Ronja Optical Data Link

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Ronja (Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access) is a free technology project. It uses LEDs to create a 10Mbps optical communication link at distances of up to 1.4km. The system was developed using open source tools and the designs are fully disclosed. Everything you need is on the site: schematics, 3D models, and diagrams. The original systems used visible light, but the current designs use infrared. The parts for building one of these units should cost around $60. It’ll probably take at least seventy man hours to put one together so you’d have to be pretty dedicated to not using commodity wi-fi equipment to go through with this.

19 thoughts on “Ronja Optical Data Link

  1. this is pretty cool.

    If i ever have a need to cheaply create a high speed network bridge over 1.4 km, I’ll know where to look.

    I didn’t see any mention on the site, but does anybody know how much electricity this uses? Could it be powered by a small solar panel? I think this might be handy as a relay across 5 km between two buildings.

  2. This would be more entertaining if it was more of a hack. Building circuts and such is nice, but I want to see them do it with $10 worth of parts and an off the shelf $3 laser pointer. Because duct-tape engineering is always more entertaining. :)

  3. #8, 802.11x’s range is limited by FCC regulations. Visible and infrared light, however, generally has no such limits, besides that of the light source. Of course, radio waves are generally much less affected by fog.
    Obviously 802.11 is more feasible in general, hence its widespread acceptance, but there are probably some situations where this would come quite in handy.

  4. What a fantastic project.

    We recently had our companies BT cables (inculding the whole industrial estates) cut to the net / telephone by some dodgy types. This cost us a couple of days to catch up with orders and general business. Money + Annoyed customers and PHBs.

    With this setup we could have a redant connection even if our cable / ISP went down again.

    Question is, can I get some corporate backing ($$$) to impliment this? Paid for hacks – priceless!

  5. just think of the awesome things you could do with this. some ideas:
    – link you and a friend’s house together down the street and play lan games
    – make a wireless link over an entire town using only light
    – make a network of these things in a town center and create a mini internet (a photonet)
    – use a lan based VoIP program and make a light-telephone.
    – use it to connect your secret lair in the garden (aka your shed) to your main network without using insecure 802.x

    just a few ideas ;)

  6. A nearby supermarket has a gas station at the end of the parking lot which is about 1000′ away. The gas station was added well after the market. I assume they did not want to hang a wire or rip a hole through the lot for LAN, so they used this stuff.

  7. Security.
    Rather than blasting your porn in every direction, this will provide a much more direct link.
    Being a “hack a day” reader you should know that wifi isn’t secure.

  8. i and some friends tries to build a awireless network using
    RONJA(Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access) forour college internal exams
    From which source we can get idea about constructional details

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