Home: Pest Control: Zapper
Fly-killing artillery   (+6)  [vote for, against]
Tracking searchlights and a miniature cannon

Killing flies is hard work. The brainless things are either wobbling through space or have abruptly landed and vanished.

Tracking their erratic flight is key. So what about a set of auto-tracking searchlights with the agility to keep up? These could be paired with a laser, a spring-loaded salt cannon, or a focussed ultrasound emitter.

Whatever the gun, it would have to look like an AA cannon. Crucially, it would also have a gun camera linked to your PC or phone. It would track automatically, but you'd get the satisfaction of pressing fire.
-- david_scothern, Aug 19 2020

Pump-Action_20Salt-Gun [tatterdemalion, Aug 19 2020]

[+]
-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2020


It should be possible to track a fly with multiple lasers from all corners of the room, such that each laser on its own is not powerful enough to char your soft furnishings, but the simultaneous combination of all the lasers on the fly results in its speedy evaporation in a puff of smoke.
-- hippo, Aug 19 2020


You're no fun any more ...
-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2020


Maybe add pre-charred soft furnishings to the range of tie-in merchandise for this product then?
-- hippo, Aug 19 2020


No. It's just not the same.
-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2020


I can picture [8th] loading a charge of salt into his full-size acht-acht. Then I picture an extra-annoying fly landing on the breech block, just to vex him.

Bzzzz ...

[+] for the idea.
-- pertinax, Aug 19 2020


Add an air raid siren on this sucker and you've got a winner. [+]

Occurs to me, don't need this anyplace else than at the windows. Easier to target, you're basically targeting on one plane as they bounce against the window over and over in a dance of celebration of how stupid they are. Plus you just have a tray at the bottom to collect the wreckage so you don't have dead flies all over the floor.
-- doctorremulac3, Aug 19 2020


There is a laser that seeks out and gets rid of mosquitos already, last I heard it was even being prepared for commercial introduction, so you idea is looking good but has pretty much been developed.
-- beanangel, Aug 19 2020


Does it have the gun cannon?
-- david_scothern, Aug 19 2020


[+], though one may have to wear mirrored glasses to cohabit the room.
-- whatrock, Aug 19 2020


We can tell you've never worked for a government, [kdf]; you've got that completely the wrong way round...
-- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2020


You're no fun any more ... -8th of 7, Aug 19 2020

Either the gun cannon is baseline, or I resign, effective immediately.
-- david_scothern, Aug 20 2020


We were addressing our comment to [hippo] ... we like the idea as originally stated.

// Guess again. //

As you wish... "You are Gideon Gono, and we claim our 5 Zimbabwe dollars... oh, wait, six dollars... ten dollars... fifty... eight thousand.... four millon... oh, just give us a pound for a cup of tea."
-- 8th of 7, Aug 20 2020


//You're no fun any more ... -- 8th of 7, Aug 19 2020//

//We were addressing our comment to [hippo] -- 8th of 7, Aug 20 2020//

Your statement appears to be based on a false premise that I was, at some point in the past, 'fun'.
-- hippo, Aug 20 2020


/like a German Acht-Acht/ And just like that, I'm back on board...

And it wasn't a stray cat, it was Schroedinger's. Now the poor thing isn't sure whether it's dead or alive.
-- david_scothern, Aug 20 2020


[+] Because I want a full creeping barrage moving through my house to finally get that cheeky fly I've been dealing with for days.
-- bs0u0155, Aug 20 2020


Strangely, no. Our attempts to market a "drumfire" version of the "singing telegram" using several regiments of Krupp 75mm field guns gained very limited additional interest (it turned out that our existing customers were quite satisfied with the non-musical version).
-- 8th of 7, Aug 20 2020


I wonder if you could broadcast secret messages with a morse code encoded artillery bombardment
-- hippo, Aug 21 2020



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