I'm here, with the same username as on DSLR. (I also created an account on Ho-Lee-Fooks.com but that doesn't seem to be getting traction, maybe because this forum replicated all the DSLR forum names.)
The DSLR thread was in the middle of discussing changing passwords for ssh login. On the 15th, just after DSLR went down, I found that passwordless ssh login with public/private key pair works fine on the 1000 and 2000 OBiPhones. The dir /home/root is read-write, you just create a subdir .ssh with perms 700 and put the authorized_keys file in that. I was not able to set it up on the 200 since /root on the 200 is read-only and the df command shows usage at 100%. Not sure if I could just remount it as rw and wanted to ask naf about it. There is plenty of room in /scratch so maybe space needs to be reallocated? They said they implemented ssh on the 200/500 (implementation on the OBiPhones was apparently in the stock firmware even though I couldn't find any mention of it in the manual).
Edit: Forgot to mention that the passwordless setup survives a factory reset - I guess everything contained in /home/root probably does?