Snap4Arduino is evolving fast, and next week we’ll be publishing a new version which we think is going to surprise everybody!

In the meantime, we’ve been preparing this year’s TecnoEstiu, which will revolve around digital communication. The first part of the workshop is meant to show children how the first long-distance communication protocols worked and paved the road of what is now so common for all of us.

So, nothing better than some good old Morse to understand what encoding and decoding messages means, and nothing better than lasers to transmit this information!

With a laser emitter plugged into an Arduino UNO board in one computer, and a light sensor plugged into another Arduino UNO board in another computer, I present to you the most anachronistic communication contraption ever:

Now, what if we put two of these in each home and pointed them to interconnected relay stations able to handle requests and distribute signals around, creating a global network that allowed people to exchange pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers?