Soulscircuit Redesigns Its Pilet Handhelds, Nearly a Year Overdue, to Accept the Raspberry Pi CM5

Two-person startup Soulscircuit has announced that its delayed Pilet handhelds are moving from being built around the Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer to the more compact Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 — and backers of its crowdfunding campaign are vocal in their displeasure at the news.

"Over the past year, we've been developing a version of the Pilet based on the Compute Module 5, in parallel with the Raspberry Pi 5 design," says Soulscircuit co-founder Christopher Stockall in the latest update to the Pilet crowdfunding campaign. "After extensive testing and iteration, we’ve decided to move forward with this approach. This change allows us to integrate all major components, including display, audio, NVMe, and battery, onto a single mainboard. The result is a much cleaner internal design, with fewer cables and connectors."

Stockall's Pilet started life two years ago as a modular 7" slab-style computer with retro-futuristic looks called the Consolo, which was later rebranded to the Pilet 7 to sit alongside a more compact Pilet 5 without built-in keyboard. When Stockall and co-founder James, the other member of the Soulscircuit team, launched a crowdfunding campaign to bring what was presented as a fully-working prototype to production, the response was immense: the campaign closed with nearly a million dollars raised, and a plan to get hardware into backers' hands by July 2025.

That plan, sadly, did not bear fruit. It's now April 2026, and backers have received little bar sporadic project updates revealing that the fully-working prototype was further from being finished than originally suggested — with Stockall detailing work as fundamental as redesigning the case and, they claim, the need to build a display from scratch rather than using the off-the-shelf hardware demonstrated at the campaign's launch.

Now nearly a year overdue, Stockall has admitted that both Pilet models have gone back to the drawing board with a fundamental redesign to shift away from the relatively bulky Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer to the Compute Module 5 computer-on-module. While the pair present the move as necessary for "a more robust and refined final product," backers — already antsy following Soulscircuit's sporadic update policy and complete lack of response to comments and emails regarding the project's status — have replied with disgust.

Comments on the latest campaign update are near-unanimous in rejecting the move, with many pointing out that they purchased a Raspberry Pi 5 ready to slot into the Pilet at the same time as backing the campaign — and would now have to spend hundreds of dollars more to replace it with a Compute Module 5. Others have pointed out that the revised motherboard is noticeably lacking in promised connectivity, with no wired Ethernet port and only one USB Type-A port to the original design's gigabit Ethernet and four USB Type-A ports. Most are calling for a reversion to the original design — with many requesting refunds, which are unlikely to be honored by the company.

While crowdfunding platform Kickstarter requires that project creators do not misrepresent the status of prototypes and that they make every effort to deliver on their promises, the company also makes it clear in its terms and conditions that Kickstarter is not responsible for any failure to deliver: "Kickstarter is not a part of this [crowdfunding] contract," the company claims. "The contract is a direct agreement between creators and their backers. A backer is not entitled to a reward simply because the campaign has funded."

With an unknown amount of the nearly $914,000 raised left, it remains to be seen if Soulscircuit can even partially deliver on its promises — or if the company will fall back on Kickstarter's rule stating that project creators have "remedied the situation and met their obligations" simply by explaining how funds were used, have made no "material misrepresentations," and "offer to refund any remaining funds to backers who have not received their report or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form," even if nothing of value is ever actually delivered to backers.

One thing is clear, though: the ball has been thoroughly dropped, and even if Soulscircuit manages to deliver it's going to be a product considerably different to the one promised.