Well i now am the proud owner of about 65kg of old keys after a large customer changed their key holding and logging pollicy, these are all obsolete keys and if i could get a good optical reader which would decode the bittings and keyway (silca do one i think) i could decode them all in a week or so. Im in the proces at the moment of sorting the junk from the good stuff eg keys with no codes non original etc onto rings in order of code number.
Since i already know the keyway i wonder if its possible to convert an old key cutting machine to do this by using an arduino or simmilar which could send the data to a spreadsheet.
If that can be done then further conversion of the machine should alow it to repeat the code and cut a key.
I know i am probably over simplifying this ( im no software engineer) but if i took an old semi automatic machine for example and added a few linnear encoders, stepper motors and motor controller and then conected them to an arduino which is then connected to a cheap tablet all in a neat box on top of the machine which is then connected through the web to an online database so that everybody can access not only the key data but all software and plans to build the machine.
Every time i cut a key that has a factory code on it i simply enter the code and keyway etc duplicate the key manually or automaticaly wheather its listed or not and when the process is over the info is uploaded and added to the list this info could then be checked against other simmilar entrys to achieve the best code. There could be a way of rating the quallity of the info for example if i have to do a key to code from the database that doesnt work i could decode the bad key and upload the info with a flag or something like that. So how do you get people to do that ? well you could restrict access slightly to more common series of low security keys etc and increase access or functionality based on upload activity.
