This one is a rather simple Do it Yourself project. Recently, I found one of the dead mosquito bats in my room. The funny part being, there are a few of them here. One can certainly find that this piece of High Voltage equipment is one of those Chinese brains, in a sense that they use lower quality batteries, hence a much lower price of around ₹150 to ₹200. This itself was the obvious reason why I could find a bunch of them in my house.
The problem, as you might have guessed, is the dead battery in the bat after a month or twice of use. As I was having my semester exams, I decided to repair the bat. :)
The first thing I did was to open up the bat and undoing all the screws and collecting them aside. After which, on a close examination, I found that the battery used was of such cheap quality. I used my beloved multimeter and checked the voltage of the battery which showcased a voltage of 4.1v. I assumed that the circuit works within a voltage range of Lithium-Ion battery.
Being a hobbyist, I used to collect a lot of laptop batteries and other junk from a local waste management shop. Hence, I had a few of the Li-Ion batteries laying around. Also, I was having one of the charging boards (TP4056) for single-cell Li-Ion battery (Total cost ₹18 for the board). Of course, you can use multiple cells in parallel, as long as the cells are from the same package and their voltages are same.
Examining the circuit and measuring some of the parameters I got to know that this produces a voltage of greater than 2500v and a current to 180μA, equalling a power output of 0.45W. Meanwhile, the input parameters take around 4v at 280mA, equalling a power input of 1.12W. Thus and efficiency of 40% to around 45% at its best. Also, testing the frequency of the arcs produced, the multimeter showed around 25kHz to 30kHz, which was the reason for the Zzz-Zzz sound.
I then soldered the 2 salvaged Li-ion batteries in parallel along with the charging board to the loop. After which I enlarged the holes for the new circuitry and removed the existing AC probes. My blessed couple, Mr. Araldite and Hardener, who was in love for several years, came into my rescue for gluing the boards in place. Charging the batteries for around 3 hours, now the bat can work for another 2 to 3 years before the batteries would have broken and a minimum of 2 to 3 months before the next charge. I checked everything and gave it a test for its proper working, after which I closed the deal.
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