Multicolored Keyless Entry System

mollyhackit writes "Here's a how-to guide for building a keyless entry that uses color identification instead of numbers. All eight buttons are initially blue; as you press the individual buttons they change color. Cycle the colors to your particular pattern, and you're in. This lock obviously wasn't designed for high security use since anyone in the same room would be able to see you and your amazing technicolor dream lock's pattern; it's just a fun project and will keep the youngins out of your workshop (timer prevents brute forcing). The RGB buttons are monome clones from hobby shop Sparkfun."

This reminds me of those buttons on Star Trek

[Drinking Bleach]

(the original series, that is)

Would make kind of a fun retro-future thing.

Re:Amusing, but a problem for one in ten men?

[JPeMu]

I'm red-green colour blind.

Many of the PopCap games (and similar) I have played where colour is significant have overlays shown (as an option) which aid me just fine, and I'm sure a similar thing would work here, even though that's assuming that the original would be unusable by someone colour blind.

The one thing that really used to irritate me was Teletext (before it faded into obsolescence) - Being unable to tell the difference between Green and Yellow, and Cyan and White made for trying times, especially when some insensitive clod chose green and yellow as two of the "fastext" colours. Oh, and chose blue for the cyan option (which looks white to me!).

I have no problem wiring a plug; only occasional problems wiring more complex items (whereby I am forced to use direct lighting to make the colour distinctions); and no problem with traffic lights. Only where I must choose between two shades that differ by red hue alone (or near enough) do I have problems. I know that red-green colour blindness is not the only kind, but it often feels like colour blindness is not considered when designing new products/websites etc. and I find that disappointing for lack of such a simple consideration.

Task based locks

[sprintkayak]

I've always liked the idea of a task based lock.

Not necessarily more secure, though.

A few ideas:

• Play a tune on piano keys (sound off for more security).
• Non trivial math: how many people can integrate sec^3? How many B&E type criminals can?

Any other ideas?

Re:Amusing, but a problem for one in ten men?

[kennykb]

And (committing the sin of following up to myself), the designers of Epson projectors did not use similar care. For some years, the only status indication on the thing has been a single LED, which can be steady red Power off), flashing red (Powering down), steady green (Power on), flashing green (Powering up), or steady yellow (Lamp burnt out). I cannot for the life of me tell the colors apart, and I'm always doing things like powering down a projector that's just kicked into "power save" when I want to have it running.

Re:Amusing, but a problem for one in ten men?

[Drogo007]

Me and my brother both used to work for the same game studio, and he's also Red-Green colorblind.

Anytime the devs came up with color as a way of differentiating things, we'd drag my bother to the screen and have him test the interface. It was sad, almost to the point of being funny, just how long it took them to make a usable color scheme somtimes