Lava lamp random number generator made useful?

[James Cloos]

>>>>> "IanG" == IanG  <iang at systemics.com> writes:

IanG> Nope, sorry, didn't follow it.  What is BOM, SoC, A plug, gerber?

Bill Of Materials  -- cost of the raw hardware
System on (a) Chip -- microchip with CPU, RAM, FLASH, etc
USB A Plug         -- physical flat-four interface; think USB key drive
gerber             -- file format for hardware designs

A system-on-a-chip which has rng and usb-client hardware on board (aka
on chip) should fit in a package which looks just like a USB key drive.

The software load could make it look like any USB device, including a
USB storage device where every read produces blocks of entropy, as you
suggested.

A search for "site:linuxdevices.com SoC RNG USB" shows some useful
SoCs, such as:

  http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9265554097.html
  http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6958318931.html
  http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6020408561.html
  http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4943322251.html
  http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4469294424.html

There seems to be significant interest in the industry for SoCs for Point
of Sale smartcard readers which would also work for your proposed design.

You did suggest an open hardware design....


As for using a camera, shots with a lens cover on and with the gain
turned up (ie, tell people to set the camera to its highest ISO setting)
should maximize the recorded entropy w/o using their candids, eh?

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6

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