ProtoCentral Unveils the HealthyPi 6, Now Powered by an STMicroelectronics STM32H7
A move away from the Raspberry Pi RP2040 and a design shift means better performance, but gone are the on-board display option and Wi-Fi.
Bengalura-based ProtoCentral Electronics has announced the successor to its HealthyPi 5 biosignal acquisition platform — very sensibly named the HealthyPi 6, offering boosted performance over its predecessor.
"HealthyPi 6 takes the proven foundation and principles behind HealthyPi 5 and delivers a massive performance leap," says ProtoCentral's Ashwin Whitchurch of the new board. "It features dramatically faster signal acquisition, significantly enhanced processing power, and expanded storage capabilities, setting a new standard for open-source biosignal monitoring platforms. Built for healthcare professionals, researchers, and biomedical engineers who value data ownership and system flexibility, HealthyPi 6 scales from single patient monitoring to complex multi-signal research studies."
Like its predecessor, the HealthyPi 6 targets biosignal monitoring. It includes a five-lead heart-monitoring electrocardiogram (ECG) with four channels going into a Texas Instruments ADS1294R 24-bit analog to digital converter supporting up to 32 kilo-samples per second (ksPS), finger-based photoplethysmogram (PPG) pulse monitoring probes feeding into a TI AFE4400 analog front-end, respiration monitoring via thoracic impedance, and temperature monitoring via a "precision digital skin temperature sensor."
This time around, though, the company has moved away from the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller that powered the HealthyPi 5; instead, the Healthy Pi 6 uses an STMicroelectronics STM32H757 with an Arm Cortex-M7 core running at up to 480MHz and a Cortex-M4 core running at up to 240MHz, linked to 32MB of SDRAM and up to 128MB of flash expandable via microSD Card. It also drops a few features: there's no Wi-Fi connectivity, the 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connector is gone as is support for an optional on-board display, and there's no battery management system for portable use.
ProtoCentral is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the HealthyPi 6 on Crowd Supply in the near future, with interested parties invited to sign up to be notified when it goes live; the company has confirmed it will publish full source code, schematics, board layouts, and other design files at the same time.