Keypad Colour

There are 10 colours available on the keypad for the user to select. Each of the colour is associated with a specific value from 1 -10 as shown in the table 4.2.

Based on the observation done, most users tend to treat the light blue and blue colour and light green and yellow colour as the same colour. The process started with the introduction of the colour keypad to the user. The user was required to calculate the total number of the colour on the keypad which each button colour is changing randomly. The majority mentioned that there are only 7, 8 or 9 colours in total. But after the colour chart is exposed to them, they managed to differentiate all the ten colours correctly even without a second look on the chart. This had proved that the 10 created colours are valid to be used as the user password. Another observation ABOUT as displayed on Figure 4.2a. The function of each option was explained in the algorithm part in previous chapter. There are three options of account and a back option appeared after the LOGIN or CHANGE PASSWORD is chosen. This page is shown on the Figure 4.2 b). The user can either went back to the main menu by choosing “Back” option or proceed to code inserting process by selecting one of the accounts. The keypad buttons are set with random colour during the code inserting process. The buttons’ colour will only alter in two conditions which are when one of the buttons is pressed or after the certain idle period. If a button were pressed, the display will show the ‘*’ to indicate that the code had entered. The condition is illustrated in the Figure 4.2c.

There is a difference between the LOGIN and CHANGE PASSWORD after the right code is inserted. For the LOGIN option: after 3 codes were inserted, the lock system will carry on with locking process (Figure 4.2e) and the keypad will blink in green if the right code had verified. Or else, the lock system will indicate wrong input (Figure 4.2d) and prompt user to insert the code again. If the user still failed to insert the right code for the 2 remaining attempts, the screen will exhibit the bad input symbol and user is required to wait for certain period before moving back to the previous menu page. At the meantime, the keypad will blink in red colour. The whole LOGIN process is shown in Video 1 in the DVD.

For the CHANGE PASSWORD option, after the correct code verification, the system will ask the user to enter their new password. After 3 colour codes are set, the second times entry is required as the confirmation process. The new colour code will only set after the confirmation process and the display is shown as Figure 4.2f.

If the wrong code is inserted during the process, the display will show the bad input which is the same result for the LOGIN option. This process is demonstrated in Video 2 in the DVD.

The LOCKING option is selected when the user wish to close back the unlocked system or to change the difficulty mode as illustrated in the algorithm part in Chapter 3. The Figure 4.2h exhibits the locking process for the “hard” mode.

There is no alphabet ‘H’ in the direct mode. The user is required to press directly the colour sequence the same as the original code in the direct mode. For the “hard”

mode, there will be a random number shown during the code inserting process. When the number appeared, it implied that the system is in the “hard” mode. In order to unlock the system, the shown number needs to be added into the real code. For example, let the real code is purple-green-blue (3, 6, 7) and the given random number is 5. So, the colour code that the user needs to be inserted is light green-white-yellow (8, 1, 2). This is calculated by adding the random number into the real code which is equal to 8, 11 and 12 respectively. For the double digit result, only the second number is considered where 12 will become 2 for this case. Video 3, 4 and 5 in DVD indicates the LOCKING process, the mode changing and the login with hard mode respectively.

The ABOUT option is applied to reset all the settings especially the code into the default settings as illustrated in the table 4.1. The default codes for the lecturer, stuff and class representative are red-green-blue, light green-light blue-white and yellow-purple-pink respectively. Upon entered in this option, all the codes are set to this default value as shown in Video 6 in DVD.

a) b) c) d)

e) f) g) h) Figure 4.2 : a) 1^st page of menu

b) Accounts for LOGIN and CHANGE PASSWORD c) Code inserting process

d) Wrong code e) Unlocking process f) New code set g) Reset

h) Locking process

Table 4.1: Default code settings for each account

Table 4.2: Colour Chart

4.2 Discussion

There are several problems encountered during this project and most of them were solved by using alternative method and applying some modification. Several solved problems are discussed in this section, such as, the control of the RGB LED independently, the number of available colours for the button, true random number, multiple jumper wire on the board, and the brightness problem of the keypad.