Computer generated picks HPC Comp-1 / Majestic HTPK36

[pickmonger]

The HPC Comp-1



Majestic HTPK36




My photoshop skills suck . It would be appreciated if someone who knows what they are doing could try to blow this image up into an useable template.

I am sure that many on LP101 would love functional templates of these picks.

According to HPC "The configurations of these picks were designed on a computer to conform to the greatest amount possible of 5 & 6-pin and disc tumbler curve configurations."

While HPC offers 8 profiles, the folks at Majestic offer 16 double ended computer generated picks, totaling 32 different profiles.

1) Any suggestions as to how one could develop an computer model to generate profiles for one's self ? I was invisioning customising sets for different models of locks.

2) Could someone please scan their Comp-1 and/or HTPK36 set so that it would be usefull as a template?

3) Does anyone know of a link to scanned images already posted somewhere? (lp101 or internet)

[pickmonger]

I noticed one interesting difference between HPC's and Majestic's computer generated pick profiles.

HPC's follows a curve (sinewave ?) where as Majestics are clearly a sawtooth pattern and, Majestic has choosen 32 profiles vs HPC's 8.

Can anyone suggest advantages or disadvantages of the 2 styles (sine vs sawtooth)?

Perhaps the most significant question I should ask is ..... Is there a relationship between how closely a homemade pick follows the pattern of the HPC Comp-1 and the success rate of using the homemade pick ?

[pickmonger]

Thank you to the person who sent me the link right here on lp101

Chucklz did a wonderful job with the comp-1 pick photos.







Finding a usefull search string that gives less than 100 hits to scan is not always the easyiest.

[raimundo]

calling them computer picks suggests to the naive that the data on all possible keyways and all standard pin lengths have somehow been reduced to these tryout styles, to fit all locks regardless of the shape of the keyway, the diameter of the plug, serrated, mushroom, spools,etc. I believe that I coud make designs equally valid with a sharpie marker. don't be fooled by the hype.

[NDE Manipulation]

calling them computer picks suggests to the naive that the data on all possible keyways and all standard pin lengths have somehow been reduced to these tryout styles, to fit all locks regardless of the shape of the keyway, the diameter of the plug, serrated, mushroom, spools,etc. I believe that I coud make designs equally valid with a sharpie marker. don't be fooled by the hype.

It might very well be hype on the part of HPC, from way back in the 80s I might add.

Let me approach this from a different way. It is quite possible that if you have the larger of the two Majestic sets, they have one small and one large - more profiles in the large set, obviously. That larger Majestic set along with the HPC Computer Generated set, you might very well, in THEORY ONLY, have a set of picks that would, again, theoretically, be capable of picking open any standard pin tumbler lock. Excluding things like Emhart and Medeco where the pins have to be rotated, etc. Just standard pin tumblers...

This is not going to be popular with people who are picking purists. I have two interests in this game.

1. Single Pin Picking (SPP)
2. Every other type of manipulation that does not involve bolt cutters, cut-off wheels and drills.

I'm not being facetious, that's my focus. I think SPP is the bedrock, the foundation, for being able to do anything in this game, including using pick guns to full advantage.

Getting back to these types of picks. They are much more than "profile" types of picks. They are rocker picks, one single pick in that HPC set can do many different things, straight in, angle up, angled down and the varying degrees of all of that combined would be thousands of combinations (key changes) for just one pick. If you had both of these sets of picks and you really knew what you were doing, again, theoretically speaking, you probably have every possible key change in every major pin tumbler lock that does not have rotating pin tumblers. I mean, you're talking about 5, 6 and 7 pin locks with between 5 and what? 12 or 15 pin lengths? Sure, it's in the tens or hundreds of millions but if you are talking about 50 picks or so that you can flip over some of them and have many more and the angles involved that is totally reliant on the operator...

It all has to do with the person manipulating the picks. Another thing to consider is the size of the HPC set, if they made a set that was smaller than that, they would be much better because when I had them, they simply would not fit in many common keyways.

I would really like to experiment with these more in the future and I regret selling off my old set at this point.

When you look at each of those picks, to put it in a nutshell, you are looking at a pick that has many different profiles because of either height that you lift the pick all the way to angling down or up, as I said before.

These might very well be the pickset to have for those that must have the ability to open locks but simply cannot SPP.

Just my opinion, it's all operator skill and theory.

[milligan]

I've got templates for all 3 sets of computer generated picks I'm going to be posting tonight. Just letting you all know...

[Romstar]

I'm too tired to be doing this today, but here it is in a nutshell.

The way the story goes is that all of the pinning data as well as the rules for proper pinning from all these different locks was entered into a computer.

Once you compare all the data, you discover that brand X is almost the same as brand K. After that, you start throwing out garbage combinations.

Some of them might be valid, such as 11211 or even straight cuts like 55555, 44444 or other idiocy.

That leaves you with a series of numerical combinations representing a variety of bittings. These are reduced to a set of combinations that adequately model 4-7 pin locks. You will notice that each pick is actually longer than the space required for 7 pins. This allows you to represent a very large cross section of these combinations.

As the previous poster has stated, as you rock the picks around, and move them in and out the profile presnted to the pins changes.

The overall result is that with practice you can simulate something close to 90% +/- of the given pin tumbler combinations from a huge variety of manufactures.

IF you know how to move them. These things really did take a lot of work to design when they were first made. I don't know how much effort went into the Majestic set, but the HPC set was quite impressive.

Romstar

[WhiteHat]

calling them computer picks suggests to the naive that the data on all possible keyways and all standard pin lengths have somehow been reduced to these tryout styles, to fit all locks regardless of the shape of the keyway, the diameter of the plug, serrated, mushroom, spools,etc. I believe that I coud make designs equally valid with a sharpie marker. don't be fooled by the hype.

I had assumed that the pin depths and MACS had been all thrown into a computation that produced the most common shapes probability wise which were then reproduced as picks. in fact noone told me that they hadn't done it that way so I went off to reproduce it myself

1) Any suggestions as to how one could develop an computer model to generate profiles for one's self ? I was invisioning customising sets for different models of locks.

yes - I started doing this already but it fell by the wayside because of other things I'm doing.

here are the steps that I believe are necessary, some of which I've completed

--------------
Step 1 - get pin spacing file
Gather most common non-rotating pin spacing information: http://www.dlaco.com/spacing/spacing.htm

and change it into a format usable by a computer program (some sort of delimited file) as I did here:
viewtopic.php?t=5240

Step 2 - Determine all possible bitings

numbering pins 1 through to 5 for this example:

here's the simultaneous equation that needs to happen:
[pin1] >= [pin2]-[macs] And <= [pin2]+[macs] And
[pin2] >= [pin1]-[macs] And >= [pin3]-[macs] And <= [pin1]+[macs] And <= [pin3]+[macs]
[pin3] >= [pin2]-[macs] And >= [pin4]-[macs] And <= [pin2]+[macs] And <= [pin4]+[macs]
[pin4] >= [pin3]-[macs] And >= [pin5]-[macs] And <= [pin3]+[macs] And <= [pin5]+[macs]
[pin5] >= [pin4]-[macs] And <= [pin4]+[macs]

example - formula for pin2: if pin 3 is depth 2 and pin 1 is depth 4 and macs is 5:
pin2range >= (2-5) And >= (4-5) And <= (2+5) And <= (4+5)
pin2range >= -3 And >= -1 And <= 7 And <= 9

so pin2 can be from depth 1 through to depth 7.

essentially, you create a cartesian join between all the possible depths to create all the possible distinct combinations.

applying this logic - there are 10,483 distinct bitings for a 5 pin kwikset lock with no MACS violations and 79,666 for schlage using that pin spacing file.

understand that? congrats.

Step3 - Determine Equivalence.

as romstar has stated previously - for the purposes of profile picks 11121 is exactly the same as 22232 is exactly the same as 33323 etc.

so we need to determine which bitings equal eachother and remove them.

since we're now getting into actual profiles - I figured that we can get into actual distances here so we can combine different brands of lock.

so in a 5 pin lock there are four distances - from pin 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, 3 to 4 and 4 to 5.

for each of the above combinations, get the equivalent distance
so for a kwikset biting 11121 here are the depths in fractions of an inch as per the spacing file:


1 = 0.329, 1 = 0.329,1 = 0.329, 2 = 0.306, 1 = 0.329

so the breaks between each pin = the difference in root depths between each pin.
so a kwikset biting 11121 =
0,0,0.023,-0.023

still with me?

ok - so basically this gives us distinct depth differences - thus reducing the actual possible "shapes" down to 70657 for schlage and 9967 for kwikset.

Step 4 - flip it! yeah!
ok - now we have all possible distinct shapes - we need to calculate which ones are the oposite of eachother:

e.g. 22232 flipped over is the same as 22212.

as I havn't actually got past this point yet I can't say for sure, but it would have something to do with flipping the signs of the bitings -
e.g. 0,0,0.023,-0.023 would equal 0,0,-0.023,0.023 etc.

will get onto this as soon as I get motivated but I suspect that it will reduce the profiles possible by a bit less than half. making approximately 35k profiles for schlage and 5k for kwikset.

step 5 - Elongate
figure out some way to add the most likely depths together to make the profile picks that are longer than 5 pins in order to add the most possible number of profiles into the least number of picks... this will further reduce the possible picks.

I haven't even thought about how to do this yet.

------------------------

ok - that's it - I've spent two hours writing this post - I believe it deserves a sticky....

I've been doing it in MS Access in order to better store all the data etc but others may do it another way.

I'd encourage people to check my calculations and tell me if I got something wrong. and I'd also encourage others to continue finishing this thing.

WhiteHat - out.

[WhiteHat]

edit: where I say "for the purposes of profile picks 11121 is exactly the same as 22232 is exactly the same as 33323 etc. "

that should be 33343 not 33323.. sorry

[WhiteHat]

oh - I forgot to mention - the above only takes care of vertical lifting - when the picks are longer as per the last step, there will be the possibility of horizontal sliding - further calculations should be able to reduce the shapes further by taking rocking (see-saw action) into account.
as you can see - it's not too hard to comprehend how all possible combinations can be covered by a small number of shapes.

[Chucklz]

Combining your data.

I would suggest that to combien your data to generate your picks, a Hidden Markov Model, or a Markov Chain may be useful. Goodgle reveals a ton on these topics, but most of the information is rather obfuscated. For those just interested in what im talking about.. not in actually coding... A markov model /markov chain would allow one to output the most probable combinations for a set of elements based on a "training set".

WH,

About your flipping problem: what about defining an artificial zero line through the approximate middle for each set of depths (if there is an even number of depths, pick one of the two "middle" depths as your zero). Then generate data as a measurement +/- or 0 in mm/inches/furlongs from your zero. You could then determine the most probable "fuzzy" depths, ie +/- some fudge factor to account for the motion of the pick in the lock. Finding the flips should be as simple as a sign change.

Considering that the pick as a derivation from the artificial zero line, an up down rocking motion can be seen as a slight rotation of the zero line around one point in the line. Because the rotation is so slight, we can probably safely assume this to be a see-saw like tipping of the zero line, limited by the keyway dimensions. Thus in general, the pick can make the greatest "adjustment" on the ends, while the depths in the center region of the pick are more limited.

Thus, the amount of fuzziness, or deviation, allowed in the pick needs to increase near the ends. By how much, or how to introduce this fuzziness into the markov model, well I need to think about that.

[WhiteHat]

About your flipping problem: what about defining an artificial zero line through the approximate middle for each set of depths (if there is an even number of depths, pick one of the two "middle" depths as your zero). Then generate data as a measurement +/- or 0 in mm/inches/furlongs from your zero. You could then determine the most probable "fuzzy" depths, ie +/- some fudge factor to account for the motion of the pick in the lock. Finding the flips should be as simple as a sign change.

yep - ok - for one - since it's been reduced down to actual fractions of an inch plus or minus from the previous "biting" on the pick, therefore as above a profile for 11121 would be:
baseline, baseline + 0,baseline +0,baseline +0.023,baseline +0
then all the possible data from all locks can be combined -

finding the flips is not a problem - just havn't got arround to trying it yet
my problem is the fudge factor that you mention.. - but if anyone can do it, you can chucklz!

[Chucklz]

I would think the fudge factor derives from the keyway vertical dimension, and how wide the pick is. My HPC's seem to be somewhere in the region of 3mm. Lets just say for the sake of argument that we could probably get 3 or 4 mm up and down on either side of our zero line. Then just make the fudge factor vary along a radius that goes from 4 on the ends to say 1 or 0.5 mm in the center. Of course you would needto consider a summed function that was more sigmoidially shaped, as rotating the pick handle down, would lower the end closest to you and raise the end farthest in the lock. It may also be useful to consier the two simple radius cases as well, as they may apply to some bittings.

[Romstar]

Well, thankfully somebody's been paying attention.

Also, we know there is something to the theory anyway. Because HPC's comp-u-[icks woork, and they work well.

Romstar

[NDE Manipulation]

R,

In your experience with them, what is the range of locks you have opened with them?

Thanks