Nocta Hardware

Open hardware for the Nocta vault: an offline password and credential manager with a 2.7 inch e-ink screen, optional Bluetooth LE, and no cloud service behind it.

This repository is the design, not a product. The device is a prototype, it is not for sale, and there is no ship date.

Built by Nocta Labs, Leuven, Belgium.

What is in here

Path	What it is
Hardware/OpenVault.kicad_sch	Schematic, KiCad
Hardware/Schematic.pdf	The same schematic, readable without KiCad
Hardware/OpenVault.kicad_pcb	Board layout, KiCad
Hardware/production/	Fabrication packages: gerbers, positions, BOMs
Hardware/3D/	STEP models for individual component packages
Hardware/Datasheets/	Datasheets for the parts used
Hardware/Footprints/, Symbols/	Project libraries

What is not in here yet

• Firmware. Still being written. It will be published when it is worth reading, and the licence for it is not decided.
• The enclosure. No named enclosure model is published yet.
• Photographs. Coming with the next write-up.

Licence

CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2, Strongly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-S-2.0). Strongly reciprocal means anything you make from this and distribute has to stay open under the same terms. That is deliberate.

Reading the files

Open Hardware/OpenVault.kicad_pro in KiCad 8 or later, or start with Hardware/Schematic.pdf if you just want to read it. The fabrication packages under Hardware/production/ are what actually went to the board house.

Use of AI

AI assistance, primarily Anthropic's Claude, is used in the development of this hardware.

Its role is limited to review and analysis: reading datasheets and verifying pin assignments and component values against them, reviewing the schematic and the board layout, triaging ERC and DRC output, maintaining helper scripts, and drafting documentation.

Component selection, the board stackup, the USB differential pair impedance and all security related decisions are made by the maintainers. No AI system commits to this repository, and every change is reviewed by a maintainer before it reaches main.

No part of this design has been validated by an AI system, and maintainer review does not amount to electrical or security qualification. The design should be read against the component datasheets and verified independently before fabrication or use. The warranty and liability disclaimers in the licence apply in full.

Contributions developed with AI assistance are accepted, provided the use is disclosed in the pull request and the contributor can account for the work submitted.

Telling us we are wrong

Open an issue. A mistake found in the schematic now is worth more to us than a compliment later :)

For anything sensitive, mail [email protected] first and we will credit you publicly once it is fixed.

Related

• noctalabs.sh and its security page
• The blog, where revisions get written up