One time, we had remotes for televisions. We hated having to point them to get line of sight.
Did you know that some of the older Gameboys had this? I think it was the Gameboy color. Instead of a link cable, you’d just point two Gameboys at each other, and… Well, they had to be on a level surface like a table. And also you basically couldn’t ever move them or touch them, which was strange for a handheld. …annnnd it basically didn’t work. Ever. So Wi-Fi was pretty good!
But no, let’s go and use line of sight tech, that seems like a great idea!
I kid, I kid. I’m sure it works fine enough within its limitations for a certain purpose, I just can’t help but joke about making these connections.
@wave_walnut the gameboy color infrared communication was basically the amiibo of the 90s. You could transmit a tiny amount of data and that’s it. In Pokémon for example, just trading pokemon was too much of infared. But you could give someone a mystery gift.
It’s THAT why I never got it to work? I always figured it was because it was a steaming pile of garbage and was actually just half baked tech on the same level as the NES and would just break and that was that. I still have my GBC somewhere and probably my Pokemon yellow cartridge in some box somewhere, hopefully without batteries still in it 😬 I should see if anybody else I know has one and try to get it to work with something very low data.
Before radio controllers got dirt-cheap, external camera flashes could be controlled by a very weak flash from your on-camera flash. (Strong enough to be recognized by the other flash, too weak to affect the photo.)
I had a tricky shot once, and I had to reflect the weak flash to the external flash with a mirror. Ha ha.
So yeah… line of sight data transmission sucks except between tall towers.
One time, we had remotes for televisions. We hated having to point them to get line of sight.
Did you know that some of the older Gameboys had this? I think it was the Gameboy color. Instead of a link cable, you’d just point two Gameboys at each other, and… Well, they had to be on a level surface like a table. And also you basically couldn’t ever move them or touch them, which was strange for a handheld. …annnnd it basically didn’t work. Ever. So Wi-Fi was pretty good!
But no, let’s go and use line of sight tech, that seems like a great idea!
I kid, I kid. I’m sure it works fine enough within its limitations for a certain purpose, I just can’t help but joke about making these connections.
@SCmSTR
@wave_walnut the gameboy color infrared communication was basically the amiibo of the 90s. You could transmit a tiny amount of data and that’s it. In Pokémon for example, just trading pokemon was too much of infared. But you could give someone a mystery gift.
It’s THAT why I never got it to work? I always figured it was because it was a steaming pile of garbage and was actually just half baked tech on the same level as the NES and would just break and that was that. I still have my GBC somewhere and probably my Pokemon yellow cartridge in some box somewhere, hopefully without batteries still in it 😬 I should see if anybody else I know has one and try to get it to work with something very low data.
Before radio controllers got dirt-cheap, external camera flashes could be controlled by a very weak flash from your on-camera flash. (Strong enough to be recognized by the other flash, too weak to affect the photo.)
I had a tricky shot once, and I had to reflect the weak flash to the external flash with a mirror. Ha ha.
So yeah… line of sight data transmission sucks except between tall towers.