ANTSTORE World of Ants

[paulhdear]

OK - excellent! If the ants run fast enough across the strips, they will hear radio

[JimmyVe]

a) Is good for most ants but like you said, as long if the PTFE don't get wet ore else it is us less, so if you keep ants that need a high humidity PTFE is no option.

b) Works for some species, if you make it wide enough so they can't float over. Still you have the danger of ants drowning.

c) I have seen a video off it, damn forgot where. You could browse the net for it. In that video it worked very well, the ants get a shock and fall down, it seems not the hurt them (still it looks crewel) but they keep on doing it over and over again, it's not that they learn from it. Also you need a device to check you battery, if you battery would fall out the ants have free game.

[paulhdear]

Thanks for that - I'll try to find the video. If you find it first - let me know!

[miszt]

i'm personally going to be attaching the strip to a DC adapter, giving 9v, but I'm undecieded onthe current yet, needs to be high enough to shock them, but not high enough to kill them, I'm thinking pherhaps 100mA to start with, but we'll have to see how t goes, wil do a few experiments with low currents first

[paulhdear]

A hundred milliamps through a human would be lethal, let alone through an ant. But the current through the ant is determined by the voltage and by the electrical resistance of the ant's body. So, just worry about the voltage not the current.

[miszt]

yep my mistake, should have said 10mA, but yes it certainly culd kill an ant as the resitance wuld be allot smaller, a human can easilly stand 1million volts if the current is low enough, the reason i want to control the current is because many adapters can give out 1A, and I certainly dont want that going thru my ants lol

[paulhdear]

Wellll.... it's not quite that simple. If the resistance of the ant is R, and the voltage is V, then the current through the ant is V/R. There's no need to limit the current on the supply, except to avoid the wires melting in the event of a short-circuit. Just stick a 100kOhm resistor in series, then it won't matter what the current-limit of your supply is (I'm guessing the resistance of an ant is >>100kOhm).

[miszt]

Well this is the problem, i dont know the resitance of the ant, it may have the resitance of a paper clip lol i dont suppose it does, i'll get my v-meter out and check lol if i can get one to sit still long enough, will have to dig out sum very fine tweezers, a resistor is an option, but i dont want to drop it down so much the ants dont notice it

water is another issue, spraying inside the tank, something i'll have to think about carefully! lol

[mzfckr]

even 6miliamps trough human heart is lethal so....

[paulhdear]

Exactly. But my point is that it's the applied voltage and the resistance of the ant which determines the current. If the ant has a resistance of 500kOhm and you put 500 volts across it, you'll get 1mA of current through it. No point externally limiting the current. Have fun.

[paulhdear]

Hi all,
I just tried this out. I prepared a glass beaker with two tracks of silver circuit-board paint, about 3-4mm wide and 3-4mm apart, running around the inside about half an inch below the top. I've got 18V across the strips (two 9V batteries in series)

I put two Polyrhachis dives in the beaker, and they're running around like crazy. Every time they try to run across the strips, they drop off, but they seem otherwise unharmed. Sometimes they will stop and attack the strips, so I think it's pretty clear that the voltage isn't harming them - it's just annoying them.

UPDATE: a couple of times, one guy has made it across the strips. I think they *can* walk across them, they just strongly prefer not to. So, a multi-strip system might be the answer, to povide more discouragement.

I'm going to implement this in my new formicarium, to stop ants making a run for it when I open the lid.

[paulhdear]

It looks as if the ants learn rather quickly to avoid the strips. After a while, my ants turned back as soon as they encountered the first silver strip, before they got a shock. These guys are smart!

[JimmyVe]

Nice going Paul, do you have pictures of it to ?

[paulhdear]

No pictures at the moment. But, when I get my new formicarium built, I'll post some pictures and let you know how the 'electric fence' works.

Incidentally, the finished formicarium will have a little indicator light to tell if the electric fence is on or off. I wonder if the ants are smart enough to learn that they can cross the fence when the light is off?

[ratgreen]

so whats the final decision for voltage and current because i got some copper electrical tape which is perfect for this.