The Banu Lockbox at EQNXSC 2952

The Banu Lockbox!

Oh boy... what a challenge this box was! At the EQNXSC 2952 event, we only had two citizens that beat the box! ... ok, there was a third, but they cheated, more on that later ;p Not only solving it, but building it was a huge challenge and wouldn't have been possible without @Progenitus, @Morigan, @HorribleTomato, @Darjanator, @th3st0rmtr00p3r and @vmxeo!

Building the Box

The box itself consists of 6 panels, 24 wedges, 24 capacitive touch panels and 1 cube with a removable side. Inside the box you'll find 66 RGBW LEDs, an ESP32, 2x MPR121s, an MPU6050, a battery pack and so many wires.

Each of the six panels have semi-opaque filament to diffuse the LEDs, and slots for the touch panels which are printed using a conductive filament bonded to wires then glued into place. @Progenitus handled the 3d printing and painting of the box and it turned out awesome! Honestly, pictures really don't do this thing justice--it looks even better in person.

The electronics give us full control of all the lights (4 per touch panel and 7 center lights per panel), the gryo/accelerometer for orientation tracking, the touch inputs, and the controller for "unlocking" the box. We've also got bluetooth and WiFi so we can stream out the current state of the box and watch it in real time from our phone/computer, because why not?

Unlocking the Box

The box was a challenge at EQNXSC to win prizes, the main prize being an in-game Banu Lockbox! Solving the box goes a bit like this:

Starts in a "sleep" stage, pulsing blue and white light. Touching the box moves into stage 1 For each of the 5 stages, you have to figure out which side of the box to enter the code, and which colors on that side of the box made up the code Holding the right "buttons" for 1 second would cause the box to flash and move to the next stage After the final stage the box "unlocks" and go into a rainbow mode If the current stage is not solved within a 30s timeout, it goes back to sleep and locks out any input for 15 seconds

At each stage, each panel would shift to different colors, so you really had to figure out the riddles in advance and be ready to re-orient the box and enter the code before the timeout.

Here's a quick video of unlocking the box.

Hackers

@JaytheBrown figured out that if you tapped all four buttons at the same time on a side repeatedly it could trigger the unlock code, so you just had to try all the sides before the stage timer ran out. Well done Jay! He got a "I beat the box!" button ;p I made a some quick code changes which stomped out that bug.

Lore and The Riddles

The riddles were posted on a website for the event which you can find on archive.org. We also had some great fun creating a machinima of how "Morigan and ventorvar found the box". The riddles require a bit of in-game knowledge and were an "intercepted transmission" that @Morigan and @ventorvar picked up between two Banu Defenders before they pirated on of the defenders to get the box.

The Next Box

There are a ton of additional plans for the box, but as always, you get done what you can in the time you have. Box 2.0 box will have:

Electronic latches so the box will actually open when unlocked Custom PCBs instead of wiring A lot more space inside to actually store something Wireless charging and a stand so we can use it as a lamp More complex/combination options

Closing

Thanks to everyone that came out to EQNXSC and tried the box challenge! It was super awesome to see everyone's reactions and get their feedback on the box. We're going to build a few more because we just have to, so maybe you'll catch us at the next event!