You probably knows that bananas are an excellent source of potassium. It turns out they’re also an excellent source of wifi network credentials.
Reddit user and network administrator Sysvival wanted to come up with a better way to pass out WiFi passwords to visitors at his place of work. Apparently there are some people who care too much about security to leave them posted on a cork board or broadcast them on a video display like the Super Bowl and World Cup organizers did in 2014.
Like a lot of hotel chains do, Sysvival has a captive portal set up. He generated a pool of 5,000 passwords that were each good for 8 hours of access. They’re stored in a Raspberry Pi, and it’s connected to a Makey Makey board via a USB cable. One of the contacts on the Makey Makey is wired to a banana.
When a guest needs access to the WiFi network, all he or she has to do is touch the banana and the display mounted to the back of the Raspberry Pi spits out a password. When contact is made, the capacitance of the banana drops. The Makey Makey interprets that drop as the press of a key and sends the signal to the Pi that it needs to hand out a voucher.
It’s a whole lot more fun than the system he was asked to create — one that relied upon a spreadsheet — would’ve been. He’s also quite keen to see how guests react once the banana has gone brown andDrosophila melanogaster start buzzing around it.
