[HN Gopher] Ronja: Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access
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       Ronja: Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access
        
       Author : marcodiego
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2022-02-13 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ronja.twibright.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ronja.twibright.com)
        
       | emteycz wrote:
       | My father once brought this device home. I saw computers using it
       | pinging, but having a look at the hardware was awesome in its own
       | way (I was around 6, 7?). Very sophisticated and at the same time
       | simple.
        
       | ghostly_s wrote:
       | What the hell is going on here?
       | http://images.twibright.com/images/ronja/rx/clock/rx_assembl...
       | 
       | why wouldn't you use a pcb for something like this?
        
         | obnauticus wrote:
         | Dead bug style circuit assembly has been popular in the ham
         | community for a long time. It's definitely a legacy thing but
         | still quite common for hobbyist projects.
         | 
         | It's quite suitable for specific RF situations provided you
         | have done the right characterization work.
         | 
         | https://spectrum.ieee.org/with-the-dead-bug-method-hobbyists...
         | 
         | https://hackaday.com/2016/05/04/getting-ugly-dead-bugs-and-g...
        
         | BostonEnginerd wrote:
         | This project predates easy and cheap PCB creation.
        
           | alar44 wrote:
           | No it doesn't. It's been possible to make homemade PCBs for
           | decades.
           | 
           | Even then, they could have at least used perfboard.
           | 
           | No idea why someone would want to do it that way. That was
           | fine for the 1920s, but there's no excuse for such poor
           | construction these days.
        
             | aliswe wrote:
             | from the website:
             | 
             | > Things have been made much easier by putting the most
             | complicated electronics on a PCB.
             | 
             | maybe it looks like this nowadays?
             | 
             | http://www.simandl.cz/stranky/elektro/ronja/ronja.htm
        
             | okl wrote:
             | To the contrary. That is how hams wire up their circuits
             | when using throughhole components. Look here:
             | https://hackaday.com/2016/05/04/getting-ugly-dead-bugs-
             | and-g...
        
               | alar44 wrote:
               | Some do, but it's stupid. There's no reason to do it that
               | way other than laziness. And even that's the wrong word
               | as that's much more difficult than using a board.
        
       | terinjokes wrote:
       | As someone who recently started looking into free space optics
       | for communication, seeing this suddenly pop up here is a bit
       | surprising! This is the project I pointed at when my friends
       | asked if you could do fast communications with visible light.
       | 
       | The project has cataloged several installations
       | (http://ronja.twibright.com/installations.php) but I suspect
       | there's many more that haven't been registered. I'm curious if
       | any of these systems are still in place.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-13 23:00 UTC)