LED replacement tubes for fly zapper

There are serious technical problems in producing LED lamps that produce UV-C, so they probably don't exist.

I was told that near-UV is best for general purpose traps and that fits with

"It has been well documented in the literature that light in the ultraviolet (UV) range is attractive to flies and other insects (e.g., Hollingsworth et al. 1968), but it was Thimijan and Pickens (1973) who found that wavelengths between 310 and 370 nm are the most attractive to house flies, Musca domestica L"

Thanks, those are the sort I've used in the past and they don't last very long. With the overall power consumption and their reliability I was hoping for an LED replacement.

While, as others have said, blue to UVA is ideal, I would be happy with something like a cool white as an alternative.

Ahem. Wrong link. I meant to send

Still, shows there are LED tubes for zappers out there

yes, - see my post that crossed with yours

sorry again

I also need a T8 for a straight fit. It's also 209mm long and I need 13" or 340mm.

Thanks for trying. It does seem a missed business opportunity. I'm loathed to ditch them and get an alternative fly zapper that aren't particularly cheap. I like tubes that I can replace too!

I found some cool white LED 334mm tubes on Ali-Express for £6 each. Better than nothing and perhaps a useful night-light!

Just use some LED tape run from a 12v wallwart. Blue is good if you can find it, if not white does work. But bear in mind these things kill the wrong insects, they're not especally useful devices.

Indeed - I bought one during a bout of mosquitoes. It only seemed to kill moths.

I'm not sure how these work, do they use the U v to just attract the bugs and then zap them with high voltages once they get to the bottom?I knowyou can make UV emitters, but there are two things that might not make them much good for this. Firstly you need the all around light, and secondly, due to how they work they are either not very efficient or die quickly. I'm not sure why the usual tubes should fail so fast though, as I thought it was the gas that gives off the UVc, unless it somehow attacks the components in the device and dies that way. I think it is a different wavelength of UV used in standard tubes with a phosphor coating, so that may just bee that its got a lot of work to do to be bright. I do recall the so called sun lamps with UV were very prone to the light source failing. Even a fingerprint could make them die. I think they used to use a special mica type tube that passed the UV through and a fingerprint caused a hot spot. Judging by what happens with tungsten bulbs and flying insects, I am a bit surprised that they go for UV at all. Obviously my education is lacking in this area. Brian

Yes but the fact is that any other colour is often bandwidth restricted, so would not be any more use than a house light which seemingly attracts moths, butterflies and daddy long legs, but not flies. I wonder what in the environment of a fly gives off a different frequency than that which attracts the other insects, and why. Obviously moths and butterflies and bees are pollinators, so they will be sensitive to the out of band reflections of flowers, to them a bit like Day Glo paint is to us. Brian

Why? What would be the point of a fly zapper that won't attract flies? Brian

I remember many moons ago having a UV Eprom eraser. This too used a tube. It actually fitted one of my torches, so I put it in once and left it running on a sideboard and flies were buzzing around that, even though to the eye it just looked a bit purple and had dire warnings about not looking directly at it. Brian

Yes we should be looking after insects really, as there has been a massive reduction in the diversity of species. What we really need is to identify what are the problem locally, and find where they breed. Most start out looking like maggots, and this is where the health concern comes from. I would suggest any food waste that is around more than a day or so nearby, simply should not be there, or have some form of chemical to kill the grubs etc. If there are no grubs, there will be no flies. Brian

UV is outside the band gap of most semiconductors. I think you might be searching for a unicorn

There do seem to be some. Not cheap and not in the right form factors

Depends on "UV". When I was involved with printing with UV-cured inks we had lamps giving out multiple kW of UV-V energy ("near UV", around 395 nm) all from huge arrays of carefully-cooled LEDs. There were also available powerful 365 nm LEDs but not as powerful and more expensive, but that was a few years ago.

nib

• Use RGB tape & just power the blue. In case you're not aware of it, white tubes work in those things, they don't need to be uv. Blue works too & looks more what people expect.