Abstract:
The twenty first century has experienced swift changes in the development and advancement of different insecticide-based insect management tactics. This is with an aim of controlling diseases spread by various insects. One such disease is malaria caused by the plasmodium parasite spread through female mosquito bites. However, the current methods employed to control mosquito population in both private and public places are limited in various ways. First, aerosols have known health side effects to humans, and secondly, ultrasonic based systems emit low frequency waves known to have side effects on either hearing or human brain. In addition, these systems are considered inefficient as they are deployed indiscriminately. A more effective approach is to spray or activate the system when the target insect has been detected. In this research, an improved method of insect control is designed and implemented which involved a microcontroller-based system that is operational only when the target insect is within the effective detection zone. The detection of the insect is derived from processing of sound frequencies produced during insect flight using the Doppler effect and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). These frequencies are recorded using a sound sensor (microphone system) that is connected to a micro-controller unit which is programmed using Arduino IDE platform to detect insects based on their sound, while the Python programming language was used in the frequency processing and GUI. Upon detection, a spray mechanism is activated to dispense the required insecticide. A sound generator was used to test the performance of the frequency detection system where the system was found to detect a broad frequency range with sufficient intensity. The system detected mosquito frequencies in the range of 434Hz and 496Hz, with a peak frequency of 465Hz. Other insects that was detected include horsefly, black-fly and tsetse fly at peak frequencies of 713Hz, 1178Hz and 1829Hz, respectively. This system is therefore effective in detection and control of these insects.
