I see in that old thread that Liquidsquid posted he made a solar version. I know he's still around the forum. Maybe he will see this thread or you might want to PM him.
Edit: My bad. I just re-read Squid's post and he said somebody needs to make a solar version. NOT that he did!
I started it, then I got stupid busy at work. Hmmm, may be time to peck at it a little more.
Harvesting solar energy into mechanical action will take some smarts and decent battery management, it wont be cheap.
The idea is to store energy during the day to light UV LEDs during the night. Possibly time it for ideal insect times depending on output required. Then wait for the insects to come in, and then only periodically start up the "bug trimmer". The fun would be to see if I can detect the quantity of bugs, and fire the trimmer up only when there is enough bugs to make it worthwhile.
I actually have another idea for measuring pond water temperature, the entire column, then reporting it wirelessly. Also not cheap, but we have transmitters/receivers on the ISM band (915MHz) capable of 3 miles with very little average energy consumption.
