Hello HealthyPi 6 backers,

Two things in this update. First, the good news many of you have been waiting for: the final HealthyPi 6 main board is done, and we have it in hand. The photos below are the real, production-intent board.

Second, the part we owe you directly: we have to move the ship date again. In our last update we committed to June 20, 2026. We did not make that date, and we are now targeting July 31, 2026. This is the second time we have had to revise the schedule, and we don’t take that lightly. Below is exactly where things stand, and why.

The Final Main Board

HealthyPi 6 final main board — front, showing the STM32H757 dual-core MCU, RTC, power module, and front-panel connectors

This is the front of the final main board. The large central package is the STM32H757 dual-core (Cortex-M7 + M4) that runs the tri-core system. You can see the medically-isolated power module, the real-time clock and backup cell, USB-C, and the front-panel and battery connectors all in their production positions.

HealthyPi 6 final main board — rear, showing the two side-by-side HealthyLink expansion slots, SDRAM, and microSD

And here is the rear — the part we previewed last time, now real. The two independent HealthyLink expansion slots, Slot A and Slot B, sit side by side exactly as described in our last update, alongside the 32 MB SDRAM and the microSD slot. This is what lets you run two HealthyLink modules at once — for example the Compute (Edge AI) module doing on-device classification in one slot while an EEG or specialty bio-AFE module streams from the other.

What the final board confirms:

• Dual HealthyLink slots, realized. Both slots share the same connector, pinout, and power, so any HealthyLink module works in either position.
• Layout locked. Component placement, high-speed routing, and analog front-end isolation are all finalized for manufacturing — not just for a one-off prototype.
• The feature set you backed is intact. Tri-core architecture, the sensor front-ends, HealthyLink expansion — all present and unchanged.

What Got Better Since the Campaign

The revision cycle was not only about swapping parts for availability. It gave us a clean window to fold in a set of hardware and firmware improvements that go beyond what we originally specified. None of this changes what you backed — it makes that same device more capable and more robust.

On the hardware:

• Individual power control for each module. Each HealthyLink slot now has its own load switch with fault detection. A module is powered up in a controlled sequence — and only after the board has identified it — and if a module ever draws too much current or misbehaves, the firmware shuts down just that slot and isolates it. The rest of the device keeps running.
• A larger, fully isolated power supply. We moved up to a 10 W medically-isolated DC/DC module (the TRACO THM 10-0511 you can see top-right on the front of the board). That gives comfortable headroom to run the display, the radios, and two HealthyLink modules at once — without compromising the isolation that matters for a device that touches the body.
• The finalized HealthyLink form factor. The expansion interface is now locked to its production form — a compact module footprint with a robust dual-connector mating interface, identical on both Slot A and Slot B, so any module works in either position.

In the firmware:

• Stream live and pull recordings over one USB cable. Two USB serial channels run at the same time — one streams live waveforms and vitals, the other carries control and commands (this is how HealthyPi Studio talks to the device). Separately, an on-demand mass-storage Transfer Mode exposes the microSD card as a standard USB drive, so you can copy entire recorded sessions off the device at full speed with no special software.
• One data format everywhere. Live streaming and on-card recording now share a single documented .HP6 frame format — the same bytes on the wire, on the SD card, and in HealthyPi Studio. One parser reads all of them.
• A fault-tolerant module supervisor. Beyond the per-slot load switch, the firmware actively supervises each module and can quarantine a faulting one in software without ever disturbing the onboard ECG/PPG acquisition.
• A modern control and tooling layer. A full command interface — built on a modified, MCUmgr-compatible protocol (the standard remote-management protocol from the Zephyr RTOS project we build on) and used by HealthyPi Studio — for streaming, recording, on-device file management, diagnostics and self-test, and Wi-Fi setup, plus a device lock/unlock security layer and a refreshed Material-style touchscreen UI.

These additions are part of why the revised board took a little longer to lock down — and we think they are worth it.

Why We Slipped Again

We want to be straight with you. The dominant reason is the same one that pushed the first date: component sourcing.

When we re-spun the design for long-term parts availability, a handful of the replacement components we selected went onto extended lead times of their own, and a couple of confirmations from suppliers came back later than promised. In the current environment, a single late line item on a medical-grade bill of materials can hold an entire build, and that is what happened here. We also took a little longer than planned on our side getting the revision board validated before committing to the production run — we would rather absorb that time now than discover a problem after parts are populated.

Where Things Stand Today

This is not a redesign and it is not back to the drawing board. The hard work — the final board you see above — is done. What remains is the path from a finished design to units in boxes:

• Final board: complete and in hand. ✅ (shown above)
• Remaining components: on order, with the last critical parts being the pacing item for the build.
• In-house assembly: ready to begin as soon as the full kit lands. Doing this ourselves gives us direct control over placement accuracy, solder quality, and power-integrity checks.
• Bring-up & validation: the firmware is already running on this hardware family, so first-article bring-up is verification, not new development.

Against those lead times — which we now hold in writing, not as a best case — we are committing to July 31, 2026 for reward fulfillment. We know a date only means something if we hit it.

Where This Leaves Us

This is the second date change, and we know that affects your confidence in our estimates. The concrete status is straightforward: the engineering is complete, the final board is in hand, and the remaining work is procurement of the last components and in-house assembly.

The cause of both delays is the same — we are sourcing parts with long-term availability and assembling in-house rather than substituting unproven components or outsourcing the build. That costs time now, but it is what lets us ship a device we can support and keep fully open for you to build on.

On that last point: we expected to open the source repositories sooner, but held off because the firmware went through a major architecture change this cycle (the pub/sub redesign behind several improvements above) and we did not want to publish code about to be reworked. We will publish the hardware, firmware, and HealthyPi Studio repositories around the time the first units ship.

Nothing changes on your side: your reward is the same specification you pledged for, now built on the final board above, and your pledge, shipping address, and reward details all stay as they are. Crowd Supply will contact you closer to shipping if anything is needed from you.

You will hear from us again before July 31, when assembly begins — the next update will come from the assembly bench, with photos of populated boards coming off our line.

— The ProtoCentral team