Show HN: A working 3D model of an Enigma machine

pprimitivesuave about 12 hours ago 18 commentsRead Article on enigma.design

ZH version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

I watched the excellent Veritasium video [1] on the Enigma machine, and watched the full animation by Jared Owen [2], but was still a bit confused on how the inner mechanics of an Enigma machine work. I used Astra to build out the inner components through a combination of reference images, writing out hundreds of extremely detailed prompts, and building my own inspection tools to ensure that every part is sized and positioned in a historically accurate way.

It's still a work in progress, but would love any feedback on the experience so far!

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybkkiGtJmkM

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Discussion (18 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

adityamishra241•about 1 hour ago

This is really cool. The attention to detail on the internal mechanics is impressive, especially the inspection tools you built. Looking forward to seeing where you take it!

primitivesuave•25 minutes ago

Thank you! My dream is to have a working Bombe [1] which can decrypt the Enigma traffic in your browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

ted_dunning•about 4 hours ago

It would be nice to be able to back up in the sequence. There were a few times where I realized I had not fully understood a previous step and would have like to be able to review some previous steps.

Otherwise this is completely excellent!

primitivesuave•about 1 hour ago

Thank you for the suggestion and the kind words! Completely agree that the navigation is a bit unintuitive, will work on fixing that tonight :)

kingkemol888•17 minutes ago

good jobs！

anonydsfsfs•about 4 hours ago

I love the presentation! Would you mind sharing the source code?

primitivesuave•about 1 hour ago

Thank you for the kind words! As mentioned in the other comment below, I'll open-source it very soon and update the site with a GitHub link.

soltanov•about 2 hours ago

+1. source code will be useful for educational purposes.

primitivesuave•about 1 hour ago

I will open-source it very soon! I was a bit nervous about putting it out there before I'm sure that the machines are absolutely accurate, especially the more niche ones where I had to make some inferences about the wiring. Will add the GitHub link to the site when I've had a chance to review everything for accuracy, and will probably end up moving some of my "educated guesses" off the main branch.

tonymet•about 1 hour ago

typical freeloading entitlement. It's his project, and he can share whatever he likes.

krapp•about 1 hour ago

The purpose of Show HN is to share and discuss code, not to advertise products. That isn't freeloading entitlement, it's the point of being here.

psolidgold•about 5 hours ago

Seems pretty cool but unfortunately the poor performance on mobile (Chrome 154 and Android 17) makes it unusable for me. I'll have to check it out on desktop.

primitivesuave•about 1 hour ago

Thank you for the tip about mobile performance, my apologies for neglecting it and I'm working on fixing it right now!

psolidgold•about 1 hour ago

No need to apologize. Hit me up when you work out the kinks and I'll give it a go again.