United States of America, As Represented by the Secretary of Agriculture

David K Weaver

Dennis Shuman

Aharon Dagan

A system for automated monitoring of pest insects having sensor units which include an insect electrocutor trap modified by the inclusion of electronic circuitry to sense, count and store the numbers of insects killed by it. The numbers of insects can be displayed at the electrocutor and/or transmitted to a remote computer that can acquire and time-stamp counts from thousands of distributed electrocutors for subsequent analysis and display. The data from the units is transmitted through a communications system which is organized into a two or more levels of multiplexing modules. Each multiplexing module has a plurality of inputs from next level multiplexing modules, with the exception of the last level multiplexing modules. The last level multiplexing modules have a plurality of inputs from sensor modules outputting data. A default condition is set up to allow transmission of address information from the computer to all the multiplexing modules to allow the programming of each multiplexing module to select one of its inputs. At the appropriate time, timing circuitry in the multiplexing modules reverse the direction of communication of the multiplexing modules to allow a single sensor module to transmit its data to the computer, in accordance with the address information.

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Bozeman, MT, United States of America

David K Weaver