You know those fictional high-tech safe cracking devices you see in movies? Well, here’s one in real life. Yes. What you see here is a safe cracking robot made by the team over at SparkFun Electronics. The story went that Seidle’s wife picked up a safe without a combination as his Christmas gift and challenge him to open it. Open it he sure did, but being the founder of the SparkFun, he did not crack it spending hours to ’feeling’ the safe with a stethoscope; instead Seidle with partners-in-crime Rob Reynolds and Joel Bartlett devised a robot that will do the job on his behalf.
The result is a 200 dollars device composed of Arduino board, a motor, an aluminum frame, 3D printed components, and some magnets and sensors, that managed to crack open the safe in under an hour. While we marvel at the feat, the real take away of this revelation is a grim reminder of what technology is capable of even in the hands everyday geeks, and with the ‘tools’ becoming more accessible and the continue advancement of technology, it is just a matter of time that almost any geek will have the potential crack a safe with relative ease.
In any case, Seidle has brought this revelation and demoed it at the Defcon cybersecurity conference to highlight the vulnerabilities of this relatively affordable and popular safe. Skip ahead for the demo given by Seidle to Wired. Also, you may be interested in the video of the first crack by the robot, recorded live in a live stream broadcasted by SparkFun earlier in the year. For the impatience, you may want to skip to 45.20 (the second video) to witness the monumental unlocking.
P.S. If you are interested in giving it a go, SparkFun has a tutorial on building a safe cracking robot which you can find HERE.
Images: SparkFun Electronics.
via Wired.
