Firmware Ideas, Thoughts?

[drew.baker]

Received my 2 pack last week.  Looks Beautiful. Always had a soft spot for the Enigma. In 2014 an intern at the NSA booth let me open up the one they had on display and poke around.  At least till his boss saw and nearly crapped his pants. 

I was curious if the firmware could have a "DEMO" mode.  HOLD down D or something when powering on.

Store a file with a list of messages.  Then cycle through the characters lighting up and rotating rotors at 1 second intervals.  Giving a nice background effect to look at.

Possibly also a USB to USB link, allowing for communication between two units.  Maybe a mod for a radio module or bt?

Love it. Great work.   

--

Drew Baker (aka. Dotel)    
R1(III,20),R2(IV,6),R3(I,10),PB1(VF),PB2(PQ)
OMIQK IGBRM AYGEK YKDYN T
[I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code]
[The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.....and GRUE'S]

[jue...@e-basteln.de]

Hi Drew,

Many thanks for the kind feedback, and I am glad you are enjoying your Enigma touch!

I like the "demo mode" idea. In fact we started discussions about a "museum mode" for interactive, non-supervised use in an exhibition -- and besides some restrictions in changing the machine configuration, it should probably also get an "attract mode" which it auto-activates after a certain inactivity period. So why not allow the attract mode to be activated b right away via a special keypress? I will put that on the to-do list!

A direct Enigma-to-Enigma connection via USB is unfortunately not feasible because the STM32F373 microcontroller can only act as a USB device, not as a USB host -- and you always need one device and one host to establish a USB connection. But I am currently working on an upgraded firmware which makes the Enigma/PC connection bi-directional, so you can send text from a terminal window on the PC and receive the enciphered text back. (There will also be a "crypto keyboard" mode where the Enigma appears as a keyboard rather than a serial device. That lets you type encrypted text directly into any application on the PC.)

There is also the provision for an "expansion port" on the Enigma touch; a fast serial connection. That port is loosely earmarked for an ESP32 which would give the Enigma touch Bluetooth and/or WiFi capability, including the possibility to connect two units point-to-point. We have not really thought the user interface for this through, and I am a bit torn whether it is desirable functionality: The real Enigma was not a transceiver, and the typing in the text and reading the result off the lamp field is pretty central to its user experience. So, would a direct connection between two machines feel "right"?

Best regards,

Jürgen

[Jeff Spears]

I have not made USB work yet. FreeBSD is great--but somethings take time.

All the old war pictures show at least two people around the Enigma machine: One runs the machine and the other writes down the results. So far I have a hard time 'enlisting' anybody to copy the results. It's hard having so many letters flying through my brain. So I am thinking let the computer be the second person--the one writing down the results. 

It has always been an offline crypto device. However, it may be fun to type some text on the keyboard, send it to the Enigma and watch (and hear) it crunch and then see the results on the screen. It can always be used as an offline crypto device just by unplugging the USB.

Thank you CEDS, Jose, Juergen, Oscar and everybody else--this thing is really great! I ordered it last Monday and it arrived Thursday!

If I were smart enough, I would program my PIDP-10/ITS to run BOMBE. :-)

ok...Jeff