Decoduino - Decoder for the MCS

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

First off.. a big thank you to fgarci03 for helping on the electronics on this one and as a sounding board for some of the development ideas!!! Also, many thanks to Squelch for printing the Flex PCBs for me so i could etch them!

This is not a new idea, in fact about a month after i dreamt it up and started work, i got access to the adv area over on the other site and found that i wasn't as innovative as i first thought. I found that the words "Arduino" & "Magnetic Encoder" have appeared in several posts about this lock already. I guess i can claim to be the first to get off my ass and build one!!

So how zit work? Well its just a 10bit rotary magnetic encoder chip soldered to a flexible PCB. The arduino then takes this information, adds 180 degrees to the reading to figure out what the key magnet should be to move the rotor to that position. Then it converts the 10 bit number to a 3bit one and displays the answer… basically that just tells you which of the 8 possible positions the rotor is encoded to. Arduino + Decoder = "Decoduino"

I still have to package this up in a fancy case, but wanted to share the tool with you guys now… Ill have it finished in maybe 4 weeks and ill then post all the schematics and build instructions for it. It will be released under the "CC Share-alike Non-comercial" license for open source development. I really hope this inspires some of you to improve on it, adapt it for say a MIWA or maybe just have a go at building some tool you've dreamed up but never thought you could get working. 4 months ago i just about knew ohms law… now SPI, I2C and micro controllers are opening up some interesting ideas for projects for me. If a couple of 14 year old kids can win the Robotic Soccer world cup… this stuff really is childs play!!!

Enjoy!!!







and the stand alone PCB that will eventually drive it…..

[TheAdvancedNoob]

cool. Could an arduino be made to scan through a digital safe combo? Or would it get a few codes wrong and lock you out for a while?

[GWiens2001]

Hopefully, an MCS wil be going into the mail for me today. Once I play with it a little, will likely be sending it off for Snowyboy's loving work. This decoder would be fantastic to use with a cutaway lock.

Thank you for sharing this, lockcracker.

Gordon

[ARF-GEF]

Wow, wow, wow ! Congrats!

[LockManipulator]

WOW! That's pretty amazing! Great work you did there

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

So just a quick update.. now that I've received a few questions on how this picks….

Well it doesn't. You need to imagine that another tool is developed that is capable of picking the lock but has no idea what the magnetic bitting is. Then all that clever Austrian engineering is turned against its self. At the 3 o'clock position, the fingers of the sidebars will actually hold the rotors in the unlocked position and you can then use this tool to read 4 rotors in turn… flip it over and read out the other 4 on the opposite side. From there its a simple move to assemble a Make-up Key for the final humiliation of the lock

Hope that clears up some confusion So a note to all those others working on this lock…. keep going and good luck, i wanna see this thing slain in 2014!!!

@Daggers had some serious help from form my partner in crime fgarci03… It has been an experience learning how to make FPCs (flexible Printed Circuits) and honestly that was by far the hardest part.

There are some really cool Chip based sensors out there, it would be nice to see some other smart tools developed to help figure out whats going on inside different locks.

[LockManipulator]

@Daggers had some serious help from form my partner in crime fgarci03… It has been an experience learning how to make FPCs (flexible Printed Circuits) and honestly that was by far the hardest part.

There are some really cool Chip based sensors out there, it would be nice to see some other smart tools developed to help figure out whats going on inside different locks.

That stuff sounds so cool! I want to get into that but have no idea where to start. Electronics confuse me a lot lol but I'm hoping one day that'll change!

[Farmerfreak]

[mbpick34]

Nice work looks very interesting.

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Quick Update... ironed out all the bugs finally on the PCB and its now in a queue at the Fab. house, maybe 2 weeks to get them back

I made the first revision of the Metal Blade for the sense assembly.... still need to tweak the speeds and feeds a bit to get a better finish.





The blade does 3 things... obviously it acts as a support for the FPC, the notches in the side will align the sensor in the center of each rotor to get a correct reading.... The third reason is not so obvious but think about it... the Hall array in the chip is measuring a magnetic field, what you don't want is the opposite rotor in the keyway messing with the reading. This is 430 grade stainless and is magnetic, so it shields the sensor from the rotor under it!



It all takes a little longer than you expect... that key pin is from an American Lock, i hope you get some sort of scale now!!



It all goes together like this... the USB port doesn't do anything clever, it just runs a LiPo charge chip so you can recharge it from your Laptop/PC or Cell phone charger.... for those days that you have to pick 50 or so MCSs

[Presumedsublime]

That looks stunning! I doubt if I'll ever need one but I want one just by the looks of it. Great work!

[huxleypig]

Oh mate, this is very nice. I love it!

[Oldfast]

I've gotta say that this shit is above my head to where I can't truly appreciate it. But still..... WOW

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Sorry Oldfast, guess I've had my head buried in this project so long I've lost some perspective!!!

That little chip has some transistor type stuff in it arranged in a diamond... its called a "Hall Array" and what it does is sense what angle a magnetic field is. they use them in things like volume knobs in stereos that always keep turning and never stop! It just looks at the the face of a diametric magnet (with N/S poles across the face, rather than back and front) and figures out what angle its at. It a 10 bit sensor.. meaning is accurate to 2 to the power of 10 (binary talk) or 1024 different positions in 1 rotation. Basically it can sense the field to the nearest 1/3 of a degree. We don't need that accuracy, so we turn it in a 3 bit number.... 2 to power 3 happens to be 8 and thats exactly the number of different positions the rotors can have.

That Flexable circuit board was a nightmare to make but you just solder the chip onto it so it fits in the lock. The other board is bit more complicated but honestly... i just copied the schematic from a small arduino and then added on the schematic for a Lithium polymer charge that i found online. I didn't really invent any of it... kinda bolted what i found together.

Although i said i would open source the designs... I'm not sure how many other people will be crazy enough to have a go at building one

@Hux... Locks and CNC... it don't get much better

[elbowmacaroni]

This, is a completely awesome post of an equally awesome project! Thank you for sharing your progress on this project as it is really cool and is a hot topic lately (the MCS and ways to decode/map/crack/bypass/"pick"/etc...)

This deserves most assuredly to be sticky, and now it is!


-Elbow