[Dan Williams] built a belt that holds up your pants while remembering your passwords. This was his project while camped out at the Hackaday Hardware Villiage at the 2015 TC Disrupt Hackathon last weekend.
The idea started with the concept of a dedicated device to carry a complicated password; something that you couldn’t remember yourself and would be difficult to type. [Dan] also decided it would be much better if the device didn’t need its own power source, and if the user interface was dead simple. The answer was a wrist-band made up of a USB cable and a microcontroller with just one button.
To the right you can see the guts of the prototype. He is using a Teensy 2.0 board, which is capable of enumerating as an HID keyboard. The only user input is the button seen at the top. Press it once and it fires off the stored password. Yes, very simple to implement, but programming is just one part of a competition. The rest of his time was spent refining it into what could reasonably be considered a product. He did such a good job of it that he received an Honorable Mention from Hackaday to recognize his execution on the build.
Fabrication
[Dan] came up with the idea to have a pair of mating boards for the Teensy 2.0. One on top hosts the button, the other on the bottom has a USB port which is used as the “clasp” of the belt buckle. One side of the USB cable plugs into the Teensy, the other into this dummy-port. Early testing showed that this was too bulky to work as a bracelet. But [Dan] simply pivoted and turned it into a belt.
[Kenji Larsen] helped [Dan] with the PCB-sandwich. Instead of mounting pin sockets on the extra boards, they heated up the solder joints on a few of the Teensy pins and pushed them through with some pliers. This left a few pins sticking up above the board to which the button add-on board could be soldered.
To finish out the build, [Dan] worked with [Chris Gammell] to model a 2-part case for the electronics. He also came up with a pandering belt buckle which is also a button-cap. It’s 3D printed with the TechCrunch logo slightly recessed. He then filled this recess with blue painter’s tape for a nice contrast.
[Dan] on-stage presentation shows off the high-level of refinement. There’s not a single wire (excluding the USB belt cable) or unfinished part showing! Since he didn’t get much into the guts of the build during the live presentation we made sure to seek him out afterward and record a hardware walk through which is embedded below.
Would’ve been cooler if security was implemented. Like if you take off the belt, or are forced to, the key on it is wiped after 5 seconds unless it is immediately plugged in. I’m sure you could do something with a few biometric sensors against the skin as well, like if the user could he deemed stressed and such.
I would be deemed “stressed” if I had to wear something so incredibly tacky.
Functional. It could be required of you. The glasses I’m wearing were deemed tacky until around 2009. Tacky is such a static word for such a fluid subject.
But what if I don’t wear pants?
You have no secrets. :)
Comment of the day right here :)
Wang print?
Arduino micro bracelet! As a product i’d like more a usb key which looks like a key which just fires off the password when plugged, and can be added to a key chain :)
There’s something like that, search Fido U2F security keys. Way more secure than a password – it’s a shame that it’s only supported by Chrome and Google services. Also it’s not a hack… I’ll just shut up now.
Wristbands, the new symbol of slavery. They might be plastic, but they still may take your life.
Everyone who has your belt has your password in clear text. That’s not really what is called security.
but what if my belly lops over my belt. and it’s hazardous to my health to exercise. hehe
ok never mind now that I watched the video I see I have no worries, I thought maybe the buckle displayed a password at the top of it. The way he was looking down at the buckle I thought he was reading a password.