An Arduino Wrapped In An OLED Wrapped Inside An Enigma Pocket Watch

December 3, 2018 by 10 Comments

A pocket watch, tucked into a waistcoat pocket and trailing a long chain, is a retro-hip accessory. A pocket watch gutted of its mechanical innards and updated as a smart appliance might be a horological abomination, but would still be a cool hack. A pocket watch converted to a digital Enigma machine is in a class all by itself.

[Simon] admits that he has a thing for pocket timepieces, having a sizable collection of old and not-so-old watches, some that even serve for everyday carry. Trouble is, they eventually break, and qualified watchmakers are getting hard to come by. So refitting defunct watches has become a hobby for him, and this example is a doozy. It uses an Enigma emulator running on an Arduino, similar to one that he stuffed into a somewhat oversized wristwatch a few years ago. Fitting it into a pocket watch case required a bit of finagling, including a 0.5-mm thick main PCB that flexes a bit to fit the contours of the case. A small OLED screen peeks through the front bezel, which is done up in an attractive black crinkle finish with brass buttons for a nice retro look. There’s even an acid-etched brass badge on the front cover with his special logo, complete with a profile of the original Enigma rotors.

Very impressive workmanship, and we don’t even care that it doesn’t tell time. Need a little background on the original Enigma? [Steve Dufresne] did a great job going through the basics a while back.

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Dr. Hallards Dream transmission box

An Enigma Wrapped In A Riddle Wrapped In A Vintage Radio

September 30, 2018 by 5 Comments

Puzzle boxes are great opportunities for hacking. You can start with a box which was originally used for something else. You get to design circuitry and controls which offer a complex puzzle for the players. And you can come up with a spectacular reward for those who solve it. [thomas.meston’s] Dr. Hallard’s Dream Transmission Box, which he created for an original party game, has all those elements.

The box was a broken 1948 National NC-33 Ham Radio purchased on eBay after a number of failed bids. Most of it was removed except for the speaker. The electronics is Arduino based, so most of the smarts are in the form of code. Potentiometers and a switch provide the mechanism for players to enter codes. And when the correct code is entered, a relay triggers an external smoke machine and turns on a laser which illuminates a party ball, rewarding the victors. And of course, there are also sound effects as well as a recorded message.

We weren’t kidding when we said puzzle boxes make great hacks. Here’s one which ignites fireworks, one made only from discrete components, and a valentine based one which makes your significant other work for their gift.

The Enigma Enigma: How The Enigma Machine Worked

August 22, 2017 by 32 Comments

To many, the Enigma machine is an enigma. But it’s really quite simple. The following is a step-by-step explanation of how it works, from the basics to the full machine.

Possibly the greatest dedicated cipher machine in human history the Enigma machine is a typewriter-sized machine, with keyboard included, that the Germans used to encrypt and decrypt messages during World War II. It’s also one of the machines that the Polish Cipher Bureau and those at Britain’s Bletchley Park figured out how to decipher, or break. Most recently the story of how it was broken was the topic of the movie The Imitation Game.

Let’s start with the basics.

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3DP Enigma Keyboard Improves On The Original

August 12, 2017 by 1 Comment

[Asciimation], who previously created an Enigma Machine wristwatch, decided to go all-in and make a 3D-printed Enigma machine. Not a perfect replica, but rather an improved version that works the same but doesn’t concern itself with historical accuracy. For instance, the current step involves building the keyboard. Rather than trying to re-create the spring-and-pin method of the original, he simply swapped in readily available, double-throw micro switches.

This project has a tremendous amount of fascinating detail. [Asciimation] did his research and it shows; he downloaded blueprints of the original and used hacked digital calipers to precisely measure each rotor’s teeth, so that it could be re-created for printing. He even re-created the Enigma font to ensure that his printed rotor wheels would look right–though in doing so he discovered that the original machine used one typeface for the keyboard, one for the wheels, and one for the indicator lamps.

We previously published [Asciimation]’s Enigma machine wristwatch project, where he simulated the functionality of an Enigma with an Arduino.

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Enigma neural network

Decoding Enigma Using A Neural Network

August 11, 2017 by 21 Comments

[Sam Greydanus] created a neural network that can encode and decode messages just as Enigma did. For those who don’t know, the Enigma machine was most famously used by the Germans during World War II to encrypt and decrypt messages. Give the neural network some encrypted text, called the ciphertext, along with the three-letter key that was used to encrypt the text, and the network predicts what the original text, or plaintext, was with around 96-97% accuracy.

The type of neural network he used was a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM ) network, a type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) that we talked about in our article covering many of the different types of neural networks developed over the years. RNNs are Turing-complete, meaning they can approximate any function. [Sam] noticed the irony in this, namely that Alan Turing both came up with the concept of Turing-completeness as well as played a big part in breaking the Enigma used in World War II.

How did [Sam] do it?

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VCF East: Enigma Machines In The Flesh

April 3, 2017 by 13 Comments

At the end of World War II, the Germans ordered all Enigma cipher machines destroyed. Around the same time, Churchill ordered all Enigma cipher machines destroyed. Add a few decades, neglect the efforts of Polish codebreakers, and make a movie about Alan Turing and an offensively historically incorrect love interest, and you have a mystique around these rare, innovative cipher machine.

At the Vintage Computer Festival East, I was privy to what is probably the largest collection of Enigma machines on the planet. The exhibit comes from [Tom] and [Dan Perera] of Enigma Museum. Right now, they’re they only place where you can go out and simply buy a real, wartime Enigma machine. The price? Well, there is a pair of million-dollar Apple I boards at VCF. The Enigmas go for about a fifth of an Apple I.

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3D Print An Enigma Machine That’s Close To The Real Thing

October 21, 2016 by 6 Comments

The Enigma machine as used by the German military during World War Two exerts a curious fascination among our community of hardware hackers and makers. Perhaps it is the mechanical complexity of the machine itself, or maybe the tale of how its encoded messages were decrypted by Allied codebreakers that contributes to this interest, but whatever it is we’ve seen a succession of Enigma-related projects over the years that shows no sign of abating.

The latest Enigma project to come our way is a particularly nice one from a group of first year students at CentraleSupélec Rennes, in Northwestern France. Their Réplique Enigma is a fully mechanical Enigma replica using 3D printing techniques, and unlike so many replicas which use modern electronics it has a set of rotors just like those you would have found in the original. The rotors themselves have a 3D-printed plastic shell which houses brass contacts and the associated writing, while the keyboard and lamp board are both made from plywood. Rather than trying to replicate the original switches from the keyboard they are using modern microswitches, however the keys themselves are upright posts that resemble the original. An AZERTY layout may not have been present on the real Enigma machines, but lends a pleasing twist to the build.

It’s worth browsing all the pages for this build, as the front page does not necessarily capture the whole build. The rotors set this Enigma apart from many of the replicas we’ve featured in the past, so you may find it interesting to take a look and make a few comparisons.