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SYSTEM: STABLE • MODE: DARK • SIGNAL: DETERMINISTIC

SUBSTRATE from RightBrain Networks

DevOps principles etched in silicon

Built for engineers deploying software beyond the cloud.

Cloud-native teams are accustomed to operating within well-defined guardrails: automated recovery, immutable deployments, and tooling that assumes failure will occur. When those same teams move into IoT, much of that safety disappears. A single microcontroller, running firmware in isolation, becomes the entire system of record—often with no reliable way to recover from faults in the field.

Substrate restores those missing guardrails by applying time-tested embedded systems principles at the hardware layer. Independent supervision, deterministic recovery, and persistent fault logging ensure that devices behave like infrastructure, not lab experiments, no matter where they’re deployed.

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DETERMINISTIC
Known states. Known outcomes.
INDEPENDENT
Supervision outside the MCU.
AUDITABLE
Fault history you can trust.

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FIELD REALITY

Power faults. Brownouts. Corrupted flash. Boot loops. Substrate is designed to behave the same way every time— even when the host can’t.

PHILSOPHY

Hardware fault recovery, made practical for IoT.

The core idea behind Substrate is intentionally old-school: put supervision in hardware, make it observable, and make the response deterministic. This approach has been proven for decades in serious industrial automation. Think: PLCs, safety-critical control systems, and networks like RS-485. It reflects an embedded-systems mindset where an independent authority can step in when the primary system stops behaving.

Substrate elevates this level of reliability off of the plant floor and into IoT products that ship with modern, connected microcontrollers such as ESP32, STM32, Nordic nRF52/nRF53 and most others. It is designed reacquaint the "self-healing" qualities of both modern software practices and traditional embedded hardware design in an easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy module.

OBSERVABLE

State you can see. Events you can correlate. Behavior you can reason about without spelunking firmware.

PREDICTABLE

Clear boundaries: what’s supervised, what triggers action, and what is recorded—no mystery timeouts.

COMPOSABLE

Start with Core, integrate OEM, graduate to CPR. A platform you can adopt incrementally.

PRODUCTS

Independent supervision, durable fault history.

Three modules, one mission: deterministic, hardware-first recovery.

Hardware Watchdog & Fault Logging

SUBSTRATE CORE

Substrate Core is a deterministic, hardware-first watchdog that operates independently of the host MCU. It listens for both a heartbeat pulse from the host and monitors real-time system voltage. If either condition becomes unhealthly, the host is reset.

Knowing what went wrong prior to the moment of failure is often more valuable than the autorecovery itself. During normal operation, an audit trail of host MCU events is continiously written at wire-speed in non-volatile, ferroelectric RAM (FRAM). Upon recovery, the host MCU can retrieve these logs and ship them over the network for debugging or forensic analysis.

Subtrate Core's fault recovery logic is 100% silicon-based with zero firmware dependencies while the real-time, presistent logging provides complimentary deep insight. This combination is designed to be simple, observable, and bulletproof—the foundation of the Substrate platform.

host-independent non-volatile fault log zero firmware dependency
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Technical

  • 46 x 23mm (1.81 x 0.9")
  • 2.7V - 3.3V
  • 10mA (nominal)
  • Requires only one GPIO pin
  • I2C interface optional

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TECHNICAL

  • No branding or user silkscreen
  • TEST & RESET buttons brought out
  • All LEDs are firmware toggable
  • Solder jumpers, not removable shunts

Resilience Integration Made Easy

SUBSTRATE CORE OEM

Substrate Core OEM delivers the same feature set as Substrate Core in a production-ready, castellated form factor suitable for reflow or hand soldering. It is designed to disappear into your product's PCB, with minimal silkscreen, firmware configurable LEDs, and OEM-friendly interfaces for integration and service access.

Substrate Core OEM is built for teams shipping IoT devices where relability isn't optional and truck rolls are expensive.

castellated module service access OEM-friendly I/O
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SUBSTRATE CPR™ (COMING SOON)

Fearless ESP32 OTA Updates

Substrate Core will reliably recover a MCU glitched by an intermittent issue. However, severe failure modes require sophisticated rescue.

Substrate CPR™ (CoProcessor Recovery) adds an out-of-band coprocessor that detects boot loops, failed updates, and unrecoverable firmware states and intervenes autonomously. Substrate CPR™ will reflash a malfunctioning ESP32 MCU with "known good" firmware stored in an onboard, encrypted firmware vault. No modification of the bootloader, complex firmware dual-banking, or network access required.

This innovation allows ESP32-based IoT devices to be deployed with the same confidence as modern software systems, even in the face of an otherwise "bricked" device. Substrate CPR™ is DevOps-grade deployment brought to the hardware edge.

boot-loop recovery out-of-band coprocessor OTA confidence
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TECHNICAL

  • Encrypted & signed firmware vault
  • Full UART log capture of host MCU
  • Coming Spring 2026

SUPPORT

Clarity in the lab. Confidence in the field.

Substrate is designed to be integrated once and trusted for years. This section is intentionally minimal for now—swap in your real support links and documentation endpoints.

DOCUMENTATION

Integration notes, signal reference, fault log decoding, and board-level checklists.

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INTEGRATION HELP

Schematic review, bring-up support, and best practices for deterministic supervision.

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RMA / WARRANTY

Clear, boring policies—because reliability includes logistics.

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CONTACT

Talk to us.

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SALES / ORDERS

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PLACEHOLDERS

  • Orders: sales@substrate.example
  • Support: support@substrate.example
  • Press: press@substrate.example

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