What is Ronja?

Ronja (Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access) is an User Controlled Technology (like Free Software) project of optical point-to-point data link. The device has 1.4km range and has stable 10Mbps full duplex data rate. Ronja is an optoelectronic device you can mount on your house and connect your PC, home or office network with other networks. Or you can use it as a general purpose wireless link for building any other networking project.

The design is released under the GNU Free Documentation License: you get all the necessary documentation and construction guides free. The material costs are very low, about 100 USD. The operation is immune to interference and quite reliable - interrupted only by dense fog.

User Approach

Output of Ronja project is a design. Twibright Labs' intent is not to manufacture and sell pieces of hardware, but to solely engage in the development. Manufacture and selling parts and kits is meant to be performed by other entities, without explicit licensing requirements. This is intended to guard the user against overpricing. Moreover, the freely available complete source code and building guide helps the user to have transparent control over quality of the goods he is buying.

If you are interested in the device, then visit the homepage, buy components and make the device yourself. The homepage is mostly a building guide exactly describing how to do it. If you run into troubles following the guides, there is an end-user-oriented support provided in the form of mailing list.

The device

One Ronja device is a single long-distance optical transceiver that is capable of running against the same or compatible device on the other side of the link. The topology is point-to-point.

Building a Ronja is rather lenghty job (this will hopefully change in future) that however pays off in a reliable and performant device that is capable of delivering steady connectivity with little maintenance and can be run freely without a need of authorities' approval. Also a possibility of interference and eavesdropping is negligible. Dropouts are infrequent and determined solely by weather and are thus foreseeable.

He who wants to enjoy the adrenaline sport of driving primitive retail parts into flawless coopertaion to provide the uncurbed fullduplex connectivity experience must withstand these nuisances:

Ronja is somewhat labour expensive. Things have been made much easier by putting the most complicated electronics on a PCB. The cost of parts is negligible in comparison with the labour, for example the components for the whole Ronja 10M Metropolis cost just 1500CZK. Further reduction in labour demands is planned by putting RX and TX on PCB too.

The user must possess certain basic manual skills as soldering, drilling, painting, and technical drawing/schematic reading. But people without any previous experience with soldering have built a piece that worked on the first try!

The user must not cut the corners during the building

but there are also certain conveniences:

The parts were chosen to be of the widest availability possible and equivalents are provided where applicable

Innovative approach is used to speed up the work and make it convenient. Sector codes are present to make the population easy. Drilling is simplified by drilling templates - just print and no measurement is necessary in the workshop!

The device is based on the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid) which makes the device plug-and-play immediately after the building provided the user hasn't botched anything.

The design is rugged and overdimensioned to withstand variations in the components. As a consequence, the resulting device is rock solid in steady performance and provides outstanding electromagnetic intereference immunity and electromagnetic compatibility. Withstands -20°C as well as direct sunlight and heat with obvious margin. During a lightning storm, lightning strike in proximity usually doesn't generate even a single lost bit.

In case of device failure (direct lightning strike), the measuring points can be inspected and bad components replaced without a need to throw the whole device out.

WSFII Slides

Mixture of topics:

50% technical

50% nontechnical

Available formats: OpenOffice, PowerPoint, PDF.

LUGS Slides

Mixture of topics:

40% introduction into basic features

10% technical details

50% development tools used

Available formats: OpenOffice, PowerPoint or in PDF.

Google Open Source Jam Slides

Mixture of topics:

60% introduction into basic features

20% history

10% technical details

10% development tools used

Available formats: OpenOffice 2, OpenOffice 1, PowerPoint or in PDF.