In the Internet age, it should be possible to have IP-based anything. One researcher’s work into IP over Xylophones shows that this is true, although it’s not exactly the quickest implementation.
University of California Berkeley researcher R. Stuart Geiger’s Xylophone-based IP experiment — officially IPoXP — provides a fully IP compliant connection between two PCs using two Arduino microcontrollers and two xylophones — as well as two xylophone players.
That’s where the data transfer speed problems — and innate error problems come in — as each Arduino sends a signal to an LED; that’s the point at which the human player is meant to strike a key on the xylophone. They’re issued one per second — so this is technically a one baud network as long as no errors happen. Which they do; Geiger’s ultimate conclusion is that
“Humans are really terrible interfaces.”
[Network World]
Image: nanagyei