UV wavelength, best for pests?

I have actually been requested to purchase a light for work, dang. The need is for a bright UV (Near UV) handheld (LED prefered). I have found several but most are in the 395nm to 405nm range. My research seems to indicate that 360nm to 380nm is the prefered range to fluoresce the evidence left behind by rodents. Yup I'm in the dark looking for rat ****. whoopee.

Does anybody KNOW what the best wavelength or range would be? I have found everything from a $20 3D light emitting 395nm to a $500+ light emitting 365nm.

Thanks
John

You would be better off to simply purchase a wide band flourescent tube light for what you are trying to do. 390nm will work somewhat but the tube light will have a broader spectrun making most all stains visible.

Im house training five Jack Russell pups now, I bough a pk of 50 - uv leds
from ebay, they came direct from Hong Kong airmail for $20 shipping inc.
They work great for pet stains, mine were 395s I read some adds that were
selling ready made lights for this purpose and they listed 390 led as their
wavelength, anyway the 395s worked for me and were cheap.

I've hunted scorpions at night in the desert for 15+ years and started with a 6" battery-operated fluorescent. I made a "reflector" for it to minimize annoying myself while using it. It worked, but only out to ~5 feet. I picked-up a 12" version some years back, and no real improvement. Next came a custom I built with two 2" CCFL tubes. Again, no real improvement except for portability. (Size of a pack of cigarettes.) The next step in my quest was to mod an Inova X5 with some 5mm's I found from a link here. I think they were 390-ish, and it was the best so far.

About a year and a half ago, a group buy happened on the then new 6W Shark led. As I recall, the bare LED's were ~$110! Dat2zip built custom drivers for them for 2 123's and I think everybody used the Pelican M6 as the host. That light was the best by far, and effectively doubled the range for spotting them to 15-20'!

I've added two lights since, which I haven't had a chance to try. The first is a McR19 Cree 200mW @ 390-410nM and one of Don's 365nM Nichia-based offering$. :green: Both beat the shark for fluorescing price tags, etc on my indoor range, but they do gave much tighter beams due to the McR19 reflectors. The King so far seems to be the Cree. The Sandwich Shoppe lists a complete Aleph McR19 Cree light and LITEmania also has a Cree-based offering.

I am clueless what wavelengths are best for scorpions or rat pee. I will say that the Cree's total flux sure gives results on pricetags.

Larry

Thanks for the input. I (the company) do have a fluorescent hand light, it's about an 8" single tube and works great in near total darkness about 4" away from the surface, which is a pain when you have 10 to 100 pallets of product (each pallet is essentially a 4' stretch wrapped cube) to check for contamination. I just compared my Photon purple (NUV) to the tube light and the Photon puts out more light, at least visibly, but the tube causes more organic spills to fluorscesce (I work in a food production place, lots of organics fluoresce, like starches).

I may have to buy a rat to get "test material"...

MR2Spyder said:

I have actually been requested to purchase a light for work, dang. The need is for a bright UV (Near UV) handheld (LED prefered). I have found several but most are in the 395nm to 405nm range. My research seems to indicate that 360nm to 380nm is the prefered range to fluoresce the evidence left behind by rodents. Yup I'm in the dark looking for rat ****. whoopee.

Does anybody KNOW what the best wavelength or range would be? I have found everything from a $20 3D light emitting 395nm to a $500+ light emitting 365nm.

Thanks
John

Click to expand...

Most people looking for rodent urine like our 380nm flashlights. But, the 3 Cree xLamp model we have (XeLED-Cr3UV-R) is brignt enough to excite pet stains, human urine, and rodent stains pretty well (and of course scprions ). Our 7 xLamp flashlight is strong enough to show pet stains on otherwise new-looking carpet without the lights turned off in fact!

Hope that helps,
Piers!

Maybe something like this would work: http://www.defensedevices.com/uv-inspection-light.html

Thanks Trashman, I haven't seen the wavelength speced on a fluorescent type light before. Yes they work well but are very short range and dim.

Xenopus, thanks I will be looking at your lights.

John

Too bad it's not for sale...



http://dmcleish.com/CPF/NichiaUV365/index.html

Wow. Tease! Couldn't afford it anyway, sigh