults. The exception is bats, who will eat flying adults. Mice and rats, skunks, raccoons, weasels, badgers and wolverines are all brave enough to occasionally attack a wasp nest in order to eat the larvae inside. Humans have even been known to eat wasp larvae in certain parts of the world.