With parts for the first prototypes already on order, it shouldn’t be too long before we get our first good look at this very unique historical recreation. The Z30 simulator looks like it will make a fantastic desk toy and a great way to help visualize how the full-scale Enigma machine worked. By modifying the work that was already done for full-scale Enigma simulation on the Arduino, it only took a few hours to design a custom PCB to hold an Arduino Nano, ten buttons with matching LEDs, and of course the hardware necessary for the iconic rotors along the top. Of course, does have some experience with such matters. But nobody even knew the Z30 existed until 2004, and even then, it wasn’t until 2015 that a surviving unit was actually discovered in Stockholm. While you can’t exactly order the standard Enigma from Digi-Key, there are at least enough surviving examples that they’ve been thoroughly documented. If all you needed to do was send off numerical codes, the Z30 was a (relatively) small and lightweight alternative for the full Enigma machine.Ĭreating an open source hardware simulator of the Z30 posses a rather unique challenge. Looking a bit like a mechanical calculator, it dropped the German QWERTZ keyboard, and instead had ten buttons and ten lights numbered 0 through 9. This “Baby Enigma” was intended for situations where only numerical data needed to be encoded. But did you know that there were actually several offshoots of the “standard” Enigma?įor their entry into the 2019 Hackaday Prize, is looking to shine a little light on one of these unusual variants, the Enigma Z30. This early electromechanical encryption device was used extensively by Nazi Germany to confound Allied attempts to eavesdrop on their communications, and the incredible effort put in by cryptologists such as Alan Turing to crack the coded messages it created before the end of the War has been the inspiration for several books and movies.
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