Would someone mind explaining, for people who aren’t familiar with electrical engineering and/or physics, is it actually possible to transmit information over spaghetti or this is just a very elaborate April-but-not-in-April fools joke?
The spaghetti is just a stick. At one end a relay[1] wiggles the strand of spaghetti to transmit information. At the other end an optical sensor[2] sees the tip of the strand of spaghetti wiggling and receives that information. There's such a setup going in each direction[3] so that each side can receive and transmit.
[1]: https://github.com/peterheinrich/InternetOverSpaghetti/blob/... (the strand of spaghetti that stick going off the screen to the right)
[2]: https://github.com/peterheinrich/InternetOverSpaghetti/blob/...
[3]: https://github.com/peterheinrich/InternetOverSpaghetti/blob/...
* Is it electrical? No, impossible, dry spaghetti is not a good conductor
* Is it optical? It could make sense, maybe spaghetti behaves like an optic fiber, trapping the reflections inside?
* Oh my god, it's mechanical!
So what happens here is, there's a relay (electromechanical device) modified to be able to poke a metal rod when a signal is applied.
This rod pokes the spaghetti.
The receiving end watches the end of the spaghetti for movement - with an optical sensor. When it moves back, more light will get through the sensor, than when spaghetti is in the way. So the bits are represented by physical movement back and forth of the spaghetti noodle (is noodle a correct term here?).