Teardown Of A Fingerprint Padlock

We wouldn’t mind tearing down a fingerprint scanner, but we hate to bust up our expensive laptop or cell phone. [Julian], however, got a hold of a fingerprint scanning padlock and was willing to tear it apart for our benefit. The video appears below.

The padlock is a simple enough little device with a cable lock instead of a solid metal shackle, although we have seen similar devices with traditional shackles. Initially, the lock’s fingerprint storage is empty and it will open for any fingerprint. The first task is to set an administrator fingerprint. You’ll need that fingerprint to set up other fingerprints or to reset the unit. Of course, what we are really interested in is what’s inside.

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Hack A Padlock Key From Plastic Scraps

Not too many years ago, if you wanted a decent copy of a key made, you had to head to either a locksmith’s shop or the nearest hardware store, where real people actually knew their trade. Now we generally take our keys to the Big Orange Box o’ Stuff and have it copied by a semi-automated machine, or even feed it into one of the growing number of fully automated key-copying kiosks, with varying results. But as [BlueMacGyver] shows us, a serviceable padlock key can be whipped up quickly at home with nothing but scraps.

The video below details the process – soot the profile of the key with a lighter, transfer the carbon to some stiff plastic with Scotch tape, and cut out the profile. With a little finagling the flat copy makes it into the lock and opens it with ease. Looks like the method could be applied to locks other than padlocks. As for raw material, we think we’ve found a use for all those expired credit cards collecting in the desk drawer.

We’ve given a lot of coverage lately to hacks involving locks, including copying keys from photos and making bump keys with a 3D printer. But we like this hack for its simplicity. True, you need physical access to the key to copy it, and that limits the hack’s nefarious possibilities. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

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Building A Single-button Combination Lock

single_button_arduino_combination_lock

[John Boxall] of Little Bird Electronics was thinking about combination locks, and how one might improve or at least change the way these locks work. Traditional combo locks can be implemented in a variety of ways, most of which we are all familiar with. Standard rotary padlock and keypad-based electronic safes work just fine, but he was interested to see how one might implement a single button combination lock.

[John] determined that the best, if not only way, to build this sort of lock would require him to measure button press intervals. In his case he decided to monitor the intervals between his button presses instead, but the concept is the same. He first tested himself to see how accurately he could press and release the button, leaving a one-second space between presses. After looking at the results he determined that he would need to incorporate at least a 10% margin for error into his code in order to compensate for human error.

He then created an Arduino sketch to test his idea, defining a set of key press intervals that could be used to ‘unlock’ his imaginary vault. It worked quite well, as you can see in the video demo below.

Now we’re not suggesting that you lock up your mint condition My Little Pony collection or your illegal arms stash with this type of lock, but it could be useful as an extra failsafe for certain projects/gadgets that you want to keep all to yourself.

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