4 ms·

I think the Native Americans did the same thing with smoke. "Smoke" for 1, "no smoke" for zero. And they went way further than across the room.

• Houshalter 13y ago
  Sort of, but they didn't smell the smoke signal, just look at it. It's cool that we can automate it too.
  • drakaal 13y ago
    Point a camera at the place where the smoke pit would be. Poof! Automation. As to smell, that was a stupid way to do it. We can detect levels of lots of different things. Instead of 1 or 0 over time it would have made a lot more sense to say Ok, I need to be able to encode 140 characters with 37 choices (alpha-numeric + Space). There is a humidity sensor, a Carbon monoxide sensor, an oxygen sensor, and a Carbon dioxide sensor. All are really cheap. If you a tube and 37 levels that you release water, carbon monoxide, oxygen, and carbon dioxide to. You now have the ability to send. 4 characters at a time. Since alcohol sensors are cheap, we can use that for "parity" so we know that the message was sent correctly.