7 ms·
Bug-a-Salt (2013)
- S_A_P 7y agoIve one of these- they were selling them at the Sams Club and I have a lot of fun with it. Definitely recommend using Morton kosher salt with it. Seems to strike the right balance between mass and aerodynamics...
- throwaway1239Mx 7y agoWhy in the holy hell is this getting downvoted[0]? Advice on what kind of ammunition to use during the endless war on bugs that we humans have perpetrated for our own comfort[1] is without a doubt invaluable information. [0] This is not snark. [1] Snark aside, I for real do not want roaches etc. in my house, and appreciate non-poisonous methods of dealing... while at the same time struggling with the fact that the insect population in my state, which is KNOWN for bugs, has visibly plummeted within my lifetime. (edit: refs. Also context: at the time of my comment, the parent was getting greyed out for some reason.)
- S_A_P 7y agowas surprising to me that this got downvoted, but looks like that trend has reversed. I can only add that I would much rather use this to kill flies and mosquitos in my house than a chemical spray. It sort of works on wasps, but mainly just knocks them down and disorients them. This can be enough sometimes to get a shoe or something else to crush them. The fact that its a 'gun' can add some sport to it, but at the end of the day I use this thing when there is a pest in my house/porch that I dont want. I dont see anything wrong with that.
- barkingcat 7y agoBecause it doesn't require multiple Kubernetes clusters spun up on 5 different geographical regions for fault tolerance with 3 different vendors to run. It works too well so people would rather downvote the advice for which kind of salt to use.
- smoyer 7y agoThat's actually a great idea ... I'm going to create clusters of Bug-a-Salts on PTZ platforms, write a custom Kubernetes operator and then use Kubernetes to orchestrate their target acquisition and elimination.
- barkingcat 7y agoyou might run into latency issues while using existing cloud platforms to run the AI stack for image recognition via the 50 webcams you need to set up to provide coverage around the house. It's better to build a hybrid cloud whereby the image recognition code runs on tensorflow locally on 10 x RTX 2080 super's (for low latency inference) and then go on to issue commands via the kubernetes cluster for elimination.
- smoyer 7y agoWhy is the post about the morality of killing for fun getting up-voted? This community, at this instance in time seems to be against it. A funny story from when I was younger ... there was a candidate running for County Commissioner who lived in my neighborhood and had a local auto-parts store. County Commissioners are paper pusher yet for some reason, as if his position mattered, someone asked whether he was for or against the death penalty. His answer was "regular or extra crispy". This was when the electric chair was still in use ... and there was one about 10 miles from where I'm sitting. I already knew he was a little "out-there" but this statement alone kept him from being elected. While we'd had three horrible commissioners, this statement made him seem "more horrible". It's interesting in thinking about it that I've found this story more and more disturbing as I've gotten older. Being an introvert and being raised as a stoic german (by descent at least) meant that I've had to grow my ability to empathize through experience. My son was opposed to the death penalty before I was. I might even still have caveats.
- loco5niner 7y agoThis is about killing flies. No qualms here.
- smoyer 7y agoYes ... I have no qualms about killing flies either. All I was getting at is that a) even back then there was a line you could cross as shown by this candidate and b) that my personal views on killing have changed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gadders 7y agoI have one of these as well. I'll need to try kosher salt to see if that does a better job of killing wasps.
- cortesoft 7y agoDoes it leave a bunch of salt on your floor? Stuff like grainy sand on my hardwood floors is one of my pet peeves... does this not create that feeling?
- S_A_P 7y agoI guess the assumption is you sweep up/vacuum afterwards. That is the way I handle it. It’s not a giant quantity of salt involved.
- Phrenzy 7y agoI prefer to use the idea that I am seasoning my home.
- toxican 7y agoAlso it's good luck to throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder, so any backwards shots you take is +3 to luck
- a_imho 7y agoI have a similar item in my backlog, a drone mounted salt gun to terminate slugs in the garden. Engaging them in first person or just sitting back and let the skynet do its thing. Will probably never have the time to work on it, but if something like this is available to buy I would be interested.
- avetisk 7y agoI think that may be a really good project. I’m pretty sure if you could make it work properly, a lot of organic farmers would invest into such a solution.
- CodeCube 7y agoIsn't spraying salt over your organic farm counter-productive?
- jaltekruse 7y agoMight be able to replace the salt with something like fertilizer beads.
- grenoire 7y agoThen it might not do the best work on slugs.
- huffmsa 7y agoFlying or on treads?
- yetihehe 7y agoMaybe somthing like skycam[0]? That could have some gripper to just move snails into some container. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycam
- phasetransition 7y agoFYI, Kevin Kelly's "Cool Tools" is a solid, and useful coffee table book. Some things from 2013 don't age well, but for it is useful for lots of items. A quick skim of my copy didn't find the bug salt shotgun, but there is a water-based bug sprayer for the garden on pp. 214.
- trevyn 7y agoA creme brulee torch is another fun option!
- et2o 7y agoWhat’s the volume of salt? Not sure if I’d rather have a fly buzzing around or salt all over my house
- FroshKiller 7y agoI have and use one. You don't even notice the salt. Sweep or vacuum your floors like normal.
- jmpman 7y agoTiny. Think the amount of salt which comes out in one shake of a salt shaker.
- evilduck 7y agoA tablespoon in the hopper will last for a couple dozen shots. It's a very small amount per shot. Its a functional novelty though and not meant to be your primary means of pest control. For a one or two flies a week you're probably not going to notice the salt and its actually pretty nice for killing flies in hard to reach places like high ceilings or corners, or "zoomers" who barely sit still long enough to be swatted.
- gadders 7y agoMrs Gadders was pretty firm that it was not to be used within the house.
- nwallin 7y agoIt's tiny. I have a Roomba and never notice any salt in its bin.
- bdcravens 7y agoWe have one in the office. They’re fun.
- foreigner 7y agoHate to be a spoilsport but I wonder what their safety record is like. The shots where the camera was pointed up the barrel made me cringe. "Treat like a loaded weapon at all times" indeed! Of all things to get in your eye high-velocity salt seems like it would be pretty bad.
- masonic 7y ago"Yer gonna put somebody's composite eyes out with that!"
- FroshKiller 7y agoI've had one for a while. Cocking it automatically engages a safety that you have to disengage in order to fire. I've invited guests to try it, and even fumbling with it, no one has fired it accidentally.
- closetohome 7y agoIf, however, one is beset by insects and doesn't have many child visitors, the safety can be disabled by moving the switch to the unsafe position and putting a screw into the plastic next to it so it can't re-engage.
- patorjk 7y agoI got mine as a gift and my 6 year old thought it was the coolest thing in the world. He begged me to let him use it. I immediately felt a since of dread, as the last thing I wanted was him using it to shoot his little sister and maybe get her in the eye. It's now hidden in the truck of my car. It's a neat gadget, but definitely not a toy.
- yellowapple 7y agoWhat's wrong with pointing a camera up the barrel? As long as nobody's behind it, the worst case scenario is you break your camera (and given the video quality, I'd say that'd be a good motivator to upgrade, haha).
- mrfusion 7y agoWould this work for mosquitos in the house? I can’t figure out a good way to kill them.
- jmpman 7y agoI killed a dozen last night with mine. Works like a champ. The mosquitoes in my house tend to land on the ceiling, where they’re perfect targets.
- draw_down 7y agoWould be interesting to try with diatomaceous earth.
- phalangion 7y agoSeems to me that DE is probably too powdery for this.
- iak8god 7y agoAlso dangerous to inhale, so maybe not the best idea to be launching it into the air in one's living space.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoI wouldn't try it. Diatomaceous earth seems likely to injure the lungs if inhaled.
- towndrunk 7y agoI have one of these and it works fantastically. Highly recommended.
- dusted 7y agoDoes it really kill them though? I'm a fan of my electric swatter (because I can catch them in-flight with it) but I have to keep it buzzing for a bit to make sure they're really dead, and then it smells slightly burnt.
- FroshKiller 7y agoIt kills. Roaches might take two or three shots depending on their size and your aim, but it kills.
- iak8god 7y agoAmazon reviewers claim the 'Bug-A-Salt 2.0 Lawn & Garden Model' works well on palmetto bugs, which I think it just what they call giant roaches in Florida?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- frabbit 7y agoI disposed of 63 wasps over a period of about 3 weeks with it. Can confirm that it kills at a range of 6 inches by blowing the body apart. So, usually it was two shots, one to immobilize and another to kill. Vastly prefer this to spraying chemicals around or having a dirty fly swat hanging around.
- jonahbenton 7y agoDoes this work on larger insects?
- JensRex 7y agoNot available in Europe. We can never have the fun toys. :(
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ZoomZoomZoom 7y agoWith age I came to conclusion that anything making killing of any kind even remotely fun is utterly wrong. It might be necessary with dangerous insects, but it should not be fun or recreational.
- lidHanteyk 7y agoIt is a question of scale. Vaccination is usually a light, kind, touching moment between a nurse and a patient; vaccines have been behind the attempted eradication of several species. Gardening is often seen as a quiet, pastoral, contemplative practice; crop selection has permanently altered the global climate (via disruption of water and nitrogen cycles) and invasive species have permanently altered local habitats. I have yet to meet the Jain who has studied cellular biology.
- ravenstine 7y agoHow did you come to that conclusion?
- zarmin 7y ago`brew upgrade morality`
- Cerium 7y agoWhen I was your age, we had to compile morality ourselves.
- pseudosudoer 7y agoThe README was quite outdated though, and wasn't cross-culturally compatible since it was rewritten several times...
- yellowapple 7y agoBack in my day we bought our morality in books that we'd have to hand-transcribe into our moral compasses. One typo, and whoops, now you're a sociopath.
- xutopia 7y agoWhat is the range on this thing?
- metabagel 7y agoI think I’ll pass on sowing my own backyard with salt.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoCoarse sand might work in place of salt, though there's the risk of the increased abrasiveness wearing out the device faster.
- K2h 7y agoI wonder if it would work with a single load of small crushed ice?
- derefr 7y ago> It is possible to shoot flies out of the air. There is nothing else like it. I mean, personally, I just spray them with Windex. (Which doesn’t so much kill them as stop them from being able to fly temporarily, at which point you can find them on the ground trying to slowly walk away, and do as you will with them.) And it has the convenient property that you already probably have a sprayer-bottle of it in your house. If you don’t, a spray bottle of {vinegar, soapy water, alcohol} works, too. Also, these droplets of light solvents just dry cleanly off of whatever surface the droplets land on, without creating a scratch or a stain. I can’t imagine what spraying salt everywhere would do to my painted walls and (hardwood) floors.
- taxidump 7y agoIt's such a tiny amount of salt it's negligible. Having owned one, it was a bummer when we ran out of flies. Totally worth it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thewebcount 7y agoI met the inventor at a party once as we had a mutual friend in common. He's a really interesting guy! Very low key. I wasn't sure that there would be an audience for it, but apparently there's a big one. Good for him!
- bbarn 7y agoMine worked great for about 25 uses then got clogged internally. I can’t unclog it with destroying it. Expensive novelty
- tomerico 7y agoI wonder if washing with water would work, given that salt dissolves quickly
- sunbear-lover 7y agoOH I GET IT! Bug Assault => bug-a-salt That took too long, I need my morning coffee
- shmulkey18 7y agoHas anyone modified these things to give them a little more power? I have a "gen 1" Bug-a-Salt and it doesn't have enough grunt to kill a fly. I suspect that a stronger spring would do the trick, but haven't seen any tear-downs or mods online. I have seen "bug killer" add-ons for air-powered pellet guns, but they seem kind of iffy for indoor use. [edit: grammar and spelling]
- fenwick67 7y agoDoes anyone know if this works on carpenter ants? Their exoskeletons are thick enough that sometimes they survive being swatted.
- dang 7y agoA small thread from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20001334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20001334
- yellowapple 7y agoI have two of these in my closet, still in the box (meant to keep one and give the other to my Dad for a Christmas gag gift, but got him something else instead). I live in a desert and haven't needed to open one, though it's dawning on me now that we get scorpions here...