Ultrasonic Weapon (USW) Circuit

The post discusses a simple ultrasonic weapon circuit also called USW, using very ordinary parts such as IC 555 and a few other passive components to generate the required ultrasonic ear piercing sound.

Controlling Crime with USW

With rising crime in today's society, especially against woman, carrying some sort of effective weapon has become quite imperative.

However keeping weapons like a hand gun can be too risky and dangerous as it can lead to deaths or severe injuries and might instigate legal interventions.

A great option which can be as effective in such cases yet won't cross dangerous limits can be in the form of a USW or an ultrasonic weapon.

What is a USW

An USW is a device or an electronic circuit designed for generating ear piercing, unpleasant frequencies that may be capable of causing intensely disturbing or painful affects for the assailant. when targeted toward the human attacker or an animal.

This sonic devastator will generally work with amplified frequencies of around 10 to 15kHz with a sweeping effect, resembling the sound created when we scratch our nail on a bar of chalk or limestone (amplify it 50 times).

Such USW devices are already available in the market but making one at home can be real fun and also useful.

A simple version can be witnessed below which incorporates a couple IC 555s for the intended actions. The proposed ultrasonic weapon circuit may be understood as follows:

Basically both the ICs are configured as astable multivibrators, but the one at the left is used as a slow rising and falling ramp generator or triangle wave generator.

Circuit Operation

The IC 555 at the right is wired up as a high frequency generator determined by the 1.5k resistor, P2 and the 0.01uF capacitor.

The slow rising/falling ramp from across the 1uF capacitor of left IC555 is applied to the control input pin#5 of the right hand side astable IC555 stage.

The above integration results in an high frequency sweeping voltage at pin#3 of the right hand IC which is fed to the transistor current amplifier stage consisting of the power transistor  D40D5 or any other similar NPN equivalent.

This amplified current is further fed to a couple of inductors which transform the high current into high voltage frequency suitable for driving high impact piezo transducers or buzzer elements.

For the two parallel inductors, here we incorporate the primaries of an ordinary radio audio output driver transformers and the series inductor can be any type having the value of around 1000uH.

S4 is the push to ON switch used for triggering the circuit into operation.

S1 is for selecting fast or slow sweep effect option, while S3 is the frequency selector switch, to be selected for fixing the optimal frequency range. P2 sets the final frequency to be delivered across the output.

Adjusting the Frequency Sweep

P1 is for correcting the desired sweep speeds.

The whole circuit operates at 18V, lower voltages upto 12V can also be tried with good results.

A battery pack made from chargeable Ni-Cd cells suits good enough for this ultrasonic weapon application.

The whole unit must be installed inside a plastic enclosure made by fabricating plastic pipes in such away that it resembles a pistol kind of appearance with S4 positioned at the trigger button position.

The piezo must be assembled inside a funnel mouth, and whole assembly to be fixed at the tip of the above fabricated gun barrel.

Circuit Diagram of Sonic Devastator

A deeper investigation shows that the sweeping feature of the left side IC 555 via the 2N2222 transistor can be achieved only when the 2N2222 is configured like an emitter follower, as shown in the following modified diagram.

The triangle waves from pin6/2 of the left side will generate a modulating triangle wave, which will amplified by the 2N2222 to feed the pin#5 of the right side 555 and this will generate the intended sharp sweeping ON OFF switching sound on the piezo transducer.

Parts List

Resistors 1/4 watt 5% CFR

• 10k = 4
• 10 Ohm = 1
• 1k5 = 1
• 3.9k = 1
• 470 ohms = 1
• 1k = 1 (at the emitter of 2N2222)
• Preset 500k = 1
• Preset 10k = 1

Capacitors

• 0.01uF = 4 (ceramic disc)
• 1uF/25V = 2 (electrolytic)
• 10uF/25V = 1 (electrolytic)

Transistors

• 2N2222 = 1
• BD139 or TIP31 = 1

IC 555 = 2

Audio Output Transformer = 1 or 2

Piezo Transducer = 1 (Assembled inside plastic enclosure)

Inductor = 1000uH

Note: The audio transformers can be completely eliminated if the piezo and the inductor are configured in parallel, between the collector of BD139 and the positive line.

The inductor can be any buzzer coil, and the piezo can be a 27mm piezo assembled inside a plastic enclosure.

Transducer Driver Coil Details

How to Make a Long Distance USW

The above design could be effectively used for remote long distance control by configuring it with a pair of RF FM transmitter and receiver circuit as shown below: