April 26, 2012
So I’ve started in on my first Arduino project – an automatic combination lock opener. It’ll automatically turn and guess the combination for a Master lock like this. It’ll have a screen to display its current combination attempt, and will spin the dial itself. I thought for a while about it, and I think I have some really neat ideas to make it more interesting:
- An optimization can be made by taking advantage of the lock’s imperfect positioning, and instead of trying every number, trying every other number first.
- Based on where 1 spin ends, you can make the next move you choose to make start close to the end position of your last move.
- The last turn, you can spin the lock and continually attempt opening, without re-trying the combinations.
So, my hopes are that with these optimizations, I can go from:
- 1st dial – 40 possibilities
- 2nd dial – 40 possibilities
- 3rd dial – 40 possibilities
- 40 * 40 * 40 = 64000 combinations
To:
- 1st dial – 20 possibilities
- 2nd dial – 20 possibilities
- 3rd dial – spinning as I go
- 20 * 20 * 1 = 400 combinations
I’ll post here updates as I have them, and hopefully soon we’ll have a cool combination lock unlocker.
