CFL or LED

stink bugs is.

yellow,

inside my shirt.

Why not experiment?

John

stink bugs is.

yellow,

inside my shirt.

I would have thought blue or UV - that's what's used in electrical traps

I'll try my Bug buster tonight. It has a UV light. LED's are fairly narrow banded.

greg

Step 1: Stink bugs. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!!

On a sunny day (Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:32:36 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote in :

There are UV LEDs.

Sounds like Obama's recovery plan. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

^^^^^^^^^^^^

I did a lot of experimentation many years ago with homebrew bug zappers.

My results: Blue / bluish, but also daylight-like with at least some fair amount of spectral content everywhere from 350-375 nm range through yellow-green, in my experience attracted most flying insects the best. (Not much testing on stinkbugs, however.)

Also, in my experience smoothing of 50/60/100/120 Hz flicker helps a lot.

For a good spectrum, I would suggest a 6500K CFL, modified to have a bigger filter capacitor (with suitable life and temperature and ripple current rating) rather than an LED, since 6500 K CFLs have a half-decent spectrum.

Better still would be an "old tech" "Daylight" or blue fluorescent. These produce more UV than medium and high color temp. CFLs do, since medium and high color temp. triphosphor fluorescents tend to have a UV-utilizing blue-glowing phosphor component, sometimes also a bluish-green-glowing UV-utilizing phosphor component (the one in GE "Reveal" CFLs, which have low color temperature).

The old tech blue is at least mostly only available in 20 and 40 watt T12 (1.5 inch diameter) last time I checked. Maybe reptile cage fluorescents from pet supply places... Use a suitable electronic ballast to minimize 50/60/100/120 Hz flicker.

White LEDs generally have a spectrum that is lower on violet and UV wavelengths than even 6500K CFLs have. However, I have yet to compare those to fluorescents for attracting flying insects.