Phasor Blast Wave Pistol

[Guest AmericanWorkMule]

Does anyone on here know anything about these?

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[TD]Phasor Blast Wave Pistol ASSEMBLED[/TD]

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[TD]Price: $159.99

Experimental device intended for animal control, routing out rodents, predators from bird feeders, control of unruly dogs, cats even people!! Unit is fully adjustable for maximizing effect on target subjects.

130 db Of Directional Sonic Shock Waves

3 1/2"x 5" Barrel Houses Transducers And Electronics.

Butt Section Houses 8 AA Batteries.

External Sweep And Frequency Controls.[/TD]

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[Steelharp]

Or a $12.99 hair dryer.

[Jonnin]

Its a noisemaker. For a while now, very loud devices have been used to annoy people who are acting rowdy, lots of "hailers" designed for talking to someone hundreds of yards away for example have been used this way. This one is small, but likely evolved from the same tech. I have stood on both ends of one of these hailers in action, on a boat, and behind it you really do not get blasted by the sound. In front, its pretty impressive, you can hear it across the lake, as advertised, and it is very directional, too far off the side and the sound is not there. But the one we had was a big thing, the speaker had to be 10 inches or more diameter. This thing... I doubt it is too impressive beyond 100 feet or so (I could be wrong, but that is my guess).

[TMF]

Not exactly an LRAD, but could probably take care of pests and noisy dogs.

[Caster]

Meh, I'd rather have a Varon T disruptor.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

The front-end of the thing appears to be a typical inexpensive piezo tweeter of the kind that has been common since the 1970's. But perhaps it is a more "sophisticated" high frequency driver. Piezo's are not the most fabulous for audio fidelity in a speaker system, but they can get very loud at high frequencies requiring not much power, can output loud up into ultrasonic ranges that dogs and small animals can hear, and they are cheap.

If that gadget is just a tunable power oscillator driving a piezo tweeter then it may be a little over-priced, depending on the quality of manufacture. Some flashlights can cost more than that and still not be considered "overpriced" if they are excellently built. A little 5 watt audio amplifier chip that costs maybe a dollar could be configured into a a tunable oscillator and ought to drive a 5 or 10 dollar piezo to 130 dB in the higher audible frequencies/lower ultrasound frequencies. Add another opamp IC if you want sweep frequencies. Maybe nothing exotic or expensive going on unless the device is built unusually good.

Maybe the thing could chase a cat or squirrel out of the yard. Maybe it would chase off or startle a non-agressive dog. Wonder if it would have any effect on an agressive dog?

Dunno much about dogs, but my two boy coonhounds have got into the rare fight. They are usually the sweetest dogs in the world. They usually get along great but maybe once a year when they get into a fight one minute everything is fine and the next minute they are doing their best to kill each other. Teeth and blood. Scary. If you notice the symptoms then you have less than 10 seconds to intervene before a death-match ensues.

We got those loud canned-air horns to see if it would break up a fight, but the fellers don't even notice the air-horn once a fight starts. Old dad gave me his hot shot cattle prod, but they don't even notice getting shocked with the prod once a fight is on.

So maybe you could aim that sonic pistol at a peed-off pit bull and chase him away? Or maybe it would just make the pit bull more peed-off?

[Guest AmericanWorkMule]

I found some schematics online... but I don't understand them.

Strategic Dog Initiative

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hi Lester,

Could you fill me in, with simple language how I might build something like that Phasor Blast Wave Pistol. I have neighbors with a dog that howls day after day into the night that I thought I might try it on.

I'd appreciate your help

Hi AmericanWorkMule

The following two links indicate that ultrasonic devices are probably ineffective on insects or small mammals--

Ultrasonic Pest Control? Save Your Money

Electronic pest control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't know if they would be long-term effective against a barking dog though there are many "similar" products which claim to be able to stop barking with sound.

If you google "does sonic bark control work" then there are various opinions and products. From the reports some products seem to work for some dogs and do not work at all or make it worse for other dogs.

This Petsafe brand product is only about $42 and SOME of the user reviews report success--

Amazon.com: PetSafe Outdoor Ultrasonic Bark Deterrent: Pet Supplies

Here is a company which sells a "sonic pistol" claiming the same 130 dB output at a price of $30 (toward the bottom of the page). They also sell "automatic" bark stoppers similar in principle to the PetSafe device.

Stop neighbor's barking dog, 60 day FREE trial, if our device fails you pay nothing

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Unless there is reason to believe that the "Phasor Blast Wave Pistol" is 3X to 5X more effective than the less expensive units, then it might be worth web-searching and buying the unit that has the lowest price versus positive user reviews?

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Though $160 for a "130 dB ultrasonic pistol" may be over-priced for that device (or it may be a fair price, dunno)-- Even if you are experienced building electronic gadgets it may not be worth building one yerself unless you want the gadget bad, simply can't afford $160, and have lots of time on your hands. Or if the project sounds like fun regardless of how much time it takes to get it right, and regardless whether it really stops the neighbor dog from barking.

I haven't done electronic building for 10 or 15 years. Maybe the parts I'd use are no longer made (though the piezo tweeters are still definitely available). Maybe there are better parts to use nowadays.

I suppose "electronic appnote" books are still available and you can find most of the appnotes online if you know what to look for. Folks who toy with electronics end up with lots of commercial books of basic circuits and also accumulate home-drawn notebooks of circuits they have built which actually worked as designed (along with all the circuits that didn't quite work as designed).

I've built really cheap non-precision voltage-controlled oscillators in the past based on appnote circuits. I'd dig up an old drawing, construct it on a protoboard and verify that it works for the desired frequency range. If not, fiddle with it until it does work. A protoboard is like an erector set or lincoln blocks for electronics. I would maybe go for a VCO with a frequency range of 5 KHz to 50 KHz.

The VCO would be driven with another dirt-cheap low-parts-count non-precision low frequency oscillator, probably a ramp wave oscillator, which would sweep the frequency of the VCO. There would be knobs for base frequency, sweep modulation rate, and sweep modulation amount.

Then I'd buy a likely-looking 5 watt or 8 watt audio amplifier chip and fiddle with interfacing the oscillator to the amp chip (on the protoboard) until it drives the piezo nice and loud. After everything was working on the protoboard I would make sure to sketch the working schematic, then solder up a one-off "finished circuit" on perfboard. Well-made perfboard circuits can be as rugged as a pc board and it is quicker than making a printed circuit if you only need one. This kind of circuit isn't critical enough to NEED a pc board in order to work properly.

[Tncobra]

Weaver mount?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I found some schematics online... but I don't understand them.

Strategic Dog Initiative

Hi AmericanWorkMule

That is a neat website. His design is probably a lot better than what I was thinking. I was mainly thinking about how to duplicate the specs of that "Phasor Blast Wave Pistol".

He is using a Mosfet for the output power and not even trying to generate a clean output signal, but for this application it probably doesn't matter whether the signal is clean or dirty, unless maybe a sine wave would be more painful to the doggy ear.

The main thing is that unless you have experience building electronics, there is always fiddling at the end to make it work. It hardly ever works right after you solder the last connection. If electronics sounds like a good future hobby to get into then you have to start somewhere and that would be as good a place as any. But it would be a lot of trouble just to save a few bucks unless you already know something about it.

If it was me I'd try that PetSafe product for starters.