Enigma-E |

An Electronic Variant |

Once you've seen a real Enigma in action, you're likely to be spoiled forever. At least, I was after visiting Bletchley Park in the summer of 2001. It triggered me to write the Enigma Simulator for RISC OS, which was the closest I could get to owning a real Enigma. After all, I'm a programmer... Marc Simons, who joined me on the trip to BP, is an electronics hardware designer and he immediately started thinking of an electronic variant of this fascinating little machine. Marc is the owner of a small design house called YiG Engineering. Imediately after the holidays he started looking for suitable components en within a few weeks he produced a circuit diagram of what would become the Electronic Enigma. A few weeks later he designed a professional PCD (Printed Circuit Board) and asked me to build it. And that's just the beginning of the story, as a whole bunch of software had to be written by Marc for the on-board micro controller, before the thing would produce any useful results. The result is a nice little gadget which behaves like a real Enigma and which even looks like a real Enigma. As the whole thing is build on a professional PCB, Marc started playing with the thought of making it available to a wider audience, perhaps as a DIY kit. We just had to find a name for it... After a few initial thoughts, we decided to call it the Enigma-E. After all, it is an Electronic variant and the letter E has never been used by the Germans to identify one of their models. Paul Reuvers, August 2003 The Enigma-E is now available as a DIY kit (read below).

First impressions |

The original Enigma machine is an electro-mechanical device. It uses a mechanical transport mechanism to rotate the wheels. In the electronic variant, the transport mechanism has been replaced by a micro controller and the wheels have been replaced by LED displays. The picture on the right shows a close-up of the keyboard and lamp panel. As you can see, small push buttons have been used for typing text and the lamps have been replaced by small low-power LEDs. |  |
Click for a larger image

Here is a close-up of the alpha-numerical LED displays that replace the wheels of the mechanical Enigma. The center of the image show the 4 LED displays that will show the current settings of the wheels. Small push buttons are present above and below each display, so that the initial position of the wheels (Grundstellung) can be set. Another button can be found at the far left of the image, which allows the Enigma to be setup. During setup, five small red LEDs will indicate what item is currently being changed. A more detailed image of the Enigma-E can be viewed in the the Enigma Simulator for RISC OS, by selecting the simulation E. |  |
Click for a larger image

The DIY kit |

The Enigma-E is now available as a DIY electronics kit. In order to build it, some knowledge of electronics and some experience with soldering is required. The DIY kit comes with a professional PCB, all electronic components and full instructions on how to build it. But there's more... Every DIY building kit, comes with a certificate and your own Enigma-E serial number, to prove that this is a genuine item. Real German wartime messages are shown in the manual, complete with their decrypts.

Links |

Enigma-E website More information about this fascinating building kit is available on the special Enigma-E website.

© Copyright Paul Reuvers. Last changed: Mon,20 Oct 2003.18:14:17