Crypto Stick 2 beta boards arrived

After nearly two years of ongoing development we are glad to present the first beta of the Crypto Stick 2 hardware boards (PCB). They just arrived and here is the first picture (in full article). You can see the main processor on the topside. Other than in the Crypto Stick 1 we changed to the Atmel's AT32UC3A processor primarily due to it's integrated AES encryption unit which results in high performance. On the bottomside is a combined socket which connects both the OpenPGP Card and a MicroSD flash card to store the (encrypted) data. The beauty is that because of this the Crypto Stick can easily equiped with varying storage capacity. We don't plan to expose the socket to users and will enclose and seal it in epoxyd and in the closed case. The reason is that the data stored on the MicroSD wouldn't be accessible without beeing inserted in the Crypto Stick together with the specific OpenPGP Card. Hence, we don't see any serious use case which would require replacing any of the cards. Also an enclosed case has advantages of higher security and longer lifespan. By the way, the new case will be a robust and elegant black metallic case (stay tuned for further communications). During the next weeks we will test the boards and update the hardware design accordingly. Subsequently we continue to work on the firmware which is current in a beta stage. It is still a few more months to go until we will eventually see a final Crypto Stick 2 for sale. We are glad to receive your feedback.