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

47 points by primitivesuave 11 hours ago | 14 comments

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

adityamishra241 2 minutes 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!

ted_dunning 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 13 minutes 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 :)

anonydsfsfs 4 hours ago

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

primitivesuave 12 minutes 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 22 minutes ago

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

primitivesuave 15 minutes 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 20 minutes ago

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

krapp 18 minutes 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.

tonymet 14 minutes ago

That's a misleading narrowing of the topic. It's a show and tell. Code, hobby, product, whatever the person wants.

krapp 4 minutes ago

The guidelines demonstrate that it isn't merely show and tell: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

    On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, you can post a video or detailed article. For books, a sample chapter is ok.
    Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.
    The project should be non-trivial. Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now. Share something that is deeply personal and interesting to you.
    Explain how and why.

Also see dang's comments on the validity of various submissions:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

And in particular this comment that touches on AI submissions in particular (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118727) from which I provide an excerpt:

    In software it's fascinating how configuration management (that boringest of all phrases) is becoming the hard part. How do you share and version the source? 
    What even is the source? Is it the prompts? That's where the OP heads at the end: "share it somewhere — or, better yet, just a screenshot and the prompts you 
    used to make it." But when I floated a couple trial balloons about whether we might use this for Show HN—i.e., don't just share the code you generated, 
    because that's not the source anymore; instead share the prompts—we got a lot of pushback from knowledgeable people 
    (summarized here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47213630).

The topic is supposed to be narrow. It's supposed to be more than just show and tell, and definitely not "whatever the person wants."

psolidgold 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 19 minutes ago

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

psolidgold 13 minutes ago

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