We’re long overdue for an update! First of all, thanks to all our backers for their support - open projects like CrypTech can’t succeed without grassroots support. It has been awhile since we premiered the alpha board at our Berlin workshop, where many of you picked up your orders in person. Here are some pics of the first batch.

The combination of the surprising (at least to us) number of people who purchasing the alpha board and the unexpectedly low yield of working boards from the manufacturer (about 70%) means we have had to order another run from the manufacturer. The next batch will be ready by mid-November and we expect all outstanding and new orders to ship by November 21. When your order ships, you will receive a shipping confirmation email from Crowd Supply containing a tracking number. If you need to update your shipping address, you can do so through your Crowd Supply account. We apologize for the delay!

Of course, we’re working with our manufacturer to track down the exact problem causing the low yield. We suspect it’s related to soldering of the FPGA (huge chip - lots of pins). Our manufacturer is busy X-raying the board to figure out how to fine-tune the production setup to increase the yield.

Meanwhile in software land the team is busy improving the firmware and we’ll cover that in more depth in future updates.