Master Keying schemes

[acedrew]

Hi, I'm new here.
I recently picked up lock-screwing-with as part of my responsibilities as a building manager.
I bought a few key dupe machines, some depth & space keys and a pin kit, and have been having fun keying all the locks for the building.
I live in the building so I decided I wanted to master key my office, loft, workshop, and various storage areas, to eliminate some keys from my ring. Being only about 6 locks and the maximum keys needed on 1 lock was 3, it was a pretty simple scheme. However it got me interested in master keying schemas.

SOOO I built a schema generator. It's a little ugly, but it works, right now it will generate (from a master you specify) (n) group masters with (n) sub keys for each group. It will generate most key types, although some of the parameters are hard coded at this time.

Right now it is hosted as a Google App Engine app, you can access it here:
http://pymasterkey.appspot.com
By default it generates 10 groups with 10 group masters, for a total of 110 keys based on a master key code of 555555, it also generates codes 0-9, as most of my locks are SC4, that is what I mess with most of the time.
Here is another example:
"http://pymasterkey.appspot.com?code=053525&groups=7&keys=5&type=6"

This would generate 7 groups of 5 keys each, with a type of 6, meaning that each pin can be a value of 0-5 with a master key of 053525
One of the parameters that is not currently editable, but is included in the application, it maximum adjacent cut difference, it is hard coded at 5. This means that a 0 next to a 5 is ok, but a 0 next to a 6 is not. Also, it is set to generate no more than 2 identical adjacent pins, meaning that 567740 is a valid code, but 577740 is not.


If anyone wants to see the source, the code is available here:
http://code.google.com/p/pymasterkey/

Let me know what you think.

[Solomon]

I only know the basics of master keying, but I see what you did and to me it looks very useful. This is one kick ass first post... welcome to the forum.

[acedrew]

@Solomon
Well, I kinda thought I did a good job, but I also knew the OSS developers at code.google.com weren't exactly the target audience, so I thought I would take it to some of the forums that proved helpful when I was learning the basics...

[whizdumb]

I don't know if this is the right sub-forum to ask in.. Maybe try the pro locksmith area of KP. But good luck with your endeavor.

[acedrew]

I don't know if this is the right sub-forum to ask in.. Maybe try the pro locksmith area of KP. But good luck with your endeavor.

I'm sorry, perhaps I worded that wrong, I'm simply offering this as a resource. It's not really a question. I could create a duplicate post in the other forum, but perhaps that would be against site rules?

Andrew

[whizdumb]

Nope.. My bad...I thought you were asking how to improve you code scheme generator.. I re-read it and yep this is basically a home brew reference. We don't usually get software solutions in the homebrew section, But i guess this could be considered a good tool to help people with problem solving their Master Key Solutions. Good work.

[acedrew]

It's all good, I do welcome feedback or added features, it really does everything I needed, (or didn't need but want)
This was kind of a trick project, my local locksmith wanted to charge $40 for a master scheme, while that's not an unreasonable request considering the software they have to purchase and such, for my simple scheme, I just didn't want to pay it. So the trick is that I wanted to learn python (programming language) and this is the project I used for that...

I'm just glad it works for my needs, one of the powerful features of Google App engine, is that I could have it store saved schemas using your google account login...
I doubt I'll ever flesh the project out that much, but if people use it, perhaps...

Andrew