A-ha, I knew there have to be lock nerds on Lemmy.

But yeah the basics are dead simple, you just need to have a light touch and listen to your fingers 😄

And so much of the stuff applies for the majority of lock mechanisms. A lot of it boils down to "apply tension, feel for pins / disks / sliders / wafers / whatever that don't want to move and then you make them move, while leaving the other pins / etc. alone. Repeat until done"

Right?!

The coolest one I have is probably this weird prototype lock called the RKS or "RoboKey System", which is sort of like a cross between a regular door lock (it's in an Abloy body) and a safe combination lock. The idea behind it was that you'd have a small portable device (only slightly larger than a key fob) that would be used to dial open the lock, and that device would be remotely programmable, meaning access could be granted and revoked remotely (you're just sending ). The prototype locks are cutaways so you can see what's going on inside, but the "real" ones would have been completely sealed. Basically they'd have lots of the pros of electronic locks but without having to have powered and/or complicated locks that are sensitive to environmental conditions, so they would have been great in challenging environments where you'd want the upsides of electronic locks but can't use the current ones (I think marine shipping was one thing they envisioned could benefit from them.) Unfortunately it didn't take off, so some hundreds of prototypes are all that exist. They still make them on occasion, purely for us lock nerds 😄