It's hard to believe that it's been six months since I posted anything to the project page for my Five Finger Code Finder device.  I may have neglected the page but I haven't neglected the project.  I have been working on the project all this time and I now have a working device that proves the concept.  It can tap out the entire sequence to find any code in only 11 minutes, and on average will find a code and open a door in under 4 minutes.

My breadboard circuit wouldn't have survived a trip out to the garage so I rebuilt what I had with an Arduino Pro Mini and a better LCD, the ULN2003 driver and some push buttons for control, all on a perfboard.  I added a 7805 regulator circuit so I could power it, and mounted that to the clear plastic sheet I put the solenoids on. 

Then I found quite a few issues along the way that needed addressing.  Like the fact that even though the solenoids are rated at 12 volts, a couple rechargeable 9V batteries in series don't have the power to pound the solenoids hard enough or the capacity to run the machine for long.

After fixing these issues I have a robotic button pusher that works great.  I plan to make a few videos for my YouTube channel showing it working, how I came up with the concept and how these minimal length code sequences work, how I fixed the problems I encountered along the way, and maybe even what could be done to improve the design.

I will post those videos here, but I hope to also do longer form write ups on these points as well.  Many interesting things happened along the way developing this project.