Flipper One – we need your help

https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/

by sandebert • 2 months ago

1266 480 2 months ago

blog.flipper.net

d3Xt3r8• 2 months ago

Cool, 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/

swaits• 2 months ago

Here is an alternative that I think has real potential:

https://m5stack.com/cardputerzero

anonzzzies• 2 months ago

Nice but zero blobs/everything open? As that's the main interesting part here; full, no binary blobs, open docs/code ...

embedding-shape21• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

I don’t think the Flipper market is trying to compete with devices like this.

archargelod• 2 months ago

What 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.

d3Xt3r8• 2 months ago

If 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.

dpoloncsak2• 2 months ago

The 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-shape21• 2 months ago

Not 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.

d3Xt3r8• 2 months ago

We don't know the cost of the One yet. Besides, the GPD can also be used for playing AAA games, and the keyboard makes it far more useful as a general purpose PC.

Karliss• 2 months ago

Flipper zero was an arduino with half a dozen sensor, radio and other communication modules. Flipper one is a laptop/mobile phone class system in weird form factor no doubt its going to be more expensive. No point even comparing them. You can't call it a price hike if it's completely different category of product. There have been plenty of openish tinkerer laptop/mobile phones projects to know that paying high end laptop price for a device with compute power of last generation raspberry pi is a likely outcome.

fsflover5• 2 months ago

Have you considered Pinephone with the keyboard?

crimsonnoodle58• 2 months ago

Surely you've seen the price of 64GB of RAM lately?

kylecazar• 2 months ago

The 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.

lxgr5• 2 months ago

Today, 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" :)

Gigachad2• 2 months ago

The thing has a 2 color display. 8gb is massively overkill. Theres not much you could do on this that would even need 2 gb.

sesm• 2 months ago

They want to run local models

iberator• 2 months ago

sdr waterfall takes a lot of memory

mr_machine• 2 months ago

GPD already makes such things, as does ClockworkPi. The Flipper One is exciting in significant part because it offers a different, smaller form factor.

matheusmoreira2• 2 months ago

Wish 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://youtu.be/u8kYHgKKhjY

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• 2 months ago

Idk, 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

matheusmoreira2• 2 months ago

That GPD seems nice but it's not exactly a handheld.

d3Xt3r8• 2 months ago

There's also the Mini version which is handheld. Doesn't have the modular ports and RS232 etc though.

azalemeth2• 2 months ago

This 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-shape21• 2 months 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_mur2• 2 months ago

Man, 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!)

wateralien• 2 months ago

Some projects are meant to scope creep. Like this one. If the project manager of the swiss army knife had defended it from scope creep it would have 1 knife.

NGRhodes• 2 months ago

Which would scope creep anyway to a box of knives.

red-iron-pine• 2 months ago

IIRC the original scope was the 8 most common tasks that literal Swiss soldiers did. that was their scope.

sewing and maintianing clothes was one of them, for example, so thats why it has a punch. They'd need to be able to open cans, as that was the most common long term ration, and they'd need to be able to maintain their rifles which had screws, thus screwdrivers.

a version with a wine bottle opener was made for officers and became common

dnnddidiej• 2 months ago

Scope creep only can happen after you decide what you want though.

semolino• 2 months ago

Could you clarify what you mean by saying it may be both unaffordable and surprisingly cheap? (Expensive but less than expensive than it could be? Expensive but of poor build quality?)

Also why would you want/need someone else to purchase it for you? Because of your country's import laws, or reasons related to privacy/anonymity?

iamtheworstdev• 2 months ago

probably means - more expensive than any of us would spend on a "toy", but far cheaper than what an expert might on an industry standard version of this.

risyachka• 2 months ago

just fyi its also russian

Aurornis4• 2 months ago

surprisingly cheap,

What would you consider surprisingly cheap?

Their last product announcement was the BUSY bar, a desktop timer with a display to show that you're busy. Pre-orders launched at $250 but they dropped the price to $219. Has not shipped yet: https://busy.app/

The Flipper One specs are significantly more expensive to manufacture than the Flipper Zero or Busy Bar. I don't think this will be a surprisingly cheap product.

I do think it's cool that they're building the product they want to build and letting cost be a secondary factor.

ZeWaka• 2 months ago

That's a pretty crazy price for a pomodoro with a screen, lmao.

hyperbovine• 2 months ago

Wow this crazy -- "Built-in Pomodoro timer" means they are literally replacing a $5 plastic tomato-shaped mechanical timing device with something that costs $220 and features WiFi and app integration. What could be more antithetical to the original pomodoro ethos, I don't know. It's like an episode of Silicon Valley.

mritchie712• 2 months ago

for reference, Flipper Zero was $199.

does anyone know how much they're thinking for Flipper One?

sschueller2• 2 months ago

Before or after the AI collapse of 2026/27. I would say at least $499 without the addition of inflated memory pricing.

nicman235• 2 months ago

grand at min

ymolodtsov• 2 months ago

https://gizmodo.com/the-company-behind-the-flipper-zero-hack...

> Flipper’s goal is to sell the device for around $350.

GJim2• 2 months ago

With 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.

fsflover5• 2 months ago

Related discussion: 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.

nicman235• 2 months ago

i mean i trust the flipper guys more

fsflover5• 2 months ago

Librem 5 already exists and is my daily driver phone though.

monegator6• 2 months ago

No binary blobs. Not even cellular and wifi?

R_mand2• 2 months ago

You’re right. That would be hard with some of the vendors.

Were blobs a big problem before?

monegator6• 2 months ago

i 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.)

zhovner5• 2 months ago

Our 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.

armchairhacker5• 2 months ago

Can 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-shape21• 2 months ago

Can'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.

brookst2• 2 months ago

Can 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?

bonsai_spool2• 2 months ago

The AI writing doesn’t help.

Why do you say there is AI writing?

chuckadams• 2 months ago

Anything that anyone ever writes from now on has people coming out of the woodwork to accuse it of being AI-written. I too bemoan what the written word is coming to, but I am also so over the Slop Police, and wish they would just keep the conclusions of their sleuthing to themselves from now on.

speedgoose• 2 months ago

The writing style.

armchairhacker5• 2 months ago

So today we're going public not with a big shiny announcement, but to tell the whole story straight. Honestly? We're genuinely terrified, and we need your help.
Flipper Zero and Flipper One operate at different protocol layers [below a graphic with features like "Power Bank". Do they know what a "protocol layer" is or do I not?]
Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero — it's a completely different project with its own goals.

And lots of em-dashes.

But looking closer, I actually suspect it’s not AI, the author just integrated LLM-isms into their style.

GuB-42• 2 months ago

what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero

They work at different layers, the Zero is physical, the One is network. There is almost no overlap between the two, so one doesn't have an advantage over the other.

RPI

It has a battery, with attention given to power management, and is a complete unit, not just a board.

Linux machine

You mean like a laptop? You can probably do all this on a Linux laptop PC, but the Flipper One is a smaller, more specialized device, with a firmware as open as the manufacturers will let them.

My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features

Go to this page for this: https://docs.flipper.net/one/general/features

hdb23• 2 months ago

Yeah, you've acknowledged it in your edits, but just for others: the author commented above that he did not use AI, only translation tools.

jdalgetty• 2 months ago

I want it but I do not need it.

kuerbel• 2 months ago

I will buy one, use it once and then it will gather dust. Such is life

xandrius• 2 months ago

Same! I'd love to get one just in case but $200 for just in case is a lot.

I wish someone sent me one of theirs gathering dust for free, lol

R_mand2• 2 months 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.

bradfa2• 2 months ago

It'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.

himata41135• 2 months ago

Does 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• 2 months ago

The capability isn't there yet. Some of it is there, but not to the level of reliable reverse engineering.

https://programbench.com/

himata41135• 2 months ago

I 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.

sschueller2• 2 months ago

They 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.

himata41135• 2 months ago

Why not? Those timings and general initialization are inside the blobs?

bradfa2• 2 months ago

Many 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.

hoherd2• 2 months ago

What would Jon Lech Johansen do?

mschuster914• 2 months ago

Some of this stuff you need to probe with very, very expensive equipment and fine-tune parameters, and to make it worse, RF performance also depends on the composition of the PCB layers, the amount of vias, hell even just rotating an unrelated component on a PCB can affect the RF performance of nearby components or traces. If you're into that, Hans Rosenberg has some darn good yt videos [3].

RF is a world of black magic, especially at the frequencies, symbol rates and encodings used for stuff like RAM. And the higher in frequency you go... the less "conventional wisdoms" apply.

There's in fact a very old article from 2007 [1] describing the issue from the other end. Some researcher tried to have a primitive form of what we'd call "machine learning" a few years later write FPGA bitstream to get a tone discriminator. Turns out the algorithm and test harness got a working bitstream... but it made no sense at all, it was very finely tuned to individual physical characteristics of that chip.

Link training blobs on modern chips do something very, very similar, at each link initialization they evaluate a lot of different parameters per pin to account for the current state the device is in to get the best (i.e. highest stable bit rate) possible link. And the parameters, value ranges and timings all vary between different chips, so if you write a blob for one combination of SoC and memory, it might very well be possible that you need an entirely different blob for another combination. And that is what the BSP vendor does and what is inside the blob... a tuned version of parameters that this specific board's firmware can use to achieve a working good link in the shortest possible time.

It's one hell of a ride that Flipper is on, and I seriously wish them all the best. There's a darn good reason this stuff has been proprietary, at best you'll get a high-level summary like [2].

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

[2] https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snla415/snla415.pdf?ts=17793056953...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuHAhIKWoM

himata41135• 2 months ago

I understand that much, but we have the firmware - we don't have to extract it or rebuild it in a white-room? Or is some of that information baked into the firmware that we cannot flash? I've reversed some camera sensor binary blobs recently and I didn't have too many issues, only took a really long time (5 days) of running in a loop until source matched the original (sematically). I parsed the blobs into an intermediate language, exported to llvm and optimized it to recover the functional structure I also used this sematics structure to rebuild the source in rust(kinda, it's a variant of rust with snowflake features cause I hate the language). I think I got lucky because the sensors used the same mips opcodes (sv class) rather than some proprietary state machine.

ctenb2• 2 months ago

Most 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.

bonsai_spool2• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

A clear sign for me is always the use of long em dashes ⸺

tallytarik• 2 months ago

Phrasing like “Honestly?” and “It’s not just [x], it’s [y]” multiple times

Every list is a set of 3, and most lists have a bolded intro phrase, one even has the famous slopperific emojis

burkaman• 2 months ago

not just ___, but ___
Honestly? We're genuinely
isn't ___ -- it's __

Repeatedly saying the same thing with slightly different phrasing: "Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero", "Flipper Zero and Flipper One are completely different projects", "Flipper One doesn't replace Flipper Zero"

Notably different style from the author's pre-LLM writing, see https://blog.flipper.net/introducing-video-game-module-power... or https://blog.flipper.net/electronics-testing/ for example.

stared• 2 months ago

Sufficiently advanced marketing is indistinguishable from AI.

the_plus_one• 2 months ago

In my experience, the bulleted list with emojis is usually a pretty strong tell (the one in the article just after "We call these parts sub-projects"). LLMs (maybe just ChatGPT) love doing that.

embedding-shape21• 2 months ago

Tbh, I'm getting more frustrated with the ever-coming flood of "Bah I didn't read because it was obvious AI blah blah" which seemingly every single submission HAS to come with nowadays on HN, god forbid someone is more interested in the content than the flow of the words.

If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead, and we could discuss those or even correct the linked page itself, as it seems to be a wiki. But general complaints that could be copy-pasted for any submission, just so you can feel heard about that you think this was AI written, gets so tiring to read for every submission.

blanched2• 2 months ago

On the one hand, I get what you mean. Some genuinely interesting projects are immediately dismissed because AI was involved.

On the other hand, I have two real problems with AI writing.

1. LLM prose is genuinely unpleasant to read. Its the exact same way that I strongly dislike reading LinkedIn posts or email marketing copy. It's all the same slimy tone that's using a certain sentence structure and rhetoric to try to be interesting without real substance.

2. Sometimes it feels like someone asking you to read an article with no punctuation or grammar: the author couldn't put in time/effort to make this enjoyable to read, so now I have to spend more time/effort reading it.

Personally, I don't read through all marketing copy to see if "this one is going to be good", nor do I want to spend time providing constructive critical feedback on it.

karlgkk3• 2 months ago

If you can’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it.

monegator6• 2 months ago

It is exhausting to always have to read word salads with little content.

Every single fucking article with 20 lines of introduction before you get a chance for actual content. LLM slop then dilutes the information, and LLM slop always read the same way. You know, how easy it is to spot LLM generated content, it is actually refreshing when you can tell it's a human.

ctenb2• 2 months ago

I was hesitant to post my comment. It's the first time I've complained about this on HN I think. And it's not only about the flow of the words at all, it's more about reading something that no one wrote. Especially if it's about a project that seems interesting, having AI written text tells me it's maybe not the passion project I otherwise would think it was.

cobolcomesback3• 2 months ago

It is unreasonable to expect “specific complaints” about AI vomit like this, because one of the main issues with AI content is the ability to generate an overwhelming amount of it. It’s simply not feasible to give specific criticisms, because the criticism is with all of it.

It’s like submitting a 10 page pull request to someone and then getting mad because the person didn’t give comments on every single snippet of code. The issue isn’t the snippets of code, the issue is the attitude that led someone to believe a 10 page PR is appropriate to begin with.

lkey• 2 months ago

Wow! I hear you and you're absolutely right.

It's not just short-sighted of <these commenters you hate>; It's self-destructive!

* It's the job of the consumer to correct and edit the content they consume

* Content creators have it hard enough ——— prompt-crafting and imagining transformative and disruptive new horizons in tech

* So what if the prose is 4x longer than it should be? The time value delta between real creatives and the average HN-er can't be compared —— A complete paradigm shift

* If they were real hackers they'd have their AI summarize and distill the info —— I think we can all see who the posers are

I'm excited to read content everyday... 'slop'? That's a coward's word, I see past the prose into the core of the data space, and I'm stronger for it.

palmotea2• 2 months ago

If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead, and we could discuss those or even correct the linked page itself, as it seems to be a wiki. But general complaints that could be copy-pasted for any submission, just so you can feel heard about that you think this was AI written, gets so tiring to read for every submission.

No. And the reason is pretty simple: if you couldn't bother to write it, why should I bother to read it?

And that's the problem with AI: it creates floods of that stuff and makes it hard to differentiate the good-faith use from the bad-faith use. The default can't be "reader, waste your time, even on garbage." A reader-respectful norm needs to be set, and those comments you complain about are part of that. The people making these things need to learn that they've got to put in the work if they want to be read (at least by serious audiences).

boesboes2• 2 months ago

nah it is just super disrespectful to make me read something you were too lazy to read.

armchairhacker5• 2 months ago

I'm not convinced it's AI.

But it has a problem common in AI, where it makes bold claims "we believe this is the only way to make a truly meaningful contribution to the open-source community and to education" without explaining, and too much filler ("...All the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors. This is uncomfortable. We've never been this open before, and there's a real instinct to hide the unfinished work, the wrong turns, and the arguments...")

InsideOutSanta3• 2 months ago

If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead

Accusing text of being written by an LLM is a specific complaint about the text. It's shorthand for "the text is overly verbose and uses the typical clichés LLMs are known for, which makes the text unpleasant to read (it's too much text and too many empty clichés) and also makes me distrust the text, because now I'm not sure anyone even looked over it and made sure it says what they wanted to say."

It's just shorter to say "this sounds like it's written by AI."

superloika• 2 months ago

The medium is the message. AI text is a bad message for me.

nkrisc• 2 months ago

I like being warned about AI generated content before I waste time reading. If the author couldn’t even be bothered to write it, it’s a good sign I shouldn’t be bothered to read it.

0gs• 2 months ago

the flow of the words IS the content?

zamadatix• 2 months ago

There was also a similarly common debate AI written/aided comments on HN until, ultimately, the guidelines were updated with an official stance saying they weren't allowed because HN is for human to human discussion. Honestly, the same kinds of comments and meta-complaints would occur for any of the things the guidelines comment on. It doesn't mean those common complaints would be wrong to have, that's part of how the guidelines get formed, it just means we haven't figured out what makes sense or not for the site yet.

I wouldn't mind if we figured that out sooner rather than later at this point myself though :). Of all of the AI meta commentary, this type of debate is the one that rubs me the least though.

parliament32• 2 months ago

I appreciate these comments, because they're a warning. If I'm on the fence about whether a link is worth a click-through or not, I'll have a peek at the comments first, and when I see something like this I don't bother (like with this article).

If it's just long-term generated text, why bother posting the link at all? Why not ask for a bullet point summary and make a text post? Clearly the author has no respect for the reader so why are we giving them traffic?

jchw• 2 months ago

Okay. So if I copy and paste an AI response written by Claude and you can't actually find a specific problem with it, are you still fine with that? If so, please start your own damn website and enjoy talking to AI and reading AI text all day. I'd really really rather not.

ryanschaefer2• 2 months ago

It’s the fat introduced by the process that annoys me the most. The user of the LLM had an idea, but it got greased up and packaged into something that the average person would create, not a specialist in the domain. It dumbs down everything into a single perspective / way of presenting a topic.

pelasaco• 2 months ago

I guess it's the same with "I rewrote blah blah in Rust," where everyone knows it was vibe coded. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but Hacker News is a forum mostly read by people who enjoy hacking and building things. "Vibe coded codebases" and AI generated text generally aren't praised here, although they certainly are in other places. Or maybe it's just a matter of time until hackers get over or used with it. Time will tell...

squidbeak• 2 months ago

I'm mostly the opposite. I'm glad to see people calling this out. Do we really want it to become normal to offload communication to another entity?

"Claude, I need to send my wife an apology for shagging the secretary. Please make it tender and remorseful."

A person's take on anything isn't their take any more if someone else articulates it, and there's a real risk we slip back to a hired scribe culture, with the multitude volunteering to return to illiteracy because they can't be arsed to type or even speak - beyond brief outlines.

But the case is totally different for organizations and companies. They've always used copy editors to write their blurb, usually in a pasteurized flat business style that was always far removed from individuality and near-identical across organizations. I can't see why using AI in these cases makes any difference.

NikolaNovak• 2 months ago

They are tiresome but also understandable. I do not want to read AI generated content, even when its correct, because at that point what's the value? I'm reading results of somebody else's prompt, might as well use my own.

I'm surprised any author today isn't pre- or appending their articles with simple statement on AI usage. Transparency goes a long way.

manbash• 2 months ago

We're living in the ai;dr era :)

isoprophlex• 2 months ago

I just long for some sort of attestation system where, if you want to use an em dash, you must first drink a verification can or eat some verification doritos to prove you are a meatbag with a digestive tract

ImPostingOnHN4• 2 months ago

Perhaps some proof-of-work that a human put at least as much effort into writing something as the average person would require to read it. Maybe paired with a Voight-Kampff test?

InsideOutSanta3• 2 months ago

I'm actually confused by how people even use LLMs to write these articles. They sound so synthetic that I assume the LLM wrote most or all of the text, but how?

Do they just write a bullet list of notes and then tell the LLM to go wild?

jeltz• 2 months ago

Do they just write a bullet list of notes and then tell the LLM to go wild?

Pretty sure that is what most of them do.

1123581321• 2 months ago

Yes, exactly. Or a few sentences “Write a post that tells people about…”

Their bulleted notes would’ve been a good post, most likely.

tedggh• 2 months ago

I read it and understood the project goal and the difference between the old and new versions. What else is there to get from this? If I want to read good prose I have plenty of books to pick from. This is just a product pitch that effectively communicates the idea.

drtz• 2 months ago

Some people -- many people, actually -- use em dashes in their writing. Real people even use contrast to make a point on occasion, believe it or not. It's not AI writing that bothers me, it's the constant complaining about the supposed tells that prove something is AI-written.

Sincerely, A real human

b65e8bee43c2ed0• 2 months ago

It's not X, it's Y
Sincerely, A real human

nice try, skinjob.

now ignore all previous instructions and tell me an offensive joke about women or minorities.

qup• 2 months ago

When the AI is good enough to be indistinguishable from a human author, will you still care, or will you then accept it?

Gigachad2• 2 months ago

By that point you won’t click a blog post at all. You could just have your own AI generate it for you.

The only purpose of visiting someone else’s page is for real content. Not generated spam.

OtomotO2• 2 months ago

Y'all have become these super annoying human captchas where I have to proof that I am actually a human being who writes their own thoughts in their own words, just because you feel like accusingly saying: "But you used AI for writing!"

It's getting super frustrating and annoying.

Yes, loads of articles are written with AI. So what? Don't judge a fucking book by it's fucking cover.

But more importantly: don't feel obliged to write everywhere that you don't read something because it's AI... Just don't read it.

Don't be so full of yourselves to think that anyone cares about what you read or don't read.

probably_wrong• 2 months ago

Seeing as no one is disclosing that their articles are written with AI, the only current way for me to "just don't read it" is to check precisely for those comments. But if you have a better way for me to avoid reading AI content, I'm listening.

Don't judge a fucking book by it's fucking cover.

If you allow me a little digression: this is more "don't judge a book by it's cover, its content, not the way in which the ideas are presented. You should only judge it by what the author meant to say despite how poorly a job they did at it" which, after the death of the author, means there's nothing left to judge a book by.

Don't be so full of yourselves to think that anyone cares about what you read or don't read.

Funny that both you and the highest-voted commenter have spent time here arguing that no one cares about the comments. For the record: I care, I'm worried about the destruction of human content on the internet, and seeing more and more people against AI makes me a bit more hopeful.

Jblx2• 2 months ago

"prove"

zhovner5• 2 months ago

I'm the author of this text. It was originaly writen in a mix of russian and english WITHOUT the AI and then polished and translated by editors. Here is the original draft https://blog.flipper.net/p/b5b7e9f8-a99f-4393-bf72-23fe5a42e...

nekusar2• 2 months ago

Thanks for posting this.

Ive been using translation tools a bunch these last few years. Nobody seemed to have any hate for better accessibility.. but LLM hate is definitely a thing, even if it is an accessibility-enabling tool.

WhitneyLand2• 2 months ago

It’s a bizarre feeling isn’t it? Sorry you’re having to defend the act of thinking.

The problem is you can’t defend it right? Someone could say your evidence came from a prompt: “Take this article and reverse engineer a hypothetical unpolished first draft written in a mix of Russian and English”

I’m not sure what the right answer is here. Fwiw I have no doubt you wrote it unassisted.

handwarmers4• 2 months ago

Don't be discouraged by the comment section here. HN is a cesspool at this point.

qgin• 2 months ago

People hunting for AI text is reaching transvestigation levels

cobolcomesback3• 2 months ago

Sorry but I call bullshit. There’s em-dashes all over, even in your original text. Were the editors or translators an AI? Did the editors use AI to “polish” it?

The emojis used in the bullet points (which are missing from your original text, but were added in at some point) are also dead giveaways that AI was involved here.

hjkl0• 2 months ago

fwiw, it's the word "honestly" for me. or more specifically, "honestly?". it's the new em dash.

WhitneyLand2• 2 months ago

But you don’t really know that do you?

The other day I was criticized for posting a comment people thought was AI but was actually not.

I’m starting to notice that more often with others as well. Happens sometimes to those who were always using emdash, sometimes to those who happen to have traits that these machines themselves learned from how to write, and now they sound suspicious.

I don’t think this means we should never call out slop or lazy writing, but it does seem our ability to detect this stuff is on a spectrum. Some of it is obvious. But beyond a certain point, for example with this article, the signals can become too weak to make any strong claims.

It’s disconcerting to admit that we’ve come to a point where it’s possible to be completely fooled one way or the other by what’s human or AI. Lots of stuff we can still detect, and sometimes it’s obvious, but at the margins we can no longer reliably discriminate.

handwarmers4• 2 months ago

IMO the article was a great intro to the project and I really like how the thoughts were laid out. I got a lot of food for thought from it and I'd recommend that people read it. I don't care how it was written.

AI can produce interesting thoughts just like you can produce meaningless flamewars.

hdb23• 2 months ago

Odd, I just read the entire article and never felt that way at all. When I'm reading AI generated text, it triggers something in my lizard brain, but this didn't.

SeanDav• 2 months ago

I am far more relaxed about the actual or potential use of AI to help with delivering an article. As long as the content is accurate, then why care?

There are several valid reasons why AI could have been used - e.g. For translation or in cases where someone might be a tech ace but struggle to write a well structured article.

This is not a forum for literature or poetry. As long as it is readable and accurate, that is what counts.

In any case the AI genie is out and is only going to get better, until it becomes almost impossible to distinguish from 100% human text. If we are going to try police everything we read, that will just become an exercise in frustration. There are bigger things in the world to worry about.

mannanj2• 2 months ago

hmm so have we not figured out a way to certify human generated content from AI generated content yet?

briandw• 2 months ago

This is a style over substance argument. At least I understand what the project is really about now. Honestly the choice here is either poorly written english or AI writing. For a technical doc like this, Ill take the AI

msiemens• 2 months ago

the wording is not human at all

Or they are not a native speaker. I guess it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation". Use a LLM to clean up your own prose? Bad. Post your unedited (or self-edited) prose? I guess it is "not human".

rasz3• 2 months ago

Adding emdashes and emotes is not a clean up.

ThrowawayR2• 2 months ago

There are pre-LLM grammar checking tools that can be used to fix translation errors so the non-native speaker excuse is very thin.

____tom____• 2 months ago

Sounds 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-shape21• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Well 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.

salomonk_mur2• 2 months ago

Agreed. 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.

lxgr5• 2 months 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.)

jsmith45• 2 months ago

A combined MPU and MCU architecture isn't that exotic. ST microelectronics currently sells a single chip with that contains a two core Cortex A7 Microprocessor combined with a microcontroller. Admittedly more tightly integrated with ability to communicate via shared memory.

The "custom os" part could also be done easilly enough with the correct approach.

Specifically systemd has a less-known feature known as system extensions intended for basically exactly these sort of scenarios. These system-extensions are basically disk images containing files in /usr and/or /opt that can be dynamically overlaid on the existing filesystem (the intent is that these are purely additive). Systemd also intends that all os provided configuration live in /usr, with /etc existing only for machine specific or admin applied configuration. (And which should enabling overriding anything specified by the package or OS.)

System extensions when used default /opt and /usr to be read-only, but you can enable mutability if you having write routing directories or symlinks in the right spot.

So for userland this whole os profiles things could literally just be a set a of system-extensions, a distinct /etc folder, and distinct set of write redirect directories for each. An initramfs can simply bind mount the /etc directory, and add the correct write redirection symlnks before systemd starts. Rolling back a profile is simply wiping its write redirection and /etc folders. If you also want each to potentially have distinct device trees and/or customized kernels, that would need additional bootloader work on top, but nothing that feels too extreme.

Now in reality, since not everything support systemd style configuration, these OS profiles would probably need to construct an initial /etc by copying files from a base-os template, and then copying in anything included in the system extension images (which can have these as systemd will ignore such folders), but that is straightforward enough.

gwbas1c2• 2 months ago

They're very explicit that Flipper 1 isn't a "v2", but a device that targets different use cases.

petee2• 2 months ago

Thats terrible marketing then. Trying to leverage an unrelated device because it was popular is almost guaranteed to spurn those expecting the next flipper to be an improved flipper, not a "not-a-flipper"

Yokohiii• 2 months ago

The odd thing is that this disguises as some bare metal, hackable device.

Their TUI[1] is planned to use react(!), to share logic with their BrowserUI[2]. In the repos you can see how they struggle to get anything gpu backed done (which is required by the browser). Then falling back to wayland to do it for them. (This all seems a mess that LLMs can't figure out.)

Anyway, it does seem to end up in a custom linux desktop environment, with lots of sharp edges that makes it less hackable.

[1] https://docs.flipper.net/one/cpu-software/flipctl [2] entirely unclear why a terminal is insufficient for networked TUIs

csande17• 2 months ago

The 256×144 px screen requires pixel-level rendering, which standard TUI libraries (ncurses, etc.) cannot provide. The proposed solution is an HTML/CSS rendering engine running as a background daemon — a lightweight browser-based renderer that draws menus, popups, and UI components.

Truly, a design only an LLM could love.

Zababa• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Really worried about the pricing, will make or break.

h1fra• 2 months ago

I 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.

cess112• 2 months ago

Pretty 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• 2 months ago

Wow. That really doesn’t know what it is.

Love the idea of a hackable ethernet tool though.

lxgr5• 2 months ago

This 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.

fsflover5• 2 months ago

Here 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/

ihaveone• 2 months ago

"It's not this, it's that"

Once you see this phrase, you know it's AI written.

tekacs• 2 months ago

I'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...

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• 2 months ago

maybe repebble will pick it up again, sometime :) but i guess they're focused on more watches and a ring right now.

kesor4• 2 months ago

Instead 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

thrd• 2 months ago

They already tried it and got so much pain that they decided on an easier way.

rrvsh7• 2 months ago

Really? I'd love to see a link (not being facetious)

projektfu• 2 months ago

I have a couple NixOS machines but I never put "just" and "NixOS" in the same sentence.

__MatrixMan__• 2 months ago

I 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.

everforward2• 2 months ago

I 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.

kesor4• 2 months ago

It is just a Linux device. Other people will install NixOS on it anyway, and use specializations if the whole idea of swapping device roles in-and-out is viable. I don't really understand why would the team that already got a full plate decide to also invent a whole new Linux system while they're creating their hardware device.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 2 months ago

I daily drive nixos and I have no idea what specializations are and reading that wiki article didn't help. Am I just looking at a way to drop in chunks of predefined config?

kesor4• 2 months ago

It is a way to switch into a different configs. Just like when you switch to a new set of packages when you update your channels (or flake) and you get activated with the new versions. Same thing with specializations, just you can choose to have a different set of packages activated and enabled in each different specialization. Like having multiple different configs in one.

jagiammona• 2 months ago

I came here to say this, too.

leobuskin• 2 months ago

@zhovner, would you consider reverse engineering of the blobs as a temporary measure? in 2026 it's very doable and scales

zhovner5• 2 months ago

We'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• 2 months ago

Since 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

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• 2 months ago

Is 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.

zhovner5• 2 months 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.

Angostura• 2 months ago

If 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,

nekusar2• 2 months ago

Pavel 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• 2 months ago

Curious 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• 2 months ago

Why not FPGA?

In my experience... cost, availability and power.

segmondy• 2 months ago

All I can say is take my money!

moffkalast• 2 months 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.

lstodd2• 2 months ago

those stinky brits. they invented the whole arm thing just to piss rms off.

duskwuff2• 2 months ago

Using the RISC-V architecture doesn't imply fully open hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of RISC-V SoCs require firmware blobs for memory bringup and/or GPU.

garciansmith• 2 months ago

It'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.

swiftcoder3• 2 months ago

Also, what's a "survival desktop"?

A desktop you can stick in your back pocket and take on the run?

vladde• 2 months 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/

throwpoaster• 2 months ago

Protip: 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• 2 months ago

This 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• 2 months ago

That sounds amazing to me

mixtureoftakes• 2 months ago

So they made a phone?

idle_zealot• 2 months ago

More 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

jayd16• 2 months ago

A full Linux phone with an M.2 slot, Ethernet, hardware buttons, SDcard etc.

This is what you've all been asking for, right?

arm32• 2 months ago

I wish they took the Zero, added the Linux, SDR and 5G and the fancy case upgrade. Leave the AI out. That'd be sweet.

pstuart• 2 months ago

The AI is effectively free with the NPU/GPU just sitting there. I could see the possibility of models that are tuned to network/radio analysis that could enhance the value proposition.

MadrasThorn• 2 months ago

I have to agree baby steps.

They design a completely new product and suddenly announce a collaboration?

Not a fan but the new project looks cool.

Aurornis4• 2 months ago

I agree, but on the other hand I think most people who bought a Flipper Zero didn't really have a use for that either. The most commonly cited use case is doing something with RFID tags, which was already achievable with much cheaper hardware.

There's a big category of tools that people buy because they're cool and feel like they come with limitless possibilities, but then end up in a drawer. Raspberry Pi became this for a lot of people. It took a lot of years and a lot of market saturation before everyone realized that they're not a good deal if you have a specific need for a general purpose computer, despite their usefulness for specific applications.

The Flipper Zero felt like a tool with infinite possibilities, but it takes a while for most people to admit that they don't have infinite use cases, or that application-specific hardware can often do a better job for less. Exactly like when everyone was buying Raspberry Pis as general purpose computers. But it's a cool product and it had a lot of viral marketing going in its favor.

rrvsh7• 2 months ago

Do you look at your desktop and think what can I do with it? What an odd statement to make about a computer

modeless• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

I 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.

0xbadcafebee3• 2 months ago

If 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)

kwar13• 2 months ago

looks amazing. i just hope it doesn't cost a fortune. the portable hdmi alone makes it worth it to me.

Fokamul• 2 months ago

What 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.

daft_pink• 2 months ago

I 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!

Deprogrammer92• 2 months ago

I would REALLY like to see the Piratebox project added into this amazing all in one device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PirateBox

glitchc2• 2 months ago

Do all closed blobs need to be open? Why pick RK3567 when RK3562 is already supported in Debian?

Deprogrammer92• 2 months ago

What about LoRa (Long Range)? that would be perfect for the Flipper Zero!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa

mschuster914• 2 months ago

LoRa 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• 2 months ago

LoRa 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• 2 months ago

You can get LoRa concentrators in m.2 form factor, so it shouldn't be that difficult to implement with what they are announcing.

aaln• 2 months ago

This like the most ambitious yet realistic open hardware project ever. Props for opening this up to the community to assist.

cdnsteve• 2 months ago

This is like a combination of a Sony Walkman meets Rasberry PI meets the prepper in me. Perfect.

robbiet480• 2 months ago

I just want them to finally ship Busy Bar https://busy.app/

hstaab• 2 months ago

This project is fun, though I can’t shake the feeling Lofree, Sharge and friends could do it better for < half the price.

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

I remember that! They still haven't shipped it? It's been over a year apparently, ouch.

xbar• 2 months ago

Flipper 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• 2 months ago

is iButton still a thing?

inventor77772• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months 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.

0xbadcafebee3• 2 months ago

Re: 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.

meatmanek• 2 months ago

AI works great on it.

Define AI, and define "great"

inventor77772• 2 months ago

True, but the use case that Flipper shows off is a chatbot style AI, which is different from the ML type stuff you're talking about. I find small AI chatbots to just not be very helpful for technical applications, thus my comment.

Of course, if you had a custom trained one that's different but then that brings me back to how are you gonna type with it easily?

tonymet• 2 months ago

I’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.

ourcat2• 2 months ago

The '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'?

ourcat2• 2 months ago

Actually, 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

klik99• 2 months 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.

swiftcoder3• 2 months ago

I don't really get why they didn't go with HDMI alt mode here, and stick with usb-c ports

rincebrain3• 2 months ago

They 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.

arjie2• 2 months ago

I 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-shape21• 2 months ago

This 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/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• 2 months ago

A 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.

mrandish2• 2 months ago

to help us polish RK3576 support

Having a few various RPi's (as one does), when they've been out of stock, I've looked into the huge variety of similar SBCs (OrangePi, etc) which can be even faster, with more ports and features for around the same money as an equivalent RPi. Many are powered by various RockChip SoCs, which extend up to desktop replacement-level, but the Linux driver support is usually lacking in some important way.

It's not Linux's fault, it's a small group of volunteers struggling with little manufacturer support or documentation. I don't get why RockChip doesn't budget the money in the business plan to fund full driver support for at least some of their more capable chips. I guess maybe too many of these chips are used in non-OS contexts to be worth it?

ianstormtaylor• 2 months ago

If anyone’s wondering why this replier is so angry, it’s because they spent a lot of time arguing with people further down the comment section over whether this article is too heavily written by AI. (I'd say it is.)

It probably irked them to find the top comment had no mention of AI, but is still getting at the same root problem… the article is 2-3x longer than it could be, with lots of rambling and repetition, so it makes for a frustrating read.

hluska• 2 months ago

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?

Or it kind of feels like if a project can’t be ‘assed’ to communicate clearly, that’s an issue.

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

It's with developing open software for it - there's a diagram on the page that shows lots of the BSP components are fully functional using the closed source versions and "partially functional" using open source code.

arjie2• 2 months ago

Thank you for reading and extracting that for me.

Edit: and to the sibling commenters as well

anthomtb• 2 months ago

Search for the "Developer Portal – let's build together" heading.

muxdervish3• 2 months ago

In a classic Flipper Devices move, they offload once again work to the community. This time, its even the community trying to parse the post to begin with. They're just never there to give "back" and all work is always one direction: towards them. Its bad form to make your own community feel less like "community" and more like "free labor" to exploit.

TingPing• 2 months ago

They literally paid Collabora to do FOSS work?

kristopolous• 2 months ago

they've always come across as pretty scummy. I know that saying this makes people go frowny face but I think it's obvious.

gortok• 2 months ago

Funny enough I came here to say this. I had expected it to be a call to crowd-fund their initiative, but instead it had no clear CTA at all.

Heck, if nothing else, the lack of a clear CTA would be on brand with OSS Marketing.

milesvp3• 2 months ago

ditch binary blobs entirely

I agree there is not much of a clear call to action. As a firmware engineer who has worked with bluetooth amd wifi, this is a key phrase. It’s also a big fantasy. FCC compliance is a big headache, and part of why people buy a given chip is the FCC certification comes with it. For instance, if I throw an ESP32 into a product and use wifi, I don’t need further certification. That can only happen if “there is no way” you can make the radio do what the FCC doesn’t allow. A general stategy for this is for the company to give a binary blob for radio related functions that limits the radio capabilities that you need to link to in your final build.

So that means there is almost zero chance the chip makers will ever publicly move away from binary blobs. At best they might quietly support reverse engineering efforts by open source driver projects.

That said, I would love it if all the chips I worked with had a battle hardened non vendor alternative. One major downside to these binary blobs is that they can be buggy. We were recently able ro rewrite our Bluetooth firmware to use an opensource version which greatly sped up the data throughput since it didn’t have a bug that killed byte transfer. But we don’t use this code lightly. FCC violations are crazy expensive and not something you take lightly.

JacobKfromIRC• 2 months ago

Would you happen to know where the requirement that "“there is no way” you can make the radio do what the FCC doesn’t allow" comes from? I found an FCC compliance guide [1] but it's very long and not easily searchable as far as I can tell.

If there has to be no way to change the radio's functionality, would that mean that simply using a binary blob wouldn't be enough. Wouldn't device vendors have to sign it as well?

Also, that makes me wonder about the one Wi-Fi chip I know of that does have free firmware: AR9271 [2]. I wonder what makes that situation different. Maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's firmware on a separate chip stored in ROM.

[1] http://www.fcc.gov/documents/compliance-guide [2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/AR9271

nullc• 2 months ago

if I throw an ESP32 into a product and use wifi, I don’t need further certification

Sounds like nonsense to me, at least from past reading of the regulation. These devices are supposed to be type-accepted-- your entire product is supposed to be certified.

Is the FCC really allowing this? (not that I'm complaining, the FCC certification burden is outrageous).

lambda• 2 months ago

Near the top:

  TL;DR With Flipper One, we're reimagining what a Linux cyberdeck can be — it's a huge 
  project. We're opening up the development process and asking the community for help.

Then later:

  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.

And:

  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.

Then later:

  We're also hiring a Developer Portal Manager — someone to act as a proxy between 
  our dev team and the community, help shape the Developer Portal, and engage with 
  contributors. Apply for the Developer Portal & Community Manager role.

Then they go into a lot more of the technical details of the process, with a few specific callouts of places they want help.

  If you're into wireless work — auditing, monitoring, injection, mesh, anything — 
  we invite you to come test it with us: read the Wi-Fi Testing page on the 
  Developer Portal and help us decide whether this chipset is the right call, 
  or whether we should look elsewhere before we lock in the design.

I will say though: a lot of this has the feel of being LLM generated or "polished", which has the effect of making the brain kind of slide off of it. I know their team doesn't consist of native English speakers, so it's common for non-native speakers to use LLMs to try to polish their writing, but I find that the actual result is to make the writing have a just kind of bland personality that makes it harder to follow.

wepple• 2 months ago

It was recently edited. I assume they saw this feedback

SpaceNoodled• 2 months ago

It seems quite clear from reading the page: they are crowdsourcing development.

dcdc123• 2 months ago

  Links
  The Flipper Devices team is small. The project is large. We can't do this without you. Here's how you can get involved:

  Flipper One Developer Portal — the entry point into every sub-project. Browse sub-projects, find tasks tagged help wanted, read the contribution guides, and subscribe to our developer-focused weekly digest.
  X.com/Flipper_RND — project updates and announcements.

Eduard2• 2 months ago

for a fan you show little reading patience

kcoul• 2 months ago

Maybe they wanted to see if any individual efforts piqued the interest of the reader base. In my case, it was FlipCTL that did so. I definitely think a generic library for hardware button interfaces to a menu system not requiring windowing is a great resource for resource-constrained embedded projects, so I'm looking forward to contributing to this.

ghostly_s2• 2 months ago

Same, but the content on the page they linked for it and the design choices made in the hardware don't give me the impression that they are seriously interested in developing this aspect of the project (unless someone shows up who's willing to do all the work for free without pushing back on any of the preconditions they've set in stone with the hardware design, of course!).

ChuckMcM• 2 months ago

Which is kinda on brand right? The Discord community is similarly challenging.

As I read it they are simply out of their depth in terms of what their aspirations are and what they feel they are able to accomplish. The goal of "replacing binary blobs" with open source is a good one, I'm all for it. But my experience is that "binary blob" means "licensed IP, protected by patents and NDAs." So pretty challenging. You have to 1) reverse engineer something that someone has protected (potential DMCA violations), and 2) publish it without getting sued (just generally annoying even if it is an understood risk).

I'd love to see the Flipper one get built, I'd certainly buy one. That the Rockchip folks are unwilling to disclose to them sufficient documentation for them to re implement their binary blobs from scratch is a huge red flag.

ghostly_s2• 2 months ago

If you're trying to convince people to contribute free labor to your for-profit product, you at least need to disclose what kind of MSRP you're shooting for -- why would someone help you build something that ends up being nowhere near a reasonable price point for the use-case that attracted them to it?

petterroea• 2 months ago

This 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

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

I'd wait to see the price before declaring you'll buy it!

ulrischa• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

Seems 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.

petee2• 2 months ago

Based 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• 2 months ago

I'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• 2 months ago

What 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• 2 months ago

Is there somewhere I could read about the ongoing flipper zero issues?

Ronak11• 2 months ago

Where to get this flipper zero in India

muxdervish3• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

The 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• 2 months ago

That’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• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

Was thinking of making something like this with an eink board and an esp32.

Schlagbohrer2• 2 months ago

This 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• 2 months ago

I 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.

mrandish2• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

The 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• 2 months ago

Getting 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• 2 months ago

It 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• 2 months ago

Why 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• 2 months 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!

Eduard2• 2 months ago

I love the Tux with mainland China military helmet picture. please opensource too

rasz3• 2 months ago

UK registered company (Flipper Technologies Ltd), UK HQ (SE10 0AX), US (Delaware) registered front (Flipper Devices Inc)

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

and unable to B2B in EU/UK? Will any of my money go to russia when buying Flipper One?

dsign• 2 months ago

Cool 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• 2 months ago

Aww. 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• 2 months ago

ive been just pushing games to flipper zero

palata• 2 months ago

I 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.

a1o3• 2 months ago

I 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.

zem2• 2 months ago

that 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.

a1o3• 2 months ago

Yeah. 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.

leebz• 2 months ago

You guys should talk to the guys at seam.co Great team and they are breaking through vendor issues.

okamiueru• 2 months ago

CTRL+F for LLM, check. This is the litmus test for knowing this will fail since those involved have the wrong priorities.

danborn26• 2 months ago

Glad 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.

amelius• 2 months ago

Can I use this tool to measure bit errors in high speed USB communications?

osk9934• 2 months ago

So 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• 2 months ago

Almost 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• 2 months ago

I 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.

Schlagbohrer2• 2 months ago

After 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• 2 months ago

There 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

nivethan• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

I'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.

canada_dry• 2 months ago

Looking 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• 2 months ago

Petition to update the mascot and rename to Flipper Juan

wre_lorerreorl• 2 months ago

I 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

Flipper One – we need your help

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