Doug Metzler wrote:
> Would a small fish-tank air pump plumbed to an 8-hole distributor and then
> have 8 pressure sensors on the other side to pick up the puff qualify as
> Rube-Goldberg?  Imagine the throughput!
>   
My thought was to use the air to blow through whistles (think pan
pipes), use a microphone to pick up the sound, DSP it to get the
individual frequencies.
Heh if you got it right you could use DTMF frequencies on your whistles
and a DTMF decoder, you could have your decoder built in about 20
minutes with a drill press and some aquarium hosing (and a really quiet
compressor).

I once as a thought experiment for uni designed a rover for Io (the 1st
moon of Jupiter) Its hit by so much radiation a person would be dead in
about 10 seconds. There was some "old school" tech in there. Tube based
camera. Fluidic computer using punched tape for the program storage.
Valve radio. All the good stuff. (A HDTV tube based camera now that
would be cool). The onboard electronics would mainly be to keep the
antenna pointed at one of the lagrange points where you would have a
ball of lead/water ice with a satellite in it and to do whatever it said
to do. (The radiation travels down a "pipe" from Jupiter's poles along
with lightning, interplanetary lightning now that would make for a light
show). You just need to pitch it as a mini-series to some TV company to
get your funding, launch from a Russian ICBM and your set.
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