Enigma Touch - My Impressions

[AltairArchaeology]

Hey all! I received my Enigma Touch (cased) this past Monday, and I've had an absolute blast with it! This was an impulse purchase that I'm very happy I made. Although I have had it for only about a week, I've put in a lot of hours with it during that time (probably anywhere from 14-18 at this point, but I didn't count them!) and wanted to share my experience with it.

Buying - I happened to purchase this on Tindie on the 29th of April - the exact day that they were bought out by EETree LLC! José León from CEDS contacted me that very day with that news, and asked if I wanted to cancel the order on Tindie and buy straight from them to avoid an extended shipping time. I agreed, was quickly refunded, and had my new order in within about two hours after that initial email. I can't stress enough at how responsive this was, and how this is absolutely some of the best customer service I have experienced. 

Shipping - I received my Enigma Touch on the 4th of May, and couldn't wait to rush home from work to start using it! The case is very nice, but unfortunately one of the screws (bottom left) had stripped out the hole in the wood, and the upper right screw was loose (it would tighten down, but would never fully grip, so you could turn it forever). I'm not sure if this happened during production, or shipping, but it was an easy fix. I took a toothpick, placed it in each screw hole, cut it to size, and put some superglue around them. After drying, I rethreaded each screw. They all fit very snug now, and tighten quite well. Longer screws might have also solved this issue, but I used what I had lying around and found it fixed it better than I thought. 

Assembly - The 13 plugboard plugs arrive unassembled, but are cut to length. You just need to place each end inside one of the 26 provided plugs and tighten the screw. The screw is fairly small, and might be smaller than the type of flathead screwdriver that you'll normally find around the house. Assembly went pretty quick, but it would have been nice to know that this was a process (I didn't see anything about it in the user manual or on the website). The battery install was simple - I bought the battery recommended on the website, plugged it in, put on some double-sided tape, and voila. You could definitely fit a larger capacity battery in the case, but the 1100mAh gives approximately 20 hours of use, and I can't imagine someone needing to use it for longer than that between charges. 

Normal Use - The Enigma Touch is very easy to use, has bright lamps, gives off a very convincing and satisfying mechanical "chunk" sound with each key press, and is an absolute pleasure to employ. I've ran it with some generated codebooks, had fun with it at enigmadrops.weebly.com with decrypting questions, answering them, and the encrypting them as a post, and even successfully completing the first three messages from the Enigma Challenge (ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/challenge.htm). I love the keyboard function, and the serial port compatibility is also a very welcome addition to speed up the encrypting and decrypting process. While it is nice to see why the typical Enigma machine used two operators, sometimes you just want speed. 

While running Firmware 4.12, I did encounter a few problems, none of which I have been able to reproduce:

- In one case, the lights when illuminated would rhythmically flash instead of remaining steadily illuminated. This happened for about three key presses. I left the machine alone for a few seconds, and then it worked fine. 

- On occasion while typing, the Ring menu will activate. This has happened about three times. I just close it and continue.

- On one occasion, it seemed like the Enigma settings didn't take for a decryption process. I rotated a ring back and forth, exited the menu, and then it worked. I'm inclined to think that this was more likely user error rather than the fault of the machine, but it was the only time where I checked the settings and they all seemed to be "right." 

Serial Port Use - Running this with Tera Term was a snap! It is a lot of fun to be able to type a message and watch as the machine converts it from plain to ciphertext, or from ciphertext to plain. Turning on the morse code sound effects in FW 4.21 is very cool while running it in this manner! I also like the ease of programming - the manual is laid out very well and is quite clear about how to make adjustments. 

My recommended improvements:

- The quickstart guide is about one firmware version behind (the Norwegian model is missing, for example), and is just large enough to not fit into the case without having to fold it. If it was just a little smaller it would fit perfectly. 

- I would like to see an option for the keyboard mode to print either 5 OR 4 characters before each space. While it isn't hard to go back and do this manually for 4 characters for a Kriegsmarine message, it does take some time. 

- It would be nice to expand the customizable model to include four rotors. Granted, I don't know what the demand is for making fictional Enigmas with a custom wiring scheme, but still... 

Overall, this is one of the best purchases I have made, and has given me far more enjoyment and hours of entertainment than I thought possible! 

[Jürgen]

Many thanks for your detailed feedback! Some excellent points and suggestions which we will take on board. 

Regarding your suggestions:

• Excellent point about the quick guide card. It was designed to match the size of the framed Enigma touch, but that variant has some extra width due to its frame. The card should really fit inside the wooden case! And as you noted, it's due for an update anyway.
  
  
• I had been dithering whether to include 4- and 5-character group options for keyboard mode. It felt like 2*3 different keyboard settings (for the language options and group lengths) were a bit much -- we are reaching the limits of the "select options via the rotors" UI paradigm there with 10+ options to scroll through... But if people think it's useful, I can certainly implement it. The biggest hurdle is probably to fit the language designations plus the 4/5 digit into the small icon. ;-)
  
  
• Hmm -- I actually don't recall why I excluded support for the fourth rotor in custom Enigma definitions. It was related to UI consistency issues rather than technical difficulty, I believe. Let me revisit that!

Regarding your firmware observations:

• If the flashing lights you observed were flickering pretty quickly, that is supposed to be a feature. ;-) The flickering indicates low battery voltage. Any chance that this happened after the battery was just installed and not charged yet, or after extended use?
  
  
• The spurious activation of the Ring button is an unfortunate effect of the limited hardware resources of the STM32 processor, in particular the number of capacitive inputs. Most keys are scanned in a matrix arrangement, where two electrode segments get activated by each key press. But to make ends meet with the available inputs, the mode buttons as well as 'A' and 'S' on the alpha keyboard use only a single electrode, i.e. a columns signal without  row signal. If you hit one of the regular matrix keys on its right side, it may activate that single electrode only and be misinterpreted as one of the single-electrode keys. I have tried to minimize the likelihood of this by tweaking the detection thresholds in firmware, but can't fully rule it out.
  
  
• The "settings didn't take" issue is a new one for me; I don't think anyone else has reported it. The settings that are displayed on the rotors in setup mode should always be in sync with what is used in encryption/decryption. Maybe some very specific sequence of operating steps can cause a mismatch? If you happen across the issue again and can describe the steps that got you there, that would be much appreciated!

Oscar or José might comment directly on the shipping and assembly aspects. But in any case I will discuss with them!

Best regards, and enjoy your new toy!
Jürgen

[Gilles Kohl]

Allow me to join in as another "happy Camper" (happy Crypter?) who got his boxed Enigma Touch last week. It was an impulse buy as soon as I saw the short video from German publisher Heise, their very positive article in c't 10/26 confirmed the choice while waiting for the device to make it over the pond.

Buying and shipping were smooth sailing all the way through, and the box build as well as the software excel in polish and attention to detail.

Completion of the 13 plugboard plugs took a moment, but OTOH I preferred having the machine in hands a bit earlier rather than someone in Panama needing to complete that task before being able to ship it. Battery installation worked nicely using the recommended Amazon link for the battery and a Tesa Powerstrip to fix it to the board.

I've recently updated to version 4.21 of the firmware after discovering its existence here - didn't encounter any problems with neither 4.12 nor the 4.21 beta.

I would second AltairArchaeology's comment about the quickstart guide being just a little too large to fit into the box, surprised me too.

A small snag I encountered myself when playing with historical examples from some of the web sites listed in the manual was that to be able to issue the serial !PB command, all physical plugs must be removed - I'd rather keep them plugged in, if only for aesthetic reasons.

I think understand the conflict but thought I'd see if I could verify and scratch that itch myself, but I don't think the firmware is available e.g. on github?

[drew.baker]

Regarding the plugboard,  If you wish to have the physical look of the plugboard without using it (in a demo or display) you can create dummy plugs out of 4-5 of them and just screw in the wire without stripping them first. (or replace with rubber tube, etc).  

[Ronald Wells]

since the keyboard mode requires connecting to a console, would it make sense to add the 4 and 5 char group options to be only accessible via the console mode?

[Jürgen]

Thank you all for more nice words and good ideas!

Regarding the "virtual plugboard active while connections are plugged", my rationale was that it should always be possible to go back to using the Enigma touch "offline", without needing the USB cable to re-enable offline mode. So if you had set virtual plugboard connections, then get the Enigma touch out again a few days later without having a cable and computer around -- there needs to be a way to clear the virtual plugboard, and ideally one that "feels natural". Clearing the virtual connections as soon as a physical wire gets plugged seemed like a good way to achieve this. 

I am open for other suggestions, but we are running out of available rotors in Model setup mode... And I would like to avoid adding "secret key presses" on the alphabet keyboard to the setup mode, since there would be no visual clues in the UI at all. Any other ideas how the virtual plugboard could be cleared from the front panel?

I do like the idea of enabling 4 vs. 5 letter groups from the PC only, with the rationale that a USB cable and computer/mobile device will be needed anyway to use the functionality. On the other hand, a terminal program will not be needed to use keyboard mode -- hmm... I had been thinking of linking the group length to the selected Enigma model instead of making it user-selectable. But to my knowledge, there is no strict correlation; the M3 and M4 were used in nets where either 4 or 5 letter groups were written. Thoughts?

For any incremental changes to the firmware, I need to make up my mind what to do with beta firmware 4.21 and its impossible-to-reproduce glitch when resuming from screen saver mode. I will open a new thread with an informal poll...

Regards,

Jürgen   

 

[Ronald Wells]

ah, right. I forgot about exactly how the keyboard mode works.  I suppose you could support that specific serial mode command being entered in keyboard mode, but then things get a bit blurry between the two modes.

I think you're right about the UI getting pretty full as far as it goes with configurations.  Probably any "advanced" features should be moved to only be configurable in the serial mode when added.  Like for the plugboard, there could be an advance serial only mode option to set it so that the virtual plugboard is cleared only when someone changes the connections of the physical plugboard, rather than if any cable is plugged in.  That way you can leave the cables plugged in, configure the virtual plugboard and as long as you don't make a change to those physical cables the virtual plugboard is active.  I know this is more confusing, but since you'd have to purposely configure it like that in the serial mode it seems like it would be reasonable.

[AltairArchaeology]

Jürgen and all,

Thanks for the conversation thus far! Glad to see so many great members of this community!

For the flashing lights, I had the Enigma Touch plugged into my laptop via a USB hub. The hub is externally powered, but I assume that there was a spike in the power input, which caused a temporary power shortage. 

I have a LIPO battery installed and spent about 5 hours after install charging it from a portable power pack. To the best that I can tell, it is near a full charge based on how much I have it plugged into my laptop. 

Understood on the ring settings randomly selecting, and the explanation makes sense. It doesn't happen often, and when it does it isn't a big deal. I just noticed it based on how many hours I've put in using it already. 

Also understood on the "settings not taking," though I still think it is more than likely that it is operator error on my part. Reading a code book, and Enigma Analyzer for determining unknown settings, and setting the Enigma Touch

leaves a lot of room for error. :) 

[Gilles Kohl]

Re: how to clear the virtual plugboard - rons idea of clearing it upon change to the physical plugs is a good one, I think.

Another one might be to make the setting - which is "visible" only via terminal program AFAICT - ephemeral, keep it either only for the session (off/on clears it and re-reads the plugs) or even only as long as UART mode is active?

Permitting plugboard override only without physical plugs and resetting it when plugs are added is still the "least surprising" option though, so maybe this feature is one of the "a thousand no's" :-)

Re: setting letter group etc.

Maybe a change in the "Modell" settings operation could help gain more flexibility for settings:

- rotor 1 still simply changes the Enigma device
- rotor 2 shows what is being set
- rotor 3 shows the current setting (changes when rotor 2 changes)
- rotor 4 shows static information like battery status, charging, firmware version etc.

The following could e.g. be shown on rotors 2 and 3 (with suitable icons):

<light intensity> <1 to 5>
<Volume> <1 to 3>
<Sound type> <None | Keys | Morse | Both?>
<Log type> <Off | Serial cols | Serial rows | US | FR | DE >
<Log Columns> < 4 | 5 >   //  would be respected in both serial and keyboard modes

... with room for more.

Advantage: more settings can be added, more room for other stuff
Disadvantage: can't see all the settings at once any more.