Brute Force Auto Dialer

[williamjcoates]

Hi all,
Haven't posted here in awhile but I'm still plugging away at learning to manipulate safe locks. I have a number of mounted S&G practice locks ranging from the 6700 3 wheel(group 2) variety up to a chubb 4 wheel vault lock(group 1). To help in this endeavor I built a rig using a rotary encoder that can be mounted to the safe dial, which accurately measures the contact point distance. I should point out that the arduino coding used in this project would not have been possible if it weren't for the help of another member on this forum "jaakko Fagerlund" whose knowledge and patience with my many questions made it all possible.


This works great on most locks but a bit iffy on the group 1 lock which has a very mushy contact points.
My next project will be to put together an autodialer run by an arduino program. My first question among many would be to figure out the approx size of stepper motor Does anyone have experience with this?
Bill

[S&G]

Which encoder (part#) did you choose, and what's it's resolution.

[Papa Gleb]

Amazing work. Thanks for posting. Any chance of a video showing the jig in action?

[GWiens2001]

Sweet. Going to have to chat with you sometime, as am getting into arduino, and would love to build something like this.

Gordon

[Josephus]

So simple. I love it. A DRO would really be an amazing help. Honestly I'd rather have a small, polished digital read out system than an autodialer, but there is a difference between fun and job efficiency.

[williamjcoates]

Which encoder (part#) did you choose, and what's it's resolution.

Hi, here is a rundown on what I used for this setup.
1024 ppr quadratic encoder
Arduino mega board
LCD keypad shield
Sd micro board.
Rotary encoder sketch uploaded to the Arduino board
With this setup I am able to record the lcp and rcp and the difference between the two to the onboard micro SD card in a txt file. I can then take the SD card and upload the file to my computer for later analysis. For field operation the unit is portable and will run off a 9v battery or plugin adapter. For me it can't be beat for visual marking of the contact point. The only fault being that you still have to feel for the contact point and then click the keypad on the shield to record the contact point. A problem if the points are mushy or you suck at it like me. It does take some of the guess work out visually.

[LocksportSouth]

That's very, very cool. I picked up an Arduino kit recently, would love to make something security or lock-picking related with it. What an awesome project, thanks for sharing!

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

Great work and nice to see it up and running Sure there is things to polish, but overall a success.

Think I'll have to dig out mine and polish it too to be something to sell, as it is now just a tool for me.

[williamjcoates]

Thanks for the comments guys. Glad you liked it. There are a couple of refinements I would like to incorporate into this design.
1. I want to use aluminum for the arms along with lockdown clips in place of the screws.
2. A thin collar that would fit over the knob, or use a magnet attached to the encoder rod which would stick to a metal disk taped to the dial top with two way tape. The idea is to center the rod and align it as best as possible with the know to reduce drag. Too much drag makes it difficult to accurately read soft contact points.
3. On the arduino board I would like to add a lcd screen and have the contact points plotted onto a graph as I enter them off the lcd keypad.
4. Finally i need to design a box to house the arduino setup. I think I will design something in CAD and then send it out to a 3d printer place to get it made up.

Hi Jaakko, Thanks again for all your help. Wouldn't have been possible without it. Did you ever get the code completed that would plot the wheels on the lcd screen. Would love to get a look at that.

Since you commented here, you know that my next endeavor is to make an auto dialer. You have any idea what the approx ft/lbs of torque would be required to turn a S&G vault lock with all 4 wheels picked up? I want to buy a stepper motor & driver. I figure I will hook up the motor + driver to my arduino board and start with some sample code to see how things work. I have sample code that was used for 3 number combination locks which would give me a good idea of how things work. Fabrication of the harness that will hold the stepper motor and connect to the safe will be done last. (its the easiest part for me to figure out)

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

Hi Jaakko, Thanks again for all your help. Wouldn't have been possible without it. Did you ever get the code completed that would plot the wheels on the lcd screen. Would love to get a look at that.

You are welcome. I have the PC software still unfinished, at the moment my system only gives out the encoder reading on a 7-segment as that is all I need to find the low spots and get the thing open. Haven't thus had any need for the graphs themselves, as this tool has been an extension for my eyesight so to speak and the rest is done in my head or some cryptic markings jotted down on paper

Should take the PC program under work and do some little modifications to the reader unit itself to get this on the market. Main goal is that it could be used stand-alone or with full graphics with a computer or similar.

Since you commented here, you know that my next endeavor is to make an auto dialer. You have any idea what the approx ft/lbs of torque would be required to turn a S&G vault lock with all 4 wheels picked up? I want to buy a stepper motor & driver. I figure I will hook up the motor + driver to my arduino board and start with some sample code to see how things work. I have sample code that was used for 3 number combination locks which would give me a good idea of how things work. Fabrication of the harness that will hold the stepper motor and connect to the safe will be done last. (its the easiest part for me to figure out)

Nope, I've been using just some 1.8-2 Nm motor and it works just fine. Basically you can get bigger than needed to have some reserve, as the stepper motor controllers current setting is what ultimately decides the available torque.

As a sidenote, was just a week ago at the first Disobey.fi hacker meeting (Finnish version of DEFCON), representing locksport stuff and had an expo version of my dialer with me. Works just fine, is fast as hell if needed and incorporates some very clever tricks to reduce the dialing time and to provide valuable options for the user. Should see the daylight in a few months too.

[williamjcoates]

Thanks for the info Jaakko. I can't wait to get this project off the ground. Should have known you would be ahead of the game and already have a autodialer up and running. I imagine you could knock off a lot of time in the process if you were able to make allowances for the certain exploits these locks have. Like the forbidden zone for example. I can't wait to see what you have come up with.

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

Thanks for the info Jaakko. I can't wait to get this project off the ground. Should have known you would be ahead of the game and already have a autodialer up and running. I imagine you could knock off a lot of time in the process if you were able to make allowances for the certain exploits these locks have. Like the forbidden zone for example. I can't wait to see what you have come up with.

This is an older video of the prototype test run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SpmBIgkdk

At the moment it looks like it takes about 16 hours to go through all the combinations on a standard S&G 3 wheel lock when jumping every other number. The whole thing is pretty much user configurable with all kinds of bells & whistles to get the lock open faster and to provide ease of use I'm expecting to see a finished code in a few months also with this one, after that I'll have to do final calculations for the price point and start selling them.

[williamjcoates]

hi all,
Haven't done too much with the brute force autodialer as I am still sourcing out a stepper motor to use, but I have been busy experimenting with the manipulation tool I described earlier in this thread. The following link shows it in action. http://imgur.com/a/prKRh
The first pic shows at startup. the second and third pics display the left and right contact points. The forth pic displays the contact point gap difference. the fifth pic displays the txt file that is created on the micro sd card. The sixth pic shows the contents of the txt file. The 7th pic displays the rotary encoder attached to the lock. The 8th pic shows a graph being generated via serial monitor/megunolink on my pc. although this final option works okay I am going to shortly add another lcd screen (3.5") to the arduino board which will plot in real time using the adafruit library. with this the unit will be portable and have the option to plot a graph in real time while still recording data on the sd card.

.... as for the graph ..... this was a quick test of the graphing option. it should be noted that there is a gate at 74

[escher7]

Jaako's video, especially the rear shots, is the best explanation I have seen of how an auto dialer (or for that matter, normal dialing) works. Fascinating for a novice like me, especially the repeated return to the contact points on the drive wheel.

[Anarchy_won]

there is some great work going on in here guys

I find is amazing that there is at least 4 different people working on the exact same projects....
we should start a github for those that want to share what they are working on. (or start a new sub forum)

here is what I am working with