The LiFi-Project

Each person in the team gets a small device with an RGB LED and a colour sensor. Put two devices face to face and the LED of one shines into the sensor of the other; data is to flow across this short stretch of air. At the start you tell a few colours apart, at the end your link transmits an unknown file byte by byte.

The device is only the occasion. What this is really about is how information is represented digitally, how to break a big problem into pieces that can be tested one by one, and how to program with an AI assistant without believing it blindly. Light suits this because it is slow and visible: what otherwise happens invisibly inside a computer can be watched here. And because no language model knows your setup, you have to measure what matters instead of asking for it.