18 ms·
Flipper One – we need your help
- atlasagentsuite 4mo ago[dead]
- amelius 4mo agoCan I use this tool to measure bit errors in high speed USB communications?
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoCool, but I think they're holding themselves back with that weird form-factor. I would've preferred if they'd included a full QWERTY keyboard, like the the GPD Pocket 4[1] or the GPD Win Mini. With a proper keyboard, I could write code on the go, easily edit files, navigate a terminal and mess with things... and do so much more in general. Also, 8GB RAM is barely enough these days, whereas the GPD comes with upto 64GB RAM - and an X86 CPU too, which means you can run your favorite Linux distro and all your apps without any compatibility issues. I really don't see a reason why I should buy the Flipper One. https://gpdstore.net/gpd-pocket-4/ https://gpdstore.net/gpd-pocket-4/
- swaits 4mo agoHere is an alternative that I think has real potential: https://m5stack.com/cardputerzero https://m5stack.com/cardputerzero
- anonzzzies 4mo agoNice but zero blobs/everything open? As that's the main interesting part here; full, no binary blobs, open docs/code ...
- moralestapia 4mo agoThe main interesting part for me is that the cardputer is real, but I do understand people getting excited by landing pages.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoI dunno, I loved the form factor of Flipper Zero, with the addition of a PTT and a more rugged design, this is quite literally an instant buy for me. It has sufficient connectivity that it'd be trivial to bring your own keyboard, in whatever size you'd like, and I'm surely not alone in not wanting a static keyboard attached to the device as I'd never have any use for it, the Flipper (in my view) is a portable device you use for enumerating and executing, but everything else I do on my desktop transferring data to/from the Flipper. I'm also not sure what I'd do with more than 8GB of RAM, I could literally run my entire OS + dekstop environment + the current applications I have open on my workstation desktop right now with that, and still have room to spare.
- NeckBeardPrince 4mo agoI don’t think the Flipper market is trying to compete with devices like this.
- archargelod 4mo agoWhat is the flipper market, anyway? I can only think of script-kiddies pwning neighbours wi-fi router and computer nerds buying it as a toy.
- aa-jv 4mo agopwnagotchi makes a pretty bad-ass portable linux system that can be used for development when its not crunching wifi ..
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoIf you're strictly taking about the Zero, I'd agree with you, but with the One they're entering a new market. I mean, kind of people who like to mess around with Linux and do hacker-y network-y things are also generally the kind of people who would prefer to use a keyboard, the kind who would love the extra hardware grunt to speed up tools like hashcat. And of course, the One will be cheaper than a full-fledged x86 handheld, but if you're willing to spend a bit more, you can do so so much more - it becomes a more practical device.
- rrvsh 4mo agoFrom the FlipCTL description, I'm surmising the intended use case is this as a cyberdeck aka using it for external tasks, vs. hacking on it at home with your actual keyboard. For example you make a config for X task at home and perform X task on the go. I do not see any indication that this is meant to be a primary device
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoI'm not saying it's meant to be a primary device. I'm simply saying that just adding a keyboard adds a huge quality of life improvement, and the bigger size allows you to pack in more power whilst still being pocketable and portable. Remember the "easy money" scene from Terminator 2[1]? Ever since I watched that as a kid, that form-factor has been my dream cyberdeck. As I grew older, I went on to own the HTC TyTN and the Nokia N900 - and loved them to bits - but I always felt constrained because of the ARM architecture and low specs. Like, you couldn't realistically brute-force any decent complexity passwords back then, and I bet the neither can the Flipper One with today's passwords. After being bitten by the various limitations of compact ARM devices, I wanted to get my hands on one of those OQO pocket PCs that ran a full-fledged Windows XP, but never managed to try out. Also missed out on the Sony VAIO P-series. So when the first GPD Pocket came out, I jumped on to it straight away even though it was from some random unheard of company at the time. And I loved it, and haven't looked back since then. I finally had a decent, proper computer in my pocket. So for me, a keyboard would be a bare minimum on a cyberdeck, and if it's got oodles of RAM and compute, that's even better. And the newer GPDs have also been able to play AAA games on the go, like Cyberpunk 2077, and I think that is super cool. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB82FNPoiPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB82FNPoiPM
- dpoloncsak 4mo agoThe product you’re suggesting is $1400, where as the zero sold for a 1/8 of that. Do we expect the Flipper One to have such a price hike as well?
- embedding-shape 4mo agoNot to mention you'd need REALLY large and durable pants/shorts pockets to fit a 27cm X 5cm X 20cm device that weights more than 1.5kg (yes, kilos!) compared to what the Flipper One will end up being.
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoI have the GPD Win Mini and it fits fine in my cargo pant pockets.
- rrvsh 4mo agoHow many people wear cargo pants or would be willing to switch to wearing them to carry a GPD Win Mini around vs. how many people would prefer a device that fits in any of their pockets? Look at the market share of phones vs GPD Wins and you'll have your answer
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoPhones are primarily communication devices though, so they're not a fair comparison. As for cargo pants, that's usually what I wear (along with cargo shorts during summer) so I don't really see it as a problem - they're big, they're comfy, they've got big pockets - what more could a hcaker ask for? I mean, can you even call yourself a hacker if you always wear skinny jeans? Where/how would you carry all your essential gadgets?
- rrvsh 4mo agoAre we gatekeeping being a hacker based on wearing cargo pants now? Such a weird point to take a stand on Phones have not been communication devices for a decade unless you want to extend the definition to social media and media consumption, in which case there would be little reason not to extend it to also cover what the Flipper One purports to support - not much of that is not covered by a phone
- fsflover 4mo agoHave you considered Pinephone with the keyboard?
- crimsonnoodle58 4mo agoSurely you've seen the price of 64GB of RAM lately?
- kylecazar 4mo agoThe form factor is indeed strange. It reminds me of an N-Gage if they had a "rugged"/durable version that was made for construction sites.
- lxgr 4mo agoToday, I think so too, but I think they're onto something with the idea of a PTT-like local LLM interface. With 2-3 orders of magnitude more local inference power, I could really see this work out! "Hey Flipper, log onto Wi-Fi SSID FooBarAir, pick the free "messaging only" plan, and set up an IP-over-WhatsApp proxy exposed over the second, encrypted SSID" :)
- Gigachad 4mo agoThe thing has a 2 color display. 8gb is massively overkill. Theres not much you could do on this that would even need 2 gb.
- mr_machine 4mo agoGPD already makes such things, as does ClockworkPi. The Flipper One is exciting in significant part because it offers a different, smaller form factor.
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoWish there were better options than those... Other than the uConsole, handheld computers with thumb keyboards seem to be in the category of literally handmade cyberdecks. https://hackaday.io/project/202522-cyberdeck-handheld https://hackaday.io/project/202522-cyberdeck-handheld https://youtu.be/u8kYHgKKhjY https://youtu.be/u8kYHgKKhjY https://youtu.be/IB5OJr_MimQ https://youtu.be/IB5OJr_MimQ Trying to make my own too. Ordered some prototype keyboard PCBs. No idea if I'll get anywhere but I'll try.
- ololobus 4mo agoIdk, with the One they already seem to try to claim too many things for a single device. Adding a keyboard and a bigger screen will be even bigger scope creep. As a Zero user, I really like the compact form-factor And just personal imo, for coding on the go something like macbook air seems to be a way more comfortable option. I know that you wrote that you fit gpd in you pants, but man, you know that this use case is even more niche than flipper zero
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoThat GPD seems nice but it's not exactly a handheld.
- d3Xt3r 4mo agoThere's also the Mini version which is handheld. Doesn't have the modular ports and RS232 etc though.
- azalemeth 4mo agoThis looks flippin' amazing, but also like the definition of project scope creep. I imagine it will be brilliant, unaffordable, surprisingly cheap, terrible and awesome (in both senses of the word) all at the same time. 3GPP really needs a light shining through it. I sincerely hope I work out a way of getting someone else to buy the thing for me. And the push towards all in-tree source is fantastic. Genuinely impressed.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> but also like the definition of project scope creep. To me it seems like the opposite, it has more connectivity and I/O than the Zero, but also scaled down, while using better materials, like they decided to outsource the project scope creep to the community, which makes sense to me.
- salomonk_mur 4mo agoMan, they put 2 processors in the thing and are building their own OS. They even say they are not sure how to get it accomplished. Scope creep to hell and back. Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running. They even - for some reason - want to waste time "training their own AI model because general ones don't cut it" (which no one is likey to use). Could just build a normal RAG + context stuffing pipeline in an afternoon but nah, let's devote a few months to this completely unnecessary non-feature. 100 bucks say this doesn't see the light of day before 2030 (if it ever does!)
- lxgr 4mo ago> Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running. This is actually quite common in embedded devices and even elsewhere. Every Apple device does this, for example (the Secure Enclave is a completely separate OS running on a separate computer). If you think about it, most laptops have been doing something like this for decades as well for things like brightness control etc., not with a different CPU but definitely an OS-like thing (i.e. the BIOS, using SMIs etc.) The idea of the "single OS, single CPU computer" has been a myth for a while now.
- mritchie712 4mo agofor reference, Flipper Zero was $199. does anyone know how much they're thinking for Flipper One?
- sschueller 4mo agoBefore or after the AI collapse of 2026/27. I would say at least $499 without the addition of inflated memory pricing.
- nicman23 4mo agogrand at min
- ymolodtsov 4mo agohttps://gizmodo.com/the-company-behind-the-flipper-zero-hacking-tool-is-making-a-cyberdeck-2000761546 https://gizmodo.com/the-company-behind-the-flipper-zero-hack... >> Flipper’s goal is to sell the device for around $350.
- GJim 4mo agoWith that money going to Russia. Just sayin'. EDIT: The above is a perfectly factual statement about the Flipper. The downvotes are presumably coming from the pro-Russia bots and shills.
- piyuv 4mo agoWhere would you prefer it to go?
- lstodd 4mo agoThe entirety of your comment has no basis in fact. Speaking as someone who watched the first flipper prototypes being soldered by hand.
- theragra 4mo agoFlipper One founders live and operate from London, as is the company. Pavel Zhovner has (or had at least) Ukrainian citizenship. Terrible to always see misinformation from people who don't even check basics.
- fsflover 4mo agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212046 This project looks similar to Librem 5 to me. The same goal of open drivers and minimal blobs everywhere.
- monegator 4mo agoNo binary blobs. Not even cellular and wifi?
- R_mand 4mo agoYou’re right. That would be hard with some of the vendors. Were blobs a big problem before?
- monegator 4mo agoi can understand blob for radios: by only using a signed blob you are restricting a malicious user from abusing the radio. However, the problem with binary blobs is that they are binary blobs: no sources, can't make changes, can't adapt them to work on a new system, can't audit them. Free folks have always argued that a computer will never be free if there are binary blobs in there (well: the last part is not really true, there is always a way to have a custom firmware, or make an audit, but the manufacturer will do that only for elite customers. Not for open source folks.)
- zhovner 4mo agoOur wifi chipset MT7921AUN has an open driver in the mainline. Of course wifi firmware is binary. But you can use the whole system without a wifi. Main idea is to make the platform open, so you don't need blobs to boot and use the system.
- armchairhacker 4mo agoCan someone explain why Flipper is making these decisions, or what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero, RPI, and Linux machine? The (EDIT2: maybe not) AI writing doesn’t help. EDIT: looking more, it seems like the goal is to be a fun project like Playdate, except a Linux multi-tool instead of game console. Which is actually great, a step towards healing today’s corporatized tech culture. It’s unfortunate that the website non-explains this with AI and marketing speak. EDIT2: I wrote too soon, AI is making me too cynical. My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features and repeating “we’re doing something exciting and important [for reasons not really explained]”
- embedding-shape 4mo agoCan't answer for the One, as I don't think even they themselves know what it'll end up being when done, but for the Zero, the biggest benefit have been the whole "one device = one large community = lots of firmware = lots of software" thing which gets a lot of benefits from one cohesive community around one device, I'm guessing the One would also get similar benefits with this. As a current Zero user, I'd definitively get a One once available, just the addition of the PTT-button feels worth it to me, but almost all the other changes are good (IMO) as well, don't really see any drawbacks from the design they're aiming for now, besides the modularity will make things slightly more complicated, but also comes with a ton of obvious benefits.
- brookst 4mo agoCan you elaborate on how you use the zero? I got all excited, bought one, and it’s in a drawer. I’m way deep into coding, CNC machining, making of all sorts… but I just never incorporated it. What am I missing? What do you use yours for?
- cess11 4mo agoMine is mostly just lying around but sometimes I find some use for it. This winter I bought some remote controlled electricity sockets that at first didn't seem to work so then I got the Flipper and started recording radio to figure out what was happening. Turns out the remote was some cheap hardware that at first broadcast promiscously and to the sockets entirely unintelligibly but with time and trying it stabilised. If I didn't have the Flipper or some other SDR device I'd probably have assumed it was bad and left it at the recycling station. If I'd lose the original remote I can use the recordings on the Flipper to either control the sockets or create a new remote. I've also looked into how the key fob to my car works and investigated tens of RFID and NFC cards, some of which I could probably have talked to with my phone but I like the format of the Flipper and it has very few distractions except Snake. When traveling I sometimes bring it up just to check out what radio stuff I can find and think about what devices might be sending.
- jdalgetty 4mo agoI want it but I do not need it.
- R_mand 4mo ago“The two processors communicate over a set of interfaces we call the Interconnect: SPI carries the framebuffer to the MCU for display output” Even with peripheral DMA this idea sounds terrifying.
- bradfa 4mo agoIt's a pretty normal thing to do for small LCD screens. Linux has had SPI framebuffer support via fbtft subsystem (in staging tree now, previously was out of tree) for well over a decade. It works quite well.
- himata4113 4mo agoDoes anyone know why the binary blobs cannot be reverse engineered in the age of AI and recompiled to closely match the original source? Is it for legal reasons? Is it firmware signatures?
- x-complexity 4mo agoThe capability isn't there yet. Some of it is there, but not to the level of reliable reverse engineering. https://programbench.com/ https://programbench.com/
- himata4113 4mo agoI beg to differ I've done this already. This is a harness issue not a model issue. It won't be identical, but as long as the A->B test loop can be closed I've had 100% success rate.
- sschueller 4mo agoThey probably can many things but I think things like memory timing is something you can't just easily reverse engineer from a blob. You need to test every state that the device can be in and see how the blob responds which is quite difficult.
- himata4113 4mo agoWhy not? Those timings and general initialization are inside the blobs?
- bradfa 4mo agoMany silicon vendors, when providing said binary blobs to a device OEM or even just documentation or source code for the binary blobs, will make companies agree to a license or other legal terms which prohibits reverse engineering. Often the direct recipient of the binary blobs (the OEM of the device) cannot legally let their employees nor contractors perform the reverse engineering. Generally, unless a similar license or legal terms are required to be agreed to by the end user, nothing stops the end user from reversing said binary blobs. But before you attempt this, be sure you fully understand every legal document which was presented to you by the device vendor. Click-through EULAs included.
- ctenb 4mo agoMost articles I click on in the HN homepage turn out to be written by AI, judging from the phrasing. I'm weirded out by the fact that people don't seem to find it important to write their own thoughts down. The writing in TFA is clearly supervised by a human, but still, the wording is not human at all.
- hjkl0 4mo agofwiw, it's the word "honestly" for me. or more specifically, "honestly?". it's the new em dash.
- bonsai_spool 4mo ago> The writing in TFA is clearly supervised by a human, but still, the wording is not human at all. I don't see the AI 'tells' in this article. What are you noticing? They use a lot of em-dashes but they use them in a very human way.
- bobnarizes 4mo agoA clear sign for me is always the use of long em dashes ⸺
- nicman23 4mo agowhat the ... that is one char
- depr 4mo agoAnd your ellipsis could also be one! …
- Sharparam 4mo agoI use the real ellipsis fairly frequently when I'm on Linux where I have access to compose key sequence, since it's just compose key + `..`. The fact that using correct typography makes people label you as an AI is just sad and it's just an overused accusation at this point.
- ____tom____ 4mo agoSounds like the second system effect. (The Mythical Man Month) First one is simple and focused, the second one tries to be & do everything. And frequently never ships.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> First one is simple and focused First time I've heard anyone call the Flipper Zero "simple" and "focused", most people seemed to have considered it a "swiss-knife" meant to just house a bunch of features and radios, meanwhile the One has less features but more connectivity and I/O. But apparently you're not alone in feeling this, but I don't understand what from the submission makes you and others believe so, what exactly gave you this impression?
- randusername 4mo agoWell the first one was a microcontroller. And this one is an 8-core Arm computer and the project has ambitions of some notoriously difficult things: no binary blobs, full mainline support (including a NPU), reinventing small-screen UI for more serious handheld computing, and supporting a ton of high-bandwidth interfaces. This is not a simple step up in difficulty.
- antonvs 4mo ago> And this one is an 8-core Arm computer ...plus a 2-core Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller.
- salomonk_mur 4mo agoAgreed. This will likely never ship with all the bloat. Custom AI model, custom OS, extremely custom architecture (2 "main" processors running independently...), barely reuses any of the previous work from Flipper Zero.
- lxgr 4mo ago> 2 "main" processors running independently... On the other hand, this has been working pretty well for the first few Raspberry Pis! (Although they had the benefit of leveraging an existing smart TV based platform for that.)
- Zababa 4mo ago>We want to train a specialized AI model that knows Flipper One's internals and applications inside out, so general-purpose models won't cut it. We invite the community to get involved. I think a general purpose model would actually cut it pretty well if it has access to proper documentation and search. Since everything will be OSS, the model can have "full" introspection of the system.
- ZiiS 4mo agoReally worried about the pricing, will make or break.
- h1fra 4mo agoI have read the whole thing, and I'm not sure what you would build with it. Can anyone give me some examples? I'm genuinely curious.
- cess11 4mo agoPretty much anything you could use Linux for, except high performance stuff since the ARM SoC they've chosen is somewhat limited. I look at it as a platform for solutions to technical problems, where either or both the solution and the problem are temporary in some sense. You could plug it into an ethernet port and have it automatically sniff the network for a while, or be your television box in hotels, or a leaner companion to some Kraken style SDR device than a laptop, or whatever. Once you have a purpose which is more permanent, then you'd probably switch it out for another device.
- bdavbdav 4mo agoWow. That really doesn’t know what it is. Love the idea of a hackable ethernet tool though.
- lxgr 4mo agoThis was my first impression too, but it's actually quite simple: It's everything all at once. It's an incredibly ambitious plan, but buy would I be in the market (unironically!) for an offline, LLM-powered, voice-controlled, satellite-connected, tactical pocket Linux set top box.
- fsflover 4mo agoHere is a similar story of creating a smartphone that exclusively runs FLOSS on the main CPU and has WiFi and modem on M.2 cards: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ihaveone 4mo ago"It's not this, it's that" Once you see this phrase, you know it's AI written.
- tekacs 4mo agoI've said a bunch of times that I really really wish that Pebble had gotten a chance to finish the Pebble Core: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time... This reminds me of that in a good way – a small Linux device that doesn't have to maintain a screen all the time (power) or focus on real-time but has physical buttons, connectivity, a microphone and a sealed case so it can be thrown in your pocket would be... an absolute dream. Counter to some others here, I would buy this at whatever cost if it lived up to that intent!
- 4ggr0 4mo agomaybe repebble will pick it up again, sometime :) but i guess they're focused on more watches and a ring right now.
- kesor 4mo agoInstead of re-inventing Linux distributions for FlipperOS on top of Debian. They should just choose to base it on NixOS which already has these "profiles" as a built-in feature called "Specializations" https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Specialisation https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Specialisation
- thrd 4mo agoThey already tried it and got so much pain that they decided on an easier way.
- rrvsh 4mo agoReally? I'd love to see a link (not being facetious)
- projektfu 4mo agoI have a couple NixOS machines but I never put "just" and "NixOS" in the same sentence.
- __MatrixMan__ 4mo agoI had the same thought. Their stated goals are very much in line with what nix is all about. Sadly, I totally get why they didn't. The nix way still isn't ready for "hey everybody, I'm making a thing, let's work on it together." The hurdles are just too high for non-nix-nerds to pick it up while simultaneously trying to learn the underlying project. It's a better way, currently only for those primarily in search of a better way.
- everforward 4mo agoI strongly disagree here. On the technical side, I'm sure it works, I almost never hear about Nix not working. On the practical side, "learn Nix" is a _massive_ onboarding task. Without Nix, I'd probably pick one up assuming I'll find something to do with it. With Nix, I'd wait until I have a project I know is worth figuring out Nix. If this were my project, I'd probably go with the absolute most simple answer: multiple SD card readers. Install the base OS on one card, allow hot-swapping the other card, do some mount point stuff with the other card (like maybe it auto-mounts to /usr/local, and have packages install into /usr/local). Or maybe some kind of overlayfs with the other card. SD cards are cheap, and I'd rather glue an SD card holder to the back of a Flipper than learn Nix.
- leobuskin 4mo ago@zhovner, would you consider reverse engineering of the blobs as a temporary measure? in 2026 it's very doable and scales
- zhovner 4mo agoWe're currently negotiating with Rockchip and will first try to convince them to open source. This particular binary isn't a problem right now. I'm sure it will be open source sooner or later. All efforts are currently focused on hardware validation, and software is being developed only in areas where hardware verification is required.
- sigmaris 4mo agoSince this is a portable battery-powered device, rather than first pushing to open-source the DDR training blob, which is non-resident in memory after it's done it's job and a fairly small binary (less chance for hiding bugs), I'd say it's more important to get open-sourced the support in the BL31 Trusted Firmware for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling of DRAM, and support for maximum power savings in suspend mode. Rockchip have not fully open-sourced the DRAM DVFS support in BL31, but it's key to achieving full run-time battery life on portable devices - see https://xnux.eu/log/083.html https://xnux.eu/log/083.html And the system suspend implementation that Rockchip did open-source in upstream BL31 lacks some functionality compared to their binary BL31, mostly about powering off as many peripherals as possible to save power. I'm not saying don't bother opening the DDR training, just that these two things are much more important for a portable battery-powered device.
- londons_explore 4mo agoIs a DDR trainer really that hard to write? I imagine you dump all the config registers of a running system, and then adjust everything that looks like some timing or drive strength parameter upwards till it stops working properly, downwards till it stops working, and then choose a middle value. Do that repeatedly for every parameter pre-boot, and then use that config. Perhaps redo that every few hours or when the temperature changes.
- zhovner 4mo ago>Is a DDR trainer really that hard to write? Since this is an unencrypted binary, I'm sure it won't be difficult to reverse engineer. And it will definitely be open source sooner or later. But first, we'll try to convince Rockchip to open source it. Especially since the RK3576 has other proprietary parts, such as OP-TEE and some registers. Also it has a Cortex M0 core, which is also not documented.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Angostura 4mo agoIf you have to spend a few paragraphs explaining that One isn't a replacement for Zero - they they are different classes of product, you know that your product naming is a problem,
- nekusar 4mo agoPavel and folks have been talking about the Flipper One concept for a few years now. It was always known that Flipper Zero did low level protocols, and that Flipper One was going to be a Linux cyberdeck. Product naming is not a problem. Anybody interested in these devices knew the differences and the plans for each product.
- ckemere 4mo agoCurious about the design choice. Why not use the TI parts with integrated microcontrollers rather than two separate chips? Or even a FPGA with integrated ARM9 like the Zynq family?
- ranger_danger 4mo agoWhy not FPGA? In my experience... cost, availability and power.
- segmondy 4mo agoAll I can say is take my money!
- moffkalast 4mo ago> Build the most open and best-documented ARM computer in the world, with full mainline Linux kernel support. Not even the Pi foundation could manage that. Why not go RISC-V if compatibility is the main goal? This thing does not need bleeding edge horsepower.
- garciansmith 4mo agoIt's interesting that the d-pad is on the right and the mouse pad on the left. I would have thought they'd be flipped, and indeed that's how it was in the prototype picture. I'm curious as to the reasoning for the change, though I don't know anything about the UI. Also, what's a "survival desktop"? I've never heard that term and I couldn't find it used elsewhere.
- swiftcoder 4mo ago> Also, what's a "survival desktop"? A desktop you can stick in your back pocket and take on the run?
- vladde 4mo ago> So people end up running full desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, etc.) squeezed onto a tiny 7" touchscreen. It's miserable. to add on to this: you can definitely make great UI's for small screens and unconventional controls -- Playdate [1] builds their UI around a physical crank on the device, and it feels fun to use it :) [1] https://play.date/ https://play.date/
- stellamariesays 4mo ago[flagged]
- throwpoaster 4mo agoProtip: asks need to be simple. This is cool, but long: "congratulations, or sorry, but I'm not reading that". If they had a "preorder" button at the top I would give them money and be done with it.
- antirez 4mo agoThis lacks the sharp idea the Zero had. I have the feeling that in order to do something different, and not an evolution, the result will be borderline useless: a portable ARM computer with Wifi / satellite connection / ... And, then? What I can do with it? The evolution that I could like is a Zero with more CPU power, SDR and LoRa. Then let's implement all the cool protocols that it is possible to implement.
- peter-m80 4mo agoThat sounds amazing to me
- mixtureoftakes 4mo agoSo they made a phone?
- idle_zealot 4mo agoMore evidence of the Smartphonification theory. Much like how all life trends towards crab, or all software towards reading mail and including a bespoke Scheme implementation, I posit that all hardware eventually becomes a smartphone. Examples: - the cellphone (obviously) - my TV - my refrigerator - my oven - music players - tablet computers - laptops (well on their way) - cash registers->PoS sales machines - handheld game consoles
- Balgair 4mo ago> Much like how all life trends towards crab Carcinisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation) The same seems to be true for trees too (arborescence).
- jayd16 4mo agoA full Linux phone with an M.2 slot, Ethernet, hardware buttons, SDcard etc. This is what you've all been asking for, right?
- arm32 4mo ago
- modeless 4mo ago> the current state of ARM Linux is depressing. Every vendor bolts on their own custom mess: closed boot blobs, vendor-specific patches, "board support packages" that nobody outside the chip maker can really understand Fixing this is a noble goal but won't sell a lot of devices by itself. And it will only fix the one specific hardware configuration used by Flipper. This seems to be the only interesting part of the project and the actual hardware is otherwise completely uninteresting. Not sure how they expect to succeed here.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoI see a lot of people are worrying about scope creep but I feel like we're missing the bigger picture here: this is cool as hell. Sometimes that's enough.
- 0xbadcafebee 4mo agoIf I wanted all of that, at that size, I would just use a laptop with USB/PCIe/M.2 expansions. I don't really care about openness, I care about functionality (and not having to carry extra stuff around)
- Fokamul 4mo agoWhat is the best HW to do "penetration testing" of Bluetooth communication. Not BLE, but Bluetooth. For BLE you can have nordic nRF chip. I'm curious if someone experienced here have some recommendation. Thank you.
- kwar13 4mo agolooks amazing. i just hope it doesn't cost a fortune. the portable hdmi alone makes it worth it to me.
- daft_pink 4mo agoI hope they let you disable the 6ghz wifi easily as Wifi 6E without the band steering of wifi 7 just gives you low range 6ghz which is a waste on a device that probably doesn’t need a high speed connection. Love my flipper zero!
- Deprogrammer9 4mo agoI would REALLY like to see the Piratebox project added into this amazing all in one device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PirateBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PirateBox
- glitchc 4mo agoDo all closed blobs need to be open? Why pick RK3567 when RK3562 is already supported in Debian?
- Deprogrammer9 4mo agoWhat about LoRa (Long Range)? that would be perfect for the Flipper Zero! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
- mschuster91 4mo agoLoRa has different frequency bands in different parts of the world. Getting boards that work well across all bands is all but impossible - EU is 868 MHz, US/CA is 910 MHz, AUNZ is 915 MHz. Either you make different versions of the boards with filter stages tuned for the region-specific bands, or you use next to no filtering at all which means you'll end up with the RX stage getting saturated by nearby stations (especially phone networks). The third idea is to use RF switches with different filter networks attached, but that's adding a lot of complexity and BOM and you got to deal with insertion losses on not just the filters but also the switches, and filters that can deal with higher output powers than 22 dBm can get pricey. Oh and then you got the question of the bandwidth of the filter. Ideally you want as low of a bandwidth as possible (e.g. Meshcore is 62.5 kHz, Meshtastic 250 kHz), but the SRD band in which you can legally run LoRa in Europe is 821-870 MHz... yeah good luck, you can't really do that, you need hardware for any serious usable filter that doesn't get stuffed over by nearby disruptors. The antenna question is a different thing. That one is easier to solve as you can just ship different antennas tuned to different bands to different country SKUs, but it is nonetheless a pain to deal with. Edit: Oh and I forgot, LoRa is proprietary IP from Semtech. There's lorarx written by some hams that can work on your average rtl-sdr... but as the name says, it's receive only, I'm not aware of anyone doing SDR transmission for Lora.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoLoRa is not an open physical layer protocol standard, but rather an interesting niche chip product from a small manufacturer. Like all unicorn chip products, setting up a link in SDR is not officially supported without violating IP rights. =3
- panja 4mo agoYou can get LoRa concentrators in m.2 form factor, so it shouldn't be that difficult to implement with what they are announcing.
- aaln 4mo agoThis like the most ambitious yet realistic open hardware project ever. Props for opening this up to the community to assist.
- cdnsteve 4mo agoThis is like a combination of a Sony Walkman meets Rasberry PI meets the prepper in me. Perfect.
- robbiet480 4mo agoI just want them to finally ship Busy Bar https://busy.app/ https://busy.app/
- xbar 4mo agoFlipper Zero is great. I would have built a Flipper 0.1 first, but I see why they are doing this. Flipper One's hardware designs and constraints are very compelling. I would have preferred an additional physical switch to disable all emissions. That said, if they can pull of the initial software stack it will be a strong platform for a broad set of use cases.
- dangerboysteve 4mo agois iButton still a thing?
- inventor7777 4mo agoI really, really, really love this concept. I think there is SOME feature creep, but it does seem more or less scoped well to IP-type protocols. However, I don't think they need to be prioritizing the local AI features, which are cool...but models get far smarter when you run them on a proper Mac/external GPU vs a small battery powered Flipper device. I think it might be helpful on the go, in the field, etc, but the usability with no dedicated keyboard will be rather poor. However, I think they should keep focusing on the Zero for a possible Zero 2 to match the capabilities of this One device. I love my Zero, but I think it is missing key features like full support for garage door and RFID rolling codes, and some other protocols. The WiFi dev board is very limited, and there is no simple way to capture/playback BLE remotes IIRC. Of course, it depends on whether you consider BLE to be layer 0 or layer 1.
- SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago>You can connect high-speed modules to Flipper One over PCI Express, USB 3.0, and SATA interfaces. There is feature creep, and lost the plot. I feel like either this is the latter, or they vastly surpass my imagination. Either way, I am not convinced enough people want in pocket PCIe that would not be contented with rasp pi or laptop form factors to make this worth it.
- 0xbadcafebee 4mo agoRe: the on-device AI, most people don't know what they don't know. And they don't know that there's dozens of on-device AI applications that already exist in the real world using tiny AI models. ESP32-S3's have been doing on-device AI for years. That's a 240MHz processor with 512KB SRAM, 16MB PSRAM and no GPU, and AI works great on it.
- tonymet 4mo agoI’m in their target market in 3 to 4 ways (radio guy, developer, contributor, consumer) and found this pitch discouraging both as a consumer and as a contributor.
- ourcat 4mo agoThe 'Layers' comparison image suggests that there would be no Bluetooth in the Flipper One. I would have thought that would still be very useful in 'Layer One'?
- ourcat 4mo agoActually, after closer inspection of the screen on the third image of the device in the article, there does appear to be a Bluetooth icon. Confirmed in the Dev Portal. https://docs.flipper.net/one/hardware/wifi-bluetooth https://docs.flipper.net/one/hardware/wifi-bluetooth
- klik99 4mo ago"Build the most open and best-documented ARM computer in the world, with full mainline Linux kernel support." ... "the HDMI port is proprietary and requires licensing fees" Are they upstreaming opensource HDMI 2.1 support? I mean I'm sure they're not, since they paid the toll, just feels they're not totally sticking to their guns. It's the kind of choice that shows if you really mean what you say. The more that won't license, the better chance of actually getting open drivers for common technology. None of this takes away from how awesome this looks. Very excited by all this.
- swiftcoder 4mo agoI don't really get why they didn't go with HDMI alt mode here, and stick with usb-c ports
- rincebrain 4mo agoThey say pretty directly in the post that they didn't want to deal with the hassles around dongles and uncommon ports for using this as a Linux PC in their pocket.
- swiftcoder 4mo agois usb-c really an uncommon port these days? I think I have more usb-c to hdmi cables lying around than actual hdmi cables
- hoherd 4mo agoImagine you check into a hotel, and want to use the in-room TV as your display. There is probably a set top box there with an HDMI port going to the TV. You would be able to unplug that and plug it into your Flipper One because it has a full-sized HDMI port. Go to any store, and look at what cable they use to connect their POS computer to the display. It's probably HDMI. For better or worse, HDMI is extremely ubiquitous.
- deleted 4mo ago
- arjie 4mo agoI have a Flipper Zero and these guys made a great tool, so I clicked this headline because it said "we need your help". After scrolling two pages I couldn't find what they need my help with, though. I scrolled to the end and couldn't find it there either. If I'm being honest, I like their stuff but not enough to dig through 8 pages of content to find out what helping means.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoThis effort seems less of a "Help us by buying our product" and more a plea for contributors as a FOSS effort, they want to do things like this: "Collabora + Flipper: Opening up the RK3576" https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/collabora-flipper-opening-up-the-rk3576.html https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/coll... , and are basically looking for developers and other technology enthusiasts to help them both with the projects themselves, and also try to network (socially) their way into convincing brands and companies to also open up themselves more: > We're asking the community to help us polish RK3576 support so we can build a truly open platform together. We'd be glad for any kind of contribution, not just code. For example, maybe you can find a way to convince Rockchip to open up that last blob. Then it seems like they're inviting anyone to participate in the entire development process too, should you be inclined: > Openness has always been our thing. With Flipper One, we want to go further — not just open-source code, but an open development process. We're publishing our task trackers, internal discussions, half-finished docs, and architectural debates. All the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors. Seems the post mentions a bunch of stuff people can help with, CTRL+F "help" shows 16 hits even, but I am afraid even this does require actually reading the content. It kind of feels like if you can't be assed to read enough to figure out what they need help with, maybe you don't actually want to help them with even harder and involved stuff than that?
- verelo 4mo agoA good Tl;dr; is never a bad thing in a world where everyone is being pulled in different directions for attention. I agree with you for the most part, but after reading the post, it's a mess and could do with a clear summary at the top...hell, even an index of relevant sections and sub-headings.
- petterroea 4mo agoThis makes me think of "The homer" from the Simpsons[1]. The scope creep is insane. But in this case, I think I may be homer. I may buy this, and feel like a glutton for doing so. Living in Japan I've avoided Flipper Zero due to the law basically saying "It is illegal to own tools primarily used for crime" (think lockpicks, etc). With Flipper Zero primarily being a RFID hacking tool, you are one officer knowing what it is and considering it a tool for crime away from being locked up - at least for the 21 days they get while they investigate you. Now Flipper One seems like something probably legal. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI
- IshKebab 4mo agoI'd wait to see the price before declaring you'll buy it!
- ulrischa 4mo agoI don't get the user case? What should I do with this that is not possible with a raspberry pi? The Flipper Zero was different and clear. This is not for me.
- Reubend 4mo agoSeems like a branding mistake to me. This new device doesn't target the same group of customers that the Flipper Zero did, so it will be much harder for them to market it effectively, since the first device is already famous enough that people know them for that market.
- petee 4mo agoBased on a lot of the comments here, this would have been decently received if it were marketed as something not-a-flipper...the "Willy One". Especially the loss of IR, which is great for kids to play with and get immediate feedback
- EricBetts 4mo agoI'd be more enthusiastic if they hadn't left the flipper zero community in the lurch and basically abandoned it over the last year (and more obvious in the last 6 months). A new product doesn't mean as much when the business behind it doesn't demonstrate follow through in their first product (even something as simple as giving the community the ability to merge PRs or do releases of bugfixes).
- shermantanktop 4mo agoWhat you describe sounds bad, especially the inability to accept help. But accepting help does take time and attention. Launching anything means splitting attention between supporting what you created and using what you learned to create something new. Pre-v1-launch is a wonderful time because it is so focused. But you can’t go home again.
- 650REDHAIR 4mo agoIs there somewhere I could read about the ongoing flipper zero issues?
- Ronak11 4mo agoWhere to get this flipper zero in India
- muxdervish 4mo ago> We're opening up the development process and asking the community for help. Except they themselves were never around to "help" their own community, instead opting to tear down creators of competitor devices and influencers who they did not like instead of trying to work with anyone. Many 3rd party board makers and app contributors could have been spotlighted, but it was all ignored over the years. Now they just want to once again extract free labor.
- h14h 4mo agoThe RK3576 is a really interesting/versatile chip and it is awesome to see major effort going into baking full support into the linux kernel. I could see it opening up a ton of doors for awesome FOSS hardware projects w/ AI accelerated workloads. One idea I have (but realistically will probably never build) is an e-ink notepad with a microphone that I can ask to generate custom note-taking templates. As a niche example, I'm imagining I'm at a baseball game and I can tell my tablet "hey give me a baseball scorecard template" only for it to generate one for me. Then if there are a ton of subs or the game goes super long, I can modify the template in place with follow-up commands like "add more rows for player substitutions" or "make it support up to twelve innings". I imagine having a chip like the RK3576 fully supported in the linux kernel could make building a device like this much much easier.
- Caracas288 4mo agoThat’s an excellent idea, single-purpose devices with lots of capability within their domain are ideal. If it were to manifest as a commercial product it might unfortunately just become an app on a souped-up e-reader. But maybe that wouldn’t be so bad either; anything is better than the laptop/smarphone local minima. The success of Flipper Zero was mainly of design, the lineaments of the product being previously understood, but hopefully if the ‘One’ succeeds in its more difficult task it will encourage innovation in more exciting devices.
- rkrueger11 4mo agoI love that idea. You should totally build it! Packing lists, grocery store runs, playing tic tac toe / connect four, taking notes during conferences, etc. Like an old palm pilot, but for the modern era. Take my money ;) but, yeah, let's hope we see more of these chips gain broad usage with low level support added.
- reassess_blind 4mo agoWas thinking of making something like this with an eink board and an esp32.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoThis type of thing could be an absolutely wonderful assistive tool for people who can't use their arms, or for people in a spacesuit or firefighting gloves or a chemistry lab where actually-functional voice commands would be awesome.
- KolmogorovComp 4mo agoI just want to say I haven't read a blog post with that slicked design in a very long time, refreshing to see, and cool project, albeit niche.
- mrandish 4mo agoI had a non-tech acquaintance mention he got called to his son's school because his kid "got busted" with "a hacking device". Based my friend's vague description, it must have been a Flipper Zero. The kid was initially threatened with expulsion but I assume someone from the school with a clue got involved and it was knocked down to a 3 day suspension. Still excessive but a survivable lesson. So, if you have kids just be aware that while we all know these are just SBCs with some neat SDR peripherals, the first Google hit a school administrator sees may be some mainstream media article with a click-bait headline.
- rockskon 4mo agoThe sad thing is....talking with LEOs that cause panics like this when they're apologizing after the fact....they have zero consideration for doing anything relating to schools taking action on their public statements and statements made to news outlets. Schools aren't their remit (and yet talking with news outlets is?). So as far as I can tell, school children being punished for the crime of having or using a toy that looks scary are unfortunate externalities from well-meaning LEOs.
- mciancia 4mo agoGetting rid of SDR, nfc and RFID hardware is a big mistake IMO. Doesn't look like this is gonna be cheap, so getting rid of 20USD worth of hardware that previous generation was known for doesn't make sense
- tamimio 4mo agoIt sounds great but I don’t know, at this point I will just use my laptop, it isn’t as small and portable like zero, and it isn’t as flexible and powerful as a laptop.
- miellaby 4mo agoWhy not a Yocto project for the software ? Embedded linux = Yocto or buildroot , not yet another debian fork. Same with the UI ; why creating a new stock when an ImGUI process with a DRM back-end is enough for a launcher
- robotnikman 4mo ago>We say "truly open" because the current state of ARM Linux is depressing. Every vendor bolts on their own custom mess: closed boot blobs, vendor-specific patches, "board support packages" that nobody outside the chip maker can really understand. You can no longer just read the specs and understand how computers work — you can only learn the workarounds for one specific chip with one specific BSP. We're sick of this ourselves, and we don't want to be part of the problem by shipping yet another product that just adds to the mess. Too true, and one of the reason I like to use x86 for Linux when I can. So glad to see them push for this!
- Eduard 4mo agoI love the Tux with mainland China military helmet picture. please opensource too
- rasz 4mo agoUK registered company (Flipper Technologies Ltd), UK HQ (SE10 0AX), US (Delaware) registered front (Flipper Devices Inc) > https://flipper.net/pages/warranty-policy https://flipper.net/pages/warranty-policy warranty covers defects in materials and workmanship for a period of one (1) year but not complying with either UK nor EU warranty laws. https://flipper.net/pages/b2b-and-tax-exemption-policy https://flipper.net/pages/b2b-and-tax-exemption-policy and unable to B2B in EU/UK? Will any of my money go to russia when buying Flipper One?
- dsign 4mo agoCool as they are (very), I'm not enthusiastic about the Flipper Zero form factor, nor the Flipper One's, though I understand that's because I'm not their target audience. However, I applaud their goal of opening up things in the ARM world. I'm still bitter after failing to use and having to discard an Arduino Giga. I wanted it because of its juicy CPU, but boy ARM hates hackers with small pockets. STM32CubeProgrammer will raise its nose in disdain if you do not use one of the purebreed and expensive dongles it approves. For my current project, I'm honestly considering to link several ESP32-xx as if I were crafting an old Nintendo, even if a single Cortex M7 would more than have enough power for what I need.
- LoganDark 4mo agoAww. Flipper Zero was great because it enabled access to protocols that are usually quite hard to mess with. Flipper One seems not to do this, so it's far less exciting.
- gdss 4mo agoive been just pushing games to flipper zero
- palata 4mo agoI find it interesting. It's a mini-linux computer with a mini-screen and enough connectivity, somewhere between a smartphone and an RPi? I like that they try to push for everything open source, let's see how that goes. I wish there was a LoRa module, that sounds like a nice portable device for that.
- a1o 4mo agoI am looking at this now, and to be frankly it not having a keyboard makes this uninteresting for me. Either a slide one (like old Linux Nokias), a small blackberry like one or one like the phone in Die Hard 4. Having no keyboard reduces a lot what I can do on the go vs a GPD Pocket.
- zem 4mo agothat was my first thought too, I was increasingly surprised scrolling down the comments that no one had mentioned it yet. it sounds extremely clunky to use without one, though perhaps the idea is that you connect it to an actual computer, and upload very focused single-purpose software that doesn't need text input but is useful on the go. that contradicts the "cyberdeck" framing though.
- a1o 4mo agoYeah. I remember like sixteen years ago, I think it was a N900 phone? A friend had it and I used it to fix a bug in a php website we had in the university through ssh. It was beautifully hacky, the website had no version control. It was awesome. I think the server actually ran Solaris at the time. I’ve been chasing a device with that form factor since forever, but sort of building my own I feel I will never get one.
- zem 4mo agoi had one of those! it was really awesome, and you could cross compile apps for it from a regular linux box. it was the only phone i've ever had where i wrote my own small apps just because i could.
- unsignedchad 4mo ago[dead]
- leebz 4mo agoYou guys should talk to the guys at seam.co Great team and they are breaking through vendor issues.
- okamiueru 4mo agoCTRL+F for LLM, check. This is the litmus test for knowing this will fail since those involved have the wrong priorities.
- danborn26 4mo agoGlad to see development continuing on this. The jump from the Zero's microcontroller to a Linux environment opens up a lot of possibilities, but battery life will be the real test.
- osk9934 4mo agoSo basically this is: "if we can make this project work with all of this software we could sell it for a ton of money, but we cannot make it work... so come do parts for free for us so we can profit" a huge part of the problems they have are issues they set for themselves, they picked the hardware first and are now trying how to make it work, usually when making a hardware product you start backwards from which hardware you can actually support and then pick from there... rather than expect someone else to solve your problems.... if they would opensource the hardware and all of the software, I'd agree with the request for help... but they seem to want to have the cake and eat it too...
- giantg2 4mo agoAlmost feels like they should just build a dongle of sensors that can plug into existing Linux systems, such as a Steam Deck, laptop, or desktop. It's almost as if people are walking around with screens and batteries in there pockets already. It's too bad they can't just make it plug into an Android phone
- megiddo 4mo agoI bought a flipper zero to reverse the shitty wireless remote that my pool equipment vendor wanted $1000 for. This remote sent signals right in the middle of the flippers range. The flipper didn't work for shit, was fucking weird, and had piss-poor documentation. The promise was democratizing radio hacking digital signals. That was, in the most charitable light, an oversell. So for the low price of $200, I found out I could just buy a replacement remote off ebay for cheap rather than hacking up my own receiver. Also, you can BUY a flipper, but you can't SELL a flipper. Anyways, that's my flipper experience, I wish them the best but also I don't give a shit.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoAfter reading this I estimate it will ship at the absolute earliest two full years from today, and cost $500 at that time, given the huge supply chain shocks that are happening right now. What do ya'll think? over-under $500? Longer than 2 years to market?
- squarefoot 4mo agoThere have been multiple reports of Flipper Zero devices being seized because they're known as burglars and black hat hackers tools. If I had to design a successor, first requirement would be to let go the popularity brought by its name+form factor and find different ones. Among my favorite is the LilyGo T-Deck Plus or something along the same look; worse that can happen is being laughed at for still using a Blackberry in 2026. https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1 https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1
- nivethan 4mo agoI love this, ordered one now. I've been looking for something lightweight to use to ssh into various machines. Though tbh it might go into my junk drawer anyway. Maybe I like the idea of on the go ssh more than actually doing it.
- RAZKOM 4mo agoI'm in the exact same boat. Look up the BeepBerry. It has the same blackberry like design but uses a Raspberry Pi Zero instead so it actually runs linux. Too bad they're no longer made but you could probably find one second hand with enough digging. For now I just use Termius on my phone but a dedicated device sounds awesome.
- Avamander 4mo agoBeepBerry is awesome, my only issue is the relatively low resolution of the screen. But it is very readable in bright light. Tradeoffs, I guess.
- canada_dry 4mo agoLooking at the comments for that product I suspect it'll find a home in your junk drawer rather quickly. I've ordered gizmos from Lilygo in the past and found their support/documentation/updates to be very poor. Once a product is out the door they seem to do little further with it. Churning out new products seems to be their forte.
- Patrax 4mo agoPetition to update the mascot and rename to Flipper Juan
- wre_lorerreorl 4mo agoI need: * ssh * cc (and git, ruby, shell, bc, vi) * screen with 80x25 unicode text (meybe greyscale or orangescale ;D ) * keyboard with minimal 16 keys (hex, t9 input text) * a week working time on one charge time (meybe solar panel) * usb A and C (minimum one host) system fuzix, or Sugaros, or Serenity, haiku, minix . (any open source) I no need * (network, reticulum, lora, wifi etc) * sound * camera * faster procesor than 333MHz