[goodbyeworld37]

Funny enough, the other day after having an encounter with a flying cockroach I wondered about using lasers to kill those. I imagined just finding a decent power rating laser diode a consumer can buy, driving it to the max and seeing what it could do.

Unfortunately it seems that any beam focused/powerful enough will end up damaging anything else it hit (in my case: walls, ceiling, carpet, etc.)

[danschumann]

yea, I thought about doing one that was a bird feeder, and it would be safe to shoot the laser at.. maybe a backdrop that absorbs the beam and heat. The point is to stop the starlings from stealing all the seed from the other birds. There are squirrel guards, but not starling guards. Might not even kill them, just heat them off.

You could make a safe backdrop and then auto detect what bugs walked on it, and only shoot the bad ones.

There are paint colors that absorb light and then it would probably need to be metal or something so it would absorb heat. It would only be active when it was shooting a bug.. so the bug would probably absorb most of it.

Sounds like it woudl need to be pretty enclosed, since even the refraction could blind people. Maybe a robot arm that swats them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMVWW-bmKwQ

One of those salt guns? Those take out bugs pretty good. Like a sentry bug zapper.