I'm a relative beginner to electronics. I have a general understanding of electronics, I can solder, can do Kirchoff's Law, etc. But I don't have much practical experience with making circuits.
I'm also in the middle of planning to build a house, and I want there to be a really unique lock on the front door. I'm envisioning the lock as a hole with several electrodes in it. The "key" would be a random, non-uniform, irregularly shaped natural semiconductor (for example, a rock or gemstone or something) - something with non-uniform, frequency dependent capacitance and such. The negative electrodes would pump into the "key" a haphazard but consistent pattern of AC at different voltages and frequencies. The positive electrode would be connected to a circuit to measure the current returning through the "key". When programming the lock, the measured values would be recorded in nonvolatile memory. When testing the lock, the measured values would be compared to the recorded values, and if a match (within a reasonable tolerance), the lock would be toggled - locked if unlocked, unlocked if locked.
It doesn't *sound* like something that complicated, but I've never worked on such a project before and honestly don't know where I'd even start. Could you point me to a starting point for what sort of hardware I'd be looking at?
Thanks.
I'm also in the middle of planning to build a house, and I want there to be a really unique lock on the front door. I'm envisioning the lock as a hole with several electrodes in it. The "key" would be a random, non-uniform, irregularly shaped natural semiconductor (for example, a rock or gemstone or something) - something with non-uniform, frequency dependent capacitance and such. The negative electrodes would pump into the "key" a haphazard but consistent pattern of AC at different voltages and frequencies. The positive electrode would be connected to a circuit to measure the current returning through the "key". When programming the lock, the measured values would be recorded in nonvolatile memory. When testing the lock, the measured values would be compared to the recorded values, and if a match (within a reasonable tolerance), the lock would be toggled - locked if unlocked, unlocked if locked.
It doesn't *sound* like something that complicated, but I've never worked on such a project before and honestly don't know where I'd even start. Could you point me to a starting point for what sort of hardware I'd be looking at?
Thanks.