Privacy Policy

The desktop app talks directly to your microcontroller over its serial port. Scan results — what devices are on your board, pin states, the report text — never touch our servers unless you are signed in and choose to save your scan history. We do not sell data, and we do not run advertising.

A scan needs our firmware running on the chip, because only code on the board can see what is wired to its own pins. Rather than replace what you already have, the app borrows the chip and gives it back: it copies the existing program out of the app partition, writes our scanner in its place, runs the scan, then writes your original program back and reads it again to confirm it matches byte for byte.

That copy is held in memory on your own computer for the length of the scan and is never written to our servers, never sent over the network, and discarded as soon as the restore is verified. If a restore ever fails, the app keeps the copy and tells you, because throwing it away at that point would be the one thing that could actually cost you your firmware.

The app only ever reads and writes the app partition. Your bootloader, partition table, and the NVS area where the Arduino core stores saved WiFi credentials are never read and never written — so your network passwords are not something we delete afterwards, they are something we never load in the first place.

Account data. Your email address, and if you sign in with Google, the name and profile image Google shares with us. That is the whole identity record.

Usage data. If you are signed in, we log that a scan happened — which board type, when, and which plan it was billed against — so your monthly quota and saved history work. We do not log the contents of a scan (which sensors you found, your pin wiring) unless you are on a plan with saved history enabled, in which case that data is stored so you can retrieve it later and deleted when you delete the scan or close your account.

Billing data. Payments are processed by Dodo Payments, who acts as the merchant of record for every purchase — they are the legal seller, they collect and remit any applicable sales tax, and they hold your payment method. We receive your plan, billing status, and enough of a customer reference to match a payment to your account. We never see or store your card number.

Dodo Payments — processes payments and acts as merchant of record.

Supabase — hosts our database and handles authentication.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal data to anyone else, and we do not use it to train any model — this product does not run AI at all.

If you join a club with a code, your account links to that club so its admin can see how many students are active and whether the club is under its seat cap. The admin does not see your individual scan contents — only that you are a member and whether you are active.

Delete your account from Account Settings and everything tied to it — profile, saved scan history, credit balance — is removed. Billing records that Dodo Payments is legally required to retain for tax purposes stay with them, governed by their own retention policy, independent of us.

Questions about this policy: email hello@hardwarecontext.com.