"Maybe I should rehearse these things?" Just to be clear, please don't rehearse. ;) These things are why we like your channel so much. You don't do any trickery.
What exactly would "trickery" be to know what to say and what to point out before starting the video? He's basically 50% there already by researching what he's going to talk about before pressing record...
DxBlack he does a good bit of his testing and research mid video though, he might know what he wants to test beforehand, but most of his research seems to be done during a jump cut, same for any imaging
@@onefastsled The pause button is an amazing invention. BigClive says: "One moment please!". You would expect it to take ages. But one second later he is back and done all the reverse engineering. Continuing the recording. But no rehearsals midway. I like that. It is real!
No, this "do not try" is dumb. It is only intended to cover up your ass in case some idiot kills himself. It is only legal stuff. I think we should expect viewers to be smarter than that and let the rest being covered by evolution...
zh84 - The pond life that are likely too try dangerous things they see around them are not affected by warnings. What we really need are more appeals to inject bleach, get into microwaves and gas ovens and play on motorways. We need a cull of useless people.
@@Trevor_Austin When you hear that eating detergent capsules (Tide Pods) has become "a thing to do" it does not bode well for civilised society. As mentioned elsewhere, the film "Idiocracy" was meant to be comedy, but is fast becoming a documentary . . . . . . . . :-(
I actually petitioned to have these electric traps installed at my work place. They're one of the cleanest most humane ways of pest control. Before my business invested in industrial electric traps they used a combination of glue traps and starve boxes. It's very hard to work next to a glue trap full of screaming mice or listened to them kill each other in a starve box. Gruesome stuff.
One of the ladies at work insisted that we use humane tipover traps (made of opaque plastic), but of course neither she or anyone else ever checked them... until alerted by a rather insistent aroma. The' humane' trap had caught a mouse which had then starved to death and gruesomely rotted inside. It would be more humane to just finish the mouse quickly. I think this design would be improved by having a sonic alert when it had killed something cos TBH no one's ever going to check it in a shared office space otherwise due to feelings of diluted responsibility. I guess if it's at home you realise you've got to check it.
You say starve box, my mind thinks small mouse gladiators in a colosseum style setting! I was a steelworker, if we had traps like starve boxes guys would be checking them all the time and running bets on winners.
It never fails to amaze me when Clive mentions another RU-vid channel that I already watch. And if one I don't watch is mentioned I always go to check it out.
Actually I was asking Shawn in the comments of his video to send an electric mouse trap to BigClive for disassembly) Wonder if it played a role somehow
It's a hell of a lot better than poisoning all the cats and owls and thing in your area via bioaccumulation. Or the glue traps and things already mentioned.
@Maling Tørk I've used a spring loaded trap before and they are NOT always instant. I heard it snap and saw it caught the mouse by the snout, a few minutes later I stopped hearing the mouse. It was the middle of the night and I was trying to sleep (I think it was back when I was still in high school school) so I left it be and heard all about it later on when my mom discovered it.
@Maling Tørk like Gregory said 2 weeks ago I used a good ole spring-loaded trap on a mouse and it didn't kill it all it did was break its back it was still 100% alive just couldn't move.
Sorry but if you've literally got hundreds of mice IN THE HOUSE and they're shitting all over the food, eating the potatoes, chewing wires, poison is the way to go. Placed carefully within the building, cupboards, alcoves etc where no cats or children etc can get to that's it. Displaced mice caught in humane traps and transported elsewhere will be killed by any local colony, for example. Generally the poison is a blood thinner like warferen it stops clots and the mouse dies from brain hemorrhage after about 4 days of coming back each day to snack on the treaty product.
@@ollieb9875 Yeah and that's exactly what Gena and others are referring to - Warfarin is a decoagulant and when used in doses high enough to poison it makes it's victims extremely thirsty, so the mice (or rats) seek water outside the house, weakened, dying, and it's at that stage that predators like owls pick them off and eat them - subsequently also imbibing a dose of poison. Poisons generally available publicly cause long, slow, inhumane and ecologically impactful death - use something else if you have even the smallest bit of concern for other species. As an aside to your example. If you've got literally hundreds of mice in the house - you've let the problem get way too big before addressing it.
Complex and deadly. I don't hate mice, but I don't want to share my space with them. Last time I used a humane trap and released the mouse I found half of it the next day compliments of a local cat. Circle of life I suppose
Are you sure it is a cat's deal? Because rats do love to eat mice more than cat eat mice. Most cat actually don't eat mice except they don't have other food, they just love to play it till the mouse die.
I have several of these at home in my garage! The low battery flashing light is more of a suggestion, they still work perfectly fine for quite a while after the warning first appears. Eventually the battery voltage will drop below what is sufficient to enable the self-test, but I've found it could be months between the alleged low battery warning and the actual cessation of operation.
I went for a more 'organic' approach, I have two cats and zero mouse problem. Sure, the upkeep is a little more expensive but mouse residue removal is reduced by around 50-90% most of the time and my neighbours gain the benefits as well. They also keep your feet warm on those cold dark winter nights. (the cats, not the neighbours) - If you prefer the more impersonal approach of mechanical or electrical devices to cure your rodent problems I can assure you that you'll be hard pushed to match the aire of indifference to your existance a couple of cats can give you.
I tried the cat thing, but many of the song birds started disappearing around my yard, so the cats disappeared also. No, I didn't kill them, I brought them to a local farm, and the owner was happy to take them. 👌
Clive, from an insomniac, thanks for creating such binge worthy content! It's great to get you through the small hours when you feel like you're the only person in the world. So entertaining, relaxing and bloody hilarious too! Except maybe it's a bit nerve racking when you start pulling broken lightbulbs apart with a pair of sidecutters and creating a new level of OG prison weapon...
We have a major mouse problem here in South Coast NSW - especially during our "winter" (which yesterday was warmer than many UK summer days!) We prefer to use traps that provide a "trap and release" function, with the "occupants" being released some distance from home, in a local Reserve. Can DEFINITELY agree that peanut butter is the way to go - works very well all the time!
We sent ours back. The mice loved it. I think they liked the little led. It's always nice to eat out with nice lighting. It didn't kill the mice but they did like the peanut butter. I think they wore gloves! Or clogs.
I used to work in a small office that was in a converted barn. We had about 10 of these battery operated traps. While they worked, the aftermath is pretty horrific. The little mouse Poops and Pees itself at the time of electrocution. So the traps end up in a really nasty state.
Woh woh woh.. you can get lithium cells in a AA housing that output 1.5V? I want to know more about those, as I find Ni-MH unsuitable in a lot of cases.
Zinter do them. Got a lot of flak here for mentioning that they can be really useful, just for the reason the DO produce a STEADY 1.5v. Convenience of a built-in micro USB charging port too, and a decent run time. Not as much capacity (yet) as similar sized NiMh but the ease of charging is a major attraction.
Many thanks I was about purchasing one to check how it is build. Now i ll probably diy with a spark plug coil from old motor. Can you find out how much is the high voltge? Many thanks for sharing
I’ve been using one of these for the past 5 years. Works very well. I took some queues from Shawn, I augment the baiting with a small trail of sunflower seeds on the way to the peanut butter bait troughs. It works faster and more surely than any spring trap, making it the most humane.
'E's passed on! This mouse is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-MOUSE!!
When I lived in Canada I designed a small hand made fridge magnet in the shape of the classic mouse trap. The model I had at hand to use for reference was Victor branded so mine had the same V on the trap but with the name Victim instead of Victor. 😏 Your video using that same brand name reminded me of that. I still have a bunch of unfinished ones in a box somewhere that I brought back to the UK 🙂
I made one of these about ten years ago using a disposable camera in a 4" drainpipe...it was to catch a rat, however, it was unsuccessful! But I had fun building it...
Disposable camera flashes are fun. Definitely enough to give an overly inquisitive human a nasty zing, but I'm guessing not enough to be lethal to a mouse?
Our house was infested with mice when we moved in. They were living inside the walls and kept chewing on the telephone wires. I watched my dad take the phone socket off and there was one sitting there. He then grabbed the cat and shoved his head in the hole. The mouse then bit the cable and killed itself in front of us. Within a few months the presence of the cat drove the mice away. Haven't had any in years.
visualizing a grown man shove a cat, head first, into the hole of a wall, to fight a very stubborn mouse staring you in the eyes when you rip a telephone off the wall, ... Priceless.
Great video! I agree that it's well designed electrically, but "humane" definitely needs the inverted commas! Some years ago I had a mouse problem at a rural property I was living at. I'd always prefer not to kill anything, but catching and releasing mice was literally illegal in that area. As an autistic physiology grad with an interest in electronics, of course I locked on and spent about a week researching & designing what would be necessary to make a truly humane electric mouse trap. I ended up pouring over piles of mouse cardiac physiology papers, ethics guidlines, running dozens of LTspice circuit simulations, the lot! TLDR; My conclusion was that it would be impossible to make one that wasn't either extremely elaborate, gruesome, or very dangerous to people. I never ended up finishing the prototypes because they were terrifying, but for the sake of morbid curiosity I'll outline below what I determined would have been needed. (CW: animal suffering, explaining how the trap in the video is horrific imo) Most rodents, including mice often exhibit "spontaneous cardioversion" - i.e their hearts will often automatically regain a normal rhythm after entering fibrillation (abnormal heart contractions = how electrical shocks usually kill). Electrical conductivity of the paws is usually very poor too, and they are highly sensitive to pain - many laboratory 'ethics' guidelines I read completely prohibited euthanizing lab animals with any kind of electrical shock to the paws. It's horrific to even say it, but I don't see how the above trap wouldn't just cause some mice to be paralyzed in pain for 20 seconds at a time until they suffocated or died of exhaustion. The only solution I could devise that might claim to be consistently humane was completely OTT. It had a cockroft-walton multiplier from mains, up to around 3kV to mitigate poor electrode to skin conductivity. Specially arranged spring electrodes were needed to ensure contact was with the head and sides of the mouse, not the paws, and the initial shock needed to be several joules to ensure instant loss of consciousness (big capacitor, big bang, potentially gruesome because of the power levels - the mechanism for ensuring loss of consciousness is by inducing a sudden temperature rise in the brain). It then needed a control system to apply a lower AC voltage for several minutes to ensure consciousness isn't regained and that cardioversion doesn't occur. This also had to ensure that enough current was being delivered, but not so much that it literally cooked the mouse and/or became a fire hazard. CONCLUSION: A proper electric trap needed to be elaborate, gruesome, *and* dangerous to people.. If you must, just use a traditional snap trap.
The trap doesn't actually electrocute the mouse.....by complex circuitry.... it instantly forces this entire video in to the mouse's brain and causes a cerebral overload.
I have the rat trap in the same brand, works like a treat. I've added a solar panel and battery with reg to replace the D cells. You can use sunflower seeds as well.
@@mcomiskey7 you're missing out. I'm not much of a sadist, but Shawn woods does a stellar job with his research and content. It somehow never gets old....
What you have there is essentially a Kettering ignition coil circuit, Clive. That buzz you're hearing is transformer squeal, which cheap transformers like this will do unless given a dunk in some hot wax. Probing the waveforms with a scope probe on the primary (don't mess with the secondary!), would unlock the mystery of the circuit's operation. The discrete diodes protecting the CPU input are needed because the IC protection diodes are not very robust, only designed to snub out infrequent static zaps. They can't tolerate continues overvoltage stress like this. Discrete diodes can absorb a helluva lot more energy than the IC's input diodes can.
The mighty 'VIZ' Comic once had one of their humorous adverts, that advertised a similar item, but for the disposal of burglars. It read: 'BLITZ THIEVES! With this Electric Queen Anne chair.'
My guess for the strict cutoff for battery voltage under load is to get past humane rules or considerations. A low source voltage will be a low output voltage and if too low may result in pain but a very slow death of at all. Glad you didn't show footage Clive.
It's because if you don't have cameras to watch everything that's going on, you would never know the batteries are too low until the third or fourth time the trap says it caught something but nothing was in it. Also, you don't want to train mice to avoid it by non-lethally shocking them.
I have a large electronic rat trap for use in my rat-infested Adactus Hovel Association flat! I've caught and electrocuted several rats in it, including a mother and two babies! Unfortunately, I had a rat die underneath my kitchen floor. The floor was crawling with maggots, followed by endless blue bottles! It was nightmarish! Imagine preparing food among that?
I've had pet mice, and they can be very sweet. But I live in an area where mice spread some pretty serious diseases and can do very costly damage to home and cars. I use the same model trap in my car and it does indeed work. I only did this after having a mouse chew up the wires in my engine then stuff my airfilter box with acorns, shredded fabric, and feces. :O
They do work quickly. When it is triggered you can hear the same sound as during the arming process. Death is immediate. No twitching or convulsing. Nervous system fried.
If you ever want a nice Fluke meter that HAS a Low-Ohm/Hi-Res function (down to 3 places after the decimal for Lo-Ohms), grab yourself an older Fluke 88 Automotive Multimeter. I bought one brand spankin new back in about 1998, and i think they were in the $700-$800 range back then, but they are quite affordable for a second hand one today. Its a NICE meter with alot of special functions that the regular Flukes dont have. I know you'd love it... 👍
Those are amazing!! I have been using them for years here in Canada. Best mouse trap ever. They make a larger one with a compartment under it that the mouse falls into after shocking it and it resets to catch more mice.
I had a different version of this Victor trap in which the two micro switches failed to make up and no amount of bending of the trigger would work. I ended up gutting the thing and use it as a container for a snap trap which works reliably every night.
I’ve got 2 of these, branded “pest-stop” (Victor) bought from Screwfix I think. They are quite pricey, but by far the best mouse traps you’ll ever own. Never has a mouse taken the bait and not been caught. They must have got at least 20 mice between them now, and still on original batteries. Well worth the money if you have a mouse problem
I use the victor rat traps (field rats- only a little bigger than mice- but too big for this trap, which I also have). Biggest downside is that they are very difficult to clean. Victor's newest rat trap was modified to make it easier to clean. Far more humane than a glue trap, more sure of a kill than a snap trap (so also more humane in that way) and no need for poisons, which will end up going higher in the food chain. There is also a Wifi alert version, but I've found the alert is pretty flaky.
I really hate the contact sensing the Victor traps use. Their sensitivity to the residue makes them not suitable for use outdoors even if it's dry, even if you clean it all the time whether or not it catches anything. The Owltra infrared beam and PIR sensor is much more reliable. It sucks because the Victor rather than the Owltra's mechanical design lends itself to sawing a in the end of the rat trap so the mice can just walk through without the need for bait since they faithfully hug the walls but don't always go for bait.
I was going to buy the multi kill version of this, by the time I found something at a good price I no longer needed it! I guess the multi kill version has a very similar circuit - it removes the kill and resets, so the mechanics would be worth looking at. They also make a WiFi enabled version. I had started designing my own using the traditional mechanical trap coupled to an ESP, using the kinetic power of the trap to power up & send a signal that it had been activated. As you can tell I spent way too much time thinking about it and no longer had a problem to deal with!
Used these, I think the same make. Very good. Within 3 days, all the mice in our house were disposed of - 7 mice across 4 traps. There was also a big daddy RAT version :-) but that didn't catch anything.
Once I got past the startling realization that I was watching this with one of my cats tucked in beside me - she who has caught precisely one mouse in her life - I came to wonder how you'd represent a mouse in your schematic.
A dont wanna see a mouse zapped - they can be a pest but theyre cute too :-) A got a humane trap years ago an caught the critter - took it to bottom of garden and released it thats when you realise how fast they can shift - it was back over doorstep an into kitchen in blink of eye lol
I agree. A few months ago I came across one resting on the shelf. It scared me at first but it wasn't scared of me. Couldn't bring myself to killing it (that face). So I released it some distance from my house. Prefer to do it that way. It also means they have a higher chance of dying with a purpose (if you can put it that way). Food for something like a bird of prey or a snake.
@@callummclachlan4771 Shawn - the RU-vid channel referenced by BC, testing/demonstrating traps, puts out the victims for the local wildlife to snack on ...
And then it either went back into your house or infested a neighbour. The PDPA 1949 makes it an offence to release vermin. This includes rats, squirrels AND domestic mice.
i made a slightly more powerful version of this once. It involved 75,000uF of caps charged to 800v with an electrophoresis power supply. I called it the Ratonator because of the sound it made when one got across it. It sounded like someone had let off a shotgun in my garage, and when i got out there i discovered a massive skid mark on the bench where the electrodes had been and bits of rat all over the wall. Didn't use it again due to excessive mess.
no because the ground is always providing *some* moisture in the northern hemisphere and since some mice live under ground if im not mistaken that will be less of a problem also he shows that it triggers with a 80k-ish resistor. for reference a mouse is smaller than a human and humans have roughly a 1k body resistance to ground. so i guess it will even trigger with a mice having feet dry as a dead dingos donger....
Idk about the 1k resistance for a human. It takes about 1.5 ma of current to feel a shock, 9 is excruciating and can force you to hold the power source... you do the math.
No, because mice pee on their feet. Seriously. It's how they mark territory and attract a new mate. They spend half the time widdling, and the other half walking through it. They widdle on food to claim ownership, widdle to exert dominance, widdle to make sure other mice know how much widdle they have... You get the picture. Mice are icky damp creatures.
thats quite thoughtful of them to include a battery test on each powerup so the mouse wont just get a huge shock and lay there injured.. still, i sorta feel 20 seconds of electricity is less humane then the standard mousetrap that i think kills instantly. i wouldn't want to hear when a mouse goes in there.. you'd hear the buzzing noise and probably the mouse trying to escape and throwing the box around..
I'd imagine it going a bit like this: m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GVtsgnHpj3c.html It probably goes stiff and sits like that for 20 seconds while it's paws burn. Then it falls dead.
I was a machine operator at the Lititz plant. It was a shit show on a good day, but I ran some really cool machines. The machines that make the standard mousetraps are from the 30s. Almost entirely mechanical, formerly 7 separate machines that were jury-rigged into one. Supposedly the only machines in the world that you can put a block of wood in one end and get a fully made mousetrap out the other. Also you'd be lucky if you got away with 30% downtime in a shift.
Yes, Clive, send it ASAP to him! I want to see the overclocked 1 million volt mouse trap! Well, maybe not now, international shipping is not exactly cheap and easy now.
I have had one of those and was starting to head for bed when I head a “pop” and I wondered if it was the trap and sure enough the red light was on. And there was a very dead stiff little mouse inside.
People complain about the strangest things, seeing the mouse killed is the best way to see if it is a merciful and swift humane kill or not. I would be more upset if this thing took multiple jolts to kill the mouse.
I vote for testing this with a cocktail sausage (with tiny ears and whiskers of course), because you cannot deny sausage cooking devices are a theme in this channel
I find killing anything really distasteful and disgusting, as well as horrible. Having said that, a teardown/reverse engineering of this device is really interesting.
Cool! I have one of these and always wondered what was going on. I just learned that it tests the batteries when you turn it on. Now to dust it off, bait it and set it out in the garage where the mice appear.
Woodstream has a bunch of brands: Havehart (known for live catch traps,) and Terro (insect bait poisons) are others. Relevant to a Victor electric trap might be that they have Zareba, a maker of electric fence controllers. I became familiar with them when I lived in a nearby part of Pennsylvania and was having a problem with wasps; they used to make a wasp and hornet spray that was good for around a dog I had who would lick everything - it had mint oil, SLS, water and CO2.
I have mice and rats here, and have spent a bit of effort and $$ trying to keep them out. (Hey, I'm in a redwood forest. They were here first. I just need to keep them out of the house and foodstuffs!) I've had the best results with variations on this kind of trap. Fast, not lingering. Other options are mechanical traps, poisons and drowning. (Or several other variations on slow torture death) I'd thought that these used a DC/Cap/charge thing, didn't realize they were triggered AC. Rather unusually overbuilt. The problem with this particular trap is that my mice (As true of pretty much _every_ critter around here) are big and healthy, can barely fit into this trap! If they get into it, they're toast, tho. I have a larger version which works on mice and rats ok. Feel it's the best of a bad batch of choices. (Had pet rats for many years, pretty good pets, frankly.) Have been too lazy to pop one apart and puzzle it out. Thanks, Clive!
I have looked at the humane traps, but then I look at the chickens... chickens are very effective rather than humane. Surprisingly few mice make it into the house, and I have a couple of spring traps there. But given the "discussions" I hear from the chooks I think they catch at least 10 mice for every one that gets inside.
@@mozismobile One of my co-workers has chickens that'll go after rodents, so a good point. Bit rougher on the rodents, but then they're back in the circle of life. Up here, tho, chickens, cats and dogs get eaten by coyotes and cougars for the bigger critters, and raccoons go for chickens, IIRC. Quite a full ecosystem, here. I only hassle the critters in the house itself, leave the outside fauna alone. A friend offered a Jack Russel terrier that goes absolutely bonkers when she scents a rodent. She'd demolish the place going after critters, and terrorize them no end. she's effective, I'll grant that! Actually, my contractor discovered that the rats had tunneled under the concrete and up into the house, so they weren't even exposed outside! clever beasties. But that route's been shut down. Just once in awhile, a couple will get in..
We have some electronic rat zappers at work, they use C size batterys, I have not noticed any metal plates in them, no maze, just a straight blind hole with no lid to open.
Hi Clive... What frequency is the step-up transformer operating at - can you loosely couple a scope on to the cool to check? Incidentally it would be a neat little IOT job to add a LoRa board to send an alarm when the trap has tripped, to avoid the rotting dead animal smell @Andreas!
I wish I'd discovered Mousetrap Mondays before the last rodent problem. I dispatched them using standard spring traps (which don't work very well -- the mouse cleaned the bait off three of four traps before the last one actually worked). Also, that is the very LAST time I use glue traps. About half the trap had been chewed up and the mouse failed to escape. :o( Next time (and I'm almost guaranteed a "next time"), I'll be busting out the multi-kill version of this trap. Better this than having to have my car towed to get wiring harnesses replaced or finding another A4-sized hole in the filter of the Shop Vac.
