Hardware robustness

Nitrokeys
1

The USB connector just broke off of my CryptoStick. It looks as though it was only held on by the soldered leads themselves, which isn’t a very robust or reliable way to hold together a USB dongle (or any electronic device). It’s more common, and a lot stronger, to form the USB connector from the PCB of the device itself, and mount the shield wrapped around the “tongue” of PCB.

Before that, the little snap-on door on top of the case fell off.

Losing a crypto key can be a pretty serious pain in the butt, so I believe these devices should be robust. I, for one, would pay more for that, but in this case I don’t think that’s necessary.

Whoever’s making these for you may be able to help you with a stronger design, and it may actually be cheaper to build. I know the volume is probably tiny, but if you’re going to do it at all, might as well do it right…

2

Thanks for the feedback. We would love to have a device made of one piece but for our small quantities, such manufacturing processes are hardly available and affordable. In general the small quantity is one of our biggest challenges. For instance a casing is simple and cheap for large quantities but difficult and expensive for our small quantities. So we are working to continously improve the casing and robustness of the device while keeping it affordable for small quantities.