There’s many ways to use your Mothbox! The Mothbox’s default software will automatically calibrate its focus and exposure to whatever kind of target is positioned in front of it. The main thing is that it should probably be

• white
• flat
• easy for insects to perch on

We have found that acrylic felt works quite well for insects to walk around on, to stay clean and not mold, and as a bright, light-diffusing backdrop.

Target Options

We share four main options for your target. We have done most of our testing with the Standard Target, so the other options are still a bit more experimental.

The Standard Target is the most compact surface for the Mothbox. It also can be lit up quite easily from lights inside the mothbox.

The Dual Target doesn’t require any additional materials other than cutting an extra Target shape. It can also fold in half so it doesn’t take up much more room than the Standard Target! So you can pretty much double your target area with minimal changes.

The Quad Target is 4X bigger than the standard target. Because of its size though, it is not as easy to travel with. This large target also needs to be positioned further away from the Mothbox which means the amount of pixels per insect will be reduced. It can work great for areas where you are looking for larger and abundant moths.

The “Just Point it at Something” option works if you have some other surface you are using as a moth target. You can use the arms to measure a distance if you want, but you can just point the mothbox at a wall or sheet.

Standard Target

Building the targets are mostly straightforward. You just glue the target material to the target. Using a spray adhesive tends to work well.

1. Spray one side of your target material with glue.
2. Make sure the protective plastic is peeled off the acrylic target
3. lay the target material on top of the side of the target with the inverted logo. (you are covering up the logo)
4. lay some heavy flat things on top of the target (to help make it extra flat)
5. Let dry for a couple hours

Dual Target

The process is similar to the Standard Target, but you need to cut out two target surfaces. Put their smooth long edges together

Spray the double-wide target material felt with the adhesive spray.

Carefully align it with the two target backings.

Place something flat and heavy on top of them.

Now the Double Wide target material functions as a sort of hinge you can use to close the target and protect it when in transit. You probably need to tape the back when deployed to keep it rigidly open. This probably could use a design tweak.

Prepare Arms for Dual Target

The dual target can fit at the end of the arms in their standard configuration, but they will fill up the camera image entirely. If you want to have a safe margin around the edges of the dual target, you can adjust the arms one notch outward (it moves them about 7 cm outward).

Quad Target

The quad target design is the size of 4 of the standard targets. If you are desperate, you could literally just set 3 standard targets next to each other in a square and tape them all together. But the stability might be weird.

Instead, we included a design to cut out a single large target. We used coroplast (corrugated plastic polypropylene). It’s lightweight and sturdy an cuts easy. You can also make it foldable by making a slit up one side of the corrugation (but you will need to figure out a way to make it sturdy, even some tape will work.).

Cut out your large target.

Cut out its felt material.

Spray the felt material with spray adhesive.

Lay a flat heavy thing on top.

Let dry for a couple hours.

Prepare Arms for Quad Target

Stagger your arms with some extra bolts

With the extra large target, it might make sense to use the External Attractor option since it is a bit further from the Mothbox.

Just Point it at Something

Depending on your setup, you might not actually need a dedicated target! We have used the Mothbox by just pointing it at a white wall with a bright light that insects were attracted to. Many people want to just point their mothbox at a sheet that have hung up for traditional Mothlighting. This can totally work, BUT some things to keep in mind:

• The mothbox will autocalibrate its focus and exposure, but it only does this about every 6 minutes. Thus if it is pointing at a surface that sways or moves back and forth (possibly like a sheet in a light breeze) many of these images will not be in focus.
• The Mothbox is trying to image a full surface which is different than when you try to take pics individually of specific insects on a moth sheet. Its visual field should be of a surface that is as flat as possible or else parts of the image may by occluded by wrinkles
• The lighting near the edges of a surface may not be as well illuminated as those near the middle.

Cleaning Target

Moths can be a bit grosser than you might think. They can poop a LOT. Look at this target I came back to one night. It got real gross.

Bleach

You can use a 20% solution of bleach to scrub out most stains. Try not to rub too hard or the felt can get too fluffy, but in general it’s quite easy to clean.

Have Backups Ready

Felt is cheap and lightweight and you should probably have extra target material cut and on hand in case your current target accidentally gets messy.

We even upcycled our old felt together with old acrylic by just melting them all together with acetone.