Journal archives for September 2017

September 28, 2017

DIY Moth Light

Due to the slippery slope of curiosity that iNaturalist has made for me around organisms I never even knew I could care about I've put a fair amount of time this summer into trying to build a cheap and effective moth light that could easily fit into a backpack and weigh a pound or less. The below link gets you to the blog of what I've learned and how to make your own for about $50 that you can also use to charge your cell phone with in the backcountry.

https://calnature.org/blog/2017/9/27/diy-moth-light

Thanks to @catchang for all of your encouragement and testing of demo units, including those that just melted and fell apart. Electronics is just as new to me as moths. Also thanks to @robberfly for all the lepidopterist stories and general enthusiasm around beautiful winged creatures. Thanks to @kueda @finatic @leftcoastnaturalist @leptonia @tiwane @seakangaroo for letting me hang around moth lights with you. Big thanks to all of the identifiers that have been brave enough to take those moth pictures closer to species level calls: @jimjohnson @k8thegr8 @hkmoths @gwark @cedarleaf @cedarleaf @ericwilliams @treegrow @loarie @leannewallisbiologist @sambiology


2022.06 update. Here are my current pieces for building the DiY Moth light:

My current system is as follows:

Light
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073Y7LRRT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

"Screen" aka a shower curtain liner
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002H9W9X8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I run fishing line through the shower curtain liner holes and at both ends put ~2 ft of line with loops at the end, this allows me to wrap around tree trunks and hold it up with just 2 thumbtacks. Although I find frequently I'm just finding other things that I can loop through the fishing line inbetween holes in the liner and use that to hold it up.

I sometimes will use a USB extender so that light's USB cable easily gets to my USB battery.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XCB5234/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Currently I'm using this USB battery, but really anything over 10,000mAH is going to be good for ~ 6-8 hrs of mothing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09F9QGH2M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Posted on September 28, 2017 10:12 PM by damontighe damontighe | 67 comments | Leave a comment

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