USB dongle uses FRAM for 200 years of data storage
Machdyne in Germany has developed a USB dongle with FRAM that will give long term data storage of over 200 years.
The Blaustahl dongle from Machdyne combines an 8Kbyte Fujitsu FRAM with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller and 4Mbytes of traditional NOR flash for firmware.
The FRAM provides long-term storage for four pages of text (about 8000 characters) to store passwords or a cryptocurrency wallet. This has a lifespan of 95 years at +55 °C, and over 200 years at +35 °C. The endurance is 10^12 read/write cycles at +85 °C
The microcontroller provides access to the FRAM without the need for drivers for an operating system by using the USB-CDC protocol. The dongle simply plugs into a computer and can be opened with any serial communications program that supports VT100 emulation such as PuTTY, Tera Term, Minicom or screen to access the built-in text editor.
However the Blaustahl dongle doesn’t ship with encryption but encryption support is planned as a future open-source firmware update.
In the event that the USB interface were to become obsolete or the RP2040 were to become non-functional, it should still be possible to recover the data using a SOP-8 test clip. The FRAM IC is marked RS64.
machdyne.com/product/blaustahl-storage-device/
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