I just tried to order the Wifi devboard and got a similar response (I live in the US). I ordered the actual Flipper Zero a few weeks ago but forgot to order the accessories. I hope I can still get them at some point.
I'm still waiting for my Kickstarter version (suposideley by July 26th) and as one of the first few backers I would hope I receive mine before others can just go buy one...
Yes I live in Switzerland but it's not at the edge or the world. Most have received theirs already but Swiss people had to wait a while...
Still waiting for mine as well. I'm in Singapore and it's apparently the last region to be served. I have yet to get a shipping notification. I hope to get it soon though.
Currently they don't list USA as a place with availability.
From the shop page:
Shipping in August 2022. Currently available only for:
Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Vatican City, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom
This front page seems to include a lot of info - it had a ‘Sub-1 GHz Transceiver’, then it has ‘125kHz RFID’:
> Low-frequency proximity cardsThis type of card is widely used in old access control systems around the world. It's pretty dumb, stores only an N-byte ID and has no authentication mechanism, allowing it to be read, cloned and emulated by anyone. A 125 kHz antenna is located on the bottom of Flipper — it can read EM-4100 and HID Prox cards, save them to memory to emulate later.
And
> Flipper Zero has a built-in NFC module (13.56 MHz). Along with the 125kHz module, it turns Flipper into an ultimate RFID device operating in both Low Frequency (LF) and High Frequency (HF) ranges. The NFC module supports all the major standards, such as NXP Mifare.
Why "yikes"? I don't think that's common anywhere, but the intersection between "hardware hackers who uses Flipper Zero" and "people with subdermal implants" is probably bigger than the intersection of "people not being hardware hackers" and "people with subdermal implants"
Probably not, but it depends on the garage door. I used to be able to open my neighbor's garage door with the remote for my own garage door. There's also the opensesame attack (replay attack, search for it). You can perform such with a YTS-0 (Yard Stick One). I still ordered a Flipper Zero. Its cute as hell, probably has a neat community, and its more portable than my PortaPack + HackRF or Proxmark + Blueshark.
Samy Kamkar who did Opensesame on the Radica Girltech also did a DefCon presentation about attacking rolling code remotes as well: http://samy.pl/defcon2015/
How do you get the details of the remotes you're replacing with it? Scanning through frequencies? Don't they have "secrets" for the actual ACK that lets your in and garage doors rotate through codes do they not? Just curious.
> Don't they have "secrets" for the actual ACK that lets your in and garage doors rotate through codes do they not?
Remote door controls are painfully dumb and relied on the absence of affordable software-defined receivers and especially transmitters. With most of them you can set the code via binary DIP switches at the back and that's it. No replay protection, no nothing, if you're lucky the receiver has a brute-force detection.
There's a few tools for figuring out radio stuff. The first is super simple, it just scans through the frequencies and tells you which is the strongest. Most devices will put this in their manual but it's nice to not need to have to look it up.
Once you know the frequency one option is to just take a raw sample at ____megahertz and play it back on demand. This doesn't work for some radio signals because they use rolling codes and it's also a bit inefficient (be VERY VERY careful using a Flipper with a car key fob, because they can sometimes go out of sync and you can't open your car afterwards)
The good news is, for many types of radio signals, the flipper can also determine the protocol and what digital data is being sent- so instead of playing back a 2 second sample of me holding down the "power" button on my lamp's remote, it knows it can just broadcast 0x1234 using protocol XYZ.
NFC and RFID devices are basically plug & play, although only a subset are supposed.
> (be VERY VERY careful using a Flipper with a car key fob, because they can sometimes go out of sync and you can't open your car afterwards)
FYI many cars with "keyless" entry have a traditional keyhole hidden under a piece of trim around the door handle and a key (sometimes plastic) hidden inside the fob; sometimes the key is part of the ring for a keyring, and can be released by pressing on the manufacturer's logo or inserting a paperclip in a hole.
ZigBee, Thread and a few others use IEEE 802.15.4 which allows three bands: 868/915/2450 MHz. According to the FlipperZero homepage, it supports two out these three bands: 868 and 915 MHz. So depending on your device, it might work with them too.
I just got mine a couple of days ago. I'm really impressed with how well its built and how polished the software is. It is much more polished than any other similar (useful!) hacking/debugging hobbyist devices I've bought. Its clear a lot of thought and care has gone into it.
It's great for beginners as it has a huge and friendly community behind it and you can easily work your way up from beginner to more intermediate/advanced.
Depends what your trying to do with it to be honest. If you just wanna use the i2c/spi/uart stuff you can probably handle it. If you can plug some cables in, at worst soldering cables or headers to a board and can find the pins/pads themselves you’ll be fine.
At worst if you wanna try it out without spending so much money you can try out the bus pirate from dangerous prototypes it’s only ~27.
Flipper zero is more aimed at wireless hacking. Which is very cool, it's a fairly unexplored area of hacking (due to traditionally high barrier of entry), but is a subset of "hardware hacking".
For general hardware hacking I'd get a pirate bus ($30), and a saelae logic clone (cheap). Maybe a nice cheap oscilloscope (but they go for $300+), but logic clone can get you mostly there.
I just got my Pokit Pro multimeter in this week and it has an oscilloscope feature. Good for up to 600V. Not currently sure I would recommend it but Ive not found anything bad on it. It is almost $200 now though.
Given all the comments here praising the build quality and conspicuous lack of comments talking about the actual things it can do, I'm guessing it's fairly difficult to use for anything beyond admiring it's build quality
the quickest hit of functionality is duplicating buttons from your remotes.
Next it's fun to mess with the screens at the pub.
Somewhere along the way, realizing that someone out there has the remote you lost long ago and all you really want is an on/off button and now you can get one.
For me so far it's a universal remote with a kind of weird interface.
I have one too. I think they are taking preorders and engaging their contract manufacturers when it makes sense. Took at least a month to actually get to me.
They did a kickstarter two years ago just before the microchip shortage. They posted frequent blog updates about their process on how to continue manufacturing while adapting to the shortage and swapping out components when available. Shipping to all countries just started a couple months ago.
perhaps a different reward tier for the kickstarter? it was a massive success. if you check the comment / karma history for people saying they have them they're not fake accounts.
I was able to get a US shipment of it to me about a month ago (not via KS), the store has had small batches of restocks available every once in a while.
No actually this depends on your location. I was an early baker and I am still waiting for my device in the EU, while they already shipped it to ppl who pre-orderd after the kickstarter was finished.
Like ixtli said, I am an early kickstarter backer from two years. They got crushed from the microchip shortage and fulfilled all backers before continuing on to preorders.
Mine arrived earlier today. I was one of the backers of their Kickstarter campaign, which I think ran two years ago. They've shipped thousands of these already.
Unless somebody disassembles it and reverse engineers all embedded code, we can't be sure this is not a Trojan horse from Russia. Wouldn't put it past them.
Definitely not something I'd import into my country.
Well don't use your credit card. What else are they gonna get? There is nothing illegal about a wifi dev device and they aren't hiding anything. You can order it anywhere if you're willing to pay
Just wasted 20 minutes trying to figure out how to order. It kept saying no shipping rates found for my address. Turns out they aren't allowing US orders at the moment but they don't actually say that on the website you just get a cryptic shipping rates message. Not the greatest experience.
As someone who just ordered one to the EU, you people in the US finally get a taste of your own medicine :)
I can't even recount how many times I've wanted to order something, and not until the final step before doing the payment they put up a "Sorry, we only accept orders within the US & Canada".
I'd like to order one as well (EU, too), but I'm a bit repelled by the $35 tax on top of the price. Did you pay the same tax? Did you research whether you'll have to pay customs fees as well?
Order total: ~$300, where ~$50 is taxes and ~$50 is shipping. I did not research any customs fees, as I've been craving the device since I came across this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31534257 (2 months ago), so don't really care about the custom fees.
Not great but I’d cut them some slack. Designing hardware, software, a billing system, a website, production, shipping… I’m part of a two man hardware company and it’s a miracle it’s even possible.
The web is funny tho - an order page is just an order page - if it was built by a trillion dollar company or a startup barely paying rent - we go in with the same expectations.
Does that mean this is legal to buy in the us, considering the sanctions against russia for the ukraine war? I want to buy one, but the legal status seems unclear to me.
I'm glad that's hackable. I have an extra class ham radio license and can play with some additional frequencies, and want to at least have the option to enable them.
I've been rather curious as to what the license would legally allow one to do with this. Should this end up applying for some of the capable but disabled frequencies?
Context: I have a flipper zero and have been thinking about testing for amateur radio licenses.
I'm not sure, but a big part of the reason for having amateur radio licenses is for experimentation and learning. I have no idea what I'd actually do with those frequencies yet.
It's fine as it's not mass produced single purpose hardware like your wifi router. Just don't use it to break into your neighbors garage and you'll be fine and don't hook it up to a 500 watt wireless repeater/amplifier.
I just emailed support asking about this, will post here the response when I get it.
Update: Flipper says they'll be back in stock for US, Canada, and Australia in September but did not provide a mechanism for getting alerted when this happens.
I've had one since April. The company, while established in the US, consists of many people who use English as a second language, and who have been under considerable difficulties with being a hardware startup servicing the world market during a pandemic.
I have a passing interest in wireless hacking but I have no idea if I have the skillset to make any use of it. How useful is this for someone with zero pen testing and/or wireless experience?
I'm curious to know what it would take to hack my garage door or key fob for my car
i have developed firmware for a few ism band products and basically had to create a few scrappy one off tools for testing and debugging. something like this ready to go is totally killer to have from a rf software standpoint too. but yea, rf is everywhere. key fobs. in your tires for tpms, garage doors, crappy bluetooth products whatever. i could see this being useful in many cases
Out of the box it supports limited raw rf capture and replay. Your garage door (probably) and your car key fob use rolling codes which change each time the button is pressed. This is not supported, and likely won’t be in the official firmware.
I’ve used mine to make copies of all rf and ir remotes in my home. Fans, tv, bidet, AC, etc.
There was a toilet in Japan I couldn't for the life of me work out how to flush, I spent ages in this bathroom checking for buttons here and there. Only after I had given up and walked away from the toiled did it flush.
Story time! Google is (was) famous for having Toto Washlet bidet seats in its restrooms, which have wireless control panels attached to the stalls.
New building opens up, vendor screws up and the control panel in stall #1 is programmed to control the Washlet in stall #2. Cue the predictable (and hilarious) email thread on #<building>-misc, along with a whole lot of memes.
FWIW I've used mine to duplicate both of our car key fobs (middle 2000's Mazda and middle-2010's Jeep) so it'll probably be very dependent on make/model/age as to whether it uses rolling codes.
Slight correction: There are two modes of RF Capture available : "Read RAW" and "Read".
"Read RAW" does exactly what it says on the label: Captures a raw stream, based on the specified frequency and demodulation.
"Read" captures, decodes and attempts to interpret the signal capture. The FlipperZero has a large built in database of brands + models of RF devices, and a database of KeeLoq master keys.
For rolling remotes that are KeeLoq based, with known keys, the Flipper can most definitely decode / decrypt rolling codes, and generate the next in the sequence.
TL;DR: Handles fixed + Rolling codes, via built in database of keys + models.
Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that more than 1% of buyers will use this for anything else than changing channels on TVs displayed at Walmart, and feel like Mr Robot for a few minutes.
I ordered a second one when I found out that there was already some code written for some a SubGhz radio intercom. Currently only available at the command line interface (yes, you can ssh to it while connected via usb) but shouldn't be too difficult to build some kind of interface for it.
As I was writing this, it occurs to me that you could might be able to capture a bluetooth signal with one, sent it via radio to another that might not be in line of sight, then retransmit from another.
The limit on what you're thinking is that the devices inside this are NOT the latest and greatest.
Finally a kickstarter i backed that keeps up to the promises. Got mine last week and it does everything that was promised and keeps constantly being improved.
PSA: the main benefit of this s the ease of use, due to a lcd display, buttons and software support.
If you're familiar with arduino/esp* programming, you can get the components (eg. esp32, cc1101, nfc reader, and infrared transciever) for a lot cheaper on aliexpress or your local reseller, and all of those things are in stock.
(or in other words, if you're one of those people who buy stuff like this, play with it for 2 minutes and then put it in a drawer, and now you're in the middle of thinking about how you could open your neighbours garage to mess with them... well, you can do it chaper)
"Usability" of software/hardware is often the biggest barrier for people looking to learn these kinds of skills. I applaud their effort, I would love to see more development and hacking tools take this approach.
Certainly you can spend time reading datashets, ordering components on aliexpress, soldering them together, going back to square 1 every time you burn something, etc.
Alternatively, you can pay a tad more and get everything in a single device with a nice interface.
This device lowers the entry barrier into hardware for software people.
This just make me want to make my own little Arduino device. I bet it would be more fun than buying a thing someone else made that I don't have a real use for.
Other comments mention how this was a Kickstarter that took two years to come to fruition and the supply chain is listed as the culprit. No one else has mentioned that while us backers were waiting, they sent out newsletters that detailed some of the complexities they were dealing with. Getting the case right took several iterations, and when you feel it in your hand you can tell that they took time to get it right.
You're right that one could put most of the functionality together, but not in a package that you're gonna toss in your pocket for EDC.
> Other users have provided the link, but my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up, especially when the commenter is singled out by name. People forget that this is a real person. He also happens to be a first-class HN contributor, and has been for many years.
> I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here.
People make fun of this post on account of Dropbox having been a commercial success, but the first points are still valid (and even more true today, with modern tooling) that FOSS self-hosted solutions are far better, more flexible, and serve as a learning/building opportunity - something the 2022 world of vendor lock-in, dumbed-down "user friendly" solutions, and vast data collection sorely needs more of.
They were also very right about one critical point:
> without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Dropbox was initially pitched as a free service, which was absolutely not sustainable, and someone would have been right to be very skeptical about the underlying business model. People might not have been quite as enthusiastic if they'd said from the beginning "oh, and it'll be $100/year for the rest of your life, or until you get your shit together and move your data elsewhere".
It was generally an in good faith comment specifically about the application.
The relevant bit to this is the “quite trivially” do X, Y, and Z non trivial thing.
Technical people often underestimate the value of good UX, generally there’s a lot of demand for it. That’s also where a lot of the value is in making something good. He also acknowledges as much in his reply to Drew.
In this case the “main benefit” of the flipper being ease of use, software, and hardware vs. some random components off of Ali express just reminds me of that.
You can build most of the things you own yourself. It's just that sometimes it's a) not worth your time, you'd rather skip the initial step and start building around the ready tool b) this thing actually looks and feels much better than you garage kit. Some people do care.
This is like the usual flame war about macbooks vs everything else.
All I see is it remove the motivation barrier and just create waste for the sake of creating waste. Another devices that people buy, tinker with it a few hours then sit in a drawer for years until it will be binned.
More than a nice hacking tool, this is a pollution and waste of resources tool. There is nothing positive about that.
The source is written in C. The provide a docker container that lets you simply download the repo, make changes, compile and then load to your flipper.
I hadn't actually written an original line of C code since the 1980s. After a couple evenings of following one of the tutorials, I was able to create some new functionality to a button that currently doesn't do anything.
At least one person on the Discord (Flipper Devices, I think) watches when someone mentions how they think it would be cool to make changes to the firmware, When that happens, they upload a PDF of the K&R book "The C Programming Language" to the chat.
Yep, there are some videos of people using it to open the charging ports. I found the wireless "commands" (or whatever the correct terminology for it is) on github a while back before I received mine, but haven't gotten around to testing it out on local teslas here
266 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadEdit: According to their forums, "There are no US region (R02) flippers in stock at the moment."
https://forum.flipperzero.one/t/unable-to-place-order/4251/4
Yes I live in Switzerland but it's not at the edge or the world. Most have received theirs already but Swiss people had to wait a while...
I've waited for 2.5 years, so what's a few weeks more =)
Hope you get it soon.
I was confused by this until I saw you were Swiss. Then I realized it was just a bit of involuntary yodeling.
From the shop page:
Shipping in August 2022. Currently available only for: Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Vatican City, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom
> Low-frequency proximity cardsThis type of card is widely used in old access control systems around the world. It's pretty dumb, stores only an N-byte ID and has no authentication mechanism, allowing it to be read, cloned and emulated by anyone. A 125 kHz antenna is located on the bottom of Flipper — it can read EM-4100 and HID Prox cards, save them to memory to emulate later.
And
> Flipper Zero has a built-in NFC module (13.56 MHz). Along with the 125kHz module, it turns Flipper into an ultimate RFID device operating in both Low Frequency (LF) and High Frequency (HF) ranges. The NFC module supports all the major standards, such as NXP Mifare.
There's a small group in the US that does this kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindhouse_Wetware
My front gate, my parents front gate, and any other front gate (check your local laws before doing this).
Controlling a lamp I have (works with any device I've tried that uses 433mhz)
Backup remote for my TV (the Flipper infrared UI is kinda clunky but it works)
Backing copies of NFC cards
And most importantly, you can use it to turn the pages during a PowerPoint presentation
Ah, so it's a business expense!
Remote door controls are painfully dumb and relied on the absence of affordable software-defined receivers and especially transmitters. With most of them you can set the code via binary DIP switches at the back and that's it. No replay protection, no nothing, if you're lucky the receiver has a brute-force detection.
Once you know the frequency one option is to just take a raw sample at ____megahertz and play it back on demand. This doesn't work for some radio signals because they use rolling codes and it's also a bit inefficient (be VERY VERY careful using a Flipper with a car key fob, because they can sometimes go out of sync and you can't open your car afterwards)
The good news is, for many types of radio signals, the flipper can also determine the protocol and what digital data is being sent- so instead of playing back a 2 second sample of me holding down the "power" button on my lamp's remote, it knows it can just broadcast 0x1234 using protocol XYZ.
NFC and RFID devices are basically plug & play, although only a subset are supposed.
(Except for that suspiciously cheap gadget you got from AliExpress which shows up in the FCC database as an iPhone 4S...)
FYI many cars with "keyless" entry have a traditional keyhole hidden under a piece of trim around the door handle and a key (sometimes plastic) hidden inside the fob; sometimes the key is part of the ring for a keyring, and can be released by pressing on the manufacturer's logo or inserting a paperclip in a hole.
haven't explored anything else
What is also amazing is the community, there are already custom firmware, extension and guides
You can find a list here: https://github.com/djsime1/awesome-flipperzero
It's great for beginners as it has a huge and friendly community behind it and you can easily work your way up from beginner to more intermediate/advanced.
At worst if you wanna try it out without spending so much money you can try out the bus pirate from dangerous prototypes it’s only ~27.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate
For general hardware hacking I'd get a pirate bus ($30), and a saelae logic clone (cheap). Maybe a nice cheap oscilloscope (but they go for $300+), but logic clone can get you mostly there.
hantek handheld for 190.
Next it's fun to mess with the screens at the pub.
Somewhere along the way, realizing that someone out there has the remote you lost long ago and all you really want is an on/off button and now you can get one.
For me so far it's a universal remote with a kind of weird interface.
https://greatscottgadgets.com/ubertoothone/
perhaps a different reward tier for the kickstarter? it was a massive success. if you check the comment / karma history for people saying they have them they're not fake accounts.
Later on, they had some sporadic availability, got my second one ordered and it has arrived in the last week or two.
So far it's mostly a clunky universal remote but I've started relearning C so that I can write firmware customizations.
You can also buy it in EU from an official reseller, with same day shipping depending on your location: https://lab401.com/products/flipper-zero
I dont know what happend with the shipping management, I hope I will receive my device soon.
I'd also like a citation.
Who? And what are they claiming. It does seem like flipper zero enables mischief but a honeypot?
It's open source and it was started on Kickstarter before even having a website.
Can you point out even one?
I have used it successfully in the past to place and receive three different orders of flippers and accessories.
I can't even recount how many times I've wanted to order something, and not until the final step before doing the payment they put up a "Sorry, we only accept orders within the US & Canada".
Do these same fraudsters hit other EU online sites as much as they hit US based sites?
---
Shipping in August 2022. Currently available only for:
Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Vatican City, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom
More countries coming in September.
The web is funny tho - an order page is just an order page - if it was built by a trillion dollar company or a startup barely paying rent - we go in with the same expectations.
Disclaimer: I know some of the employees at Flipper. And a few Russian backers who still didn't get their device.
I found it interesting that their Careers/Jobs page is in Cyrillic. Flipper Devices is not looking for me. https://www.flipperdevices.com/jobs
Context: I have a flipper zero and have been thinking about testing for amateur radio licenses.
Update: Flipper says they'll be back in stock for US, Canada, and Australia in September but did not provide a mechanism for getting alerted when this happens.
https://blog.flipperzero.one/
I'm curious to know what it would take to hack my garage door or key fob for my car
New building opens up, vendor screws up and the control panel in stall #1 is programmed to control the Washlet in stall #2. Cue the predictable (and hilarious) email thread on #<building>-misc, along with a whole lot of memes.
I'm not convinced that there is a 'non destructive' method to find that out though.
There’s a pairing mode you put the car in and it accepts the new keyfob and probably records it’s seed / counter / etc at that point.
"Read RAW" does exactly what it says on the label: Captures a raw stream, based on the specified frequency and demodulation.
"Read" captures, decodes and attempts to interpret the signal capture. The FlipperZero has a large built in database of brands + models of RF devices, and a database of KeeLoq master keys.
For rolling remotes that are KeeLoq based, with known keys, the Flipper can most definitely decode / decrypt rolling codes, and generate the next in the sequence.
TL;DR: Handles fixed + Rolling codes, via built in database of keys + models.
As I was writing this, it occurs to me that you could might be able to capture a bluetooth signal with one, sent it via radio to another that might not be in line of sight, then retransmit from another.
The limit on what you're thinking is that the devices inside this are NOT the latest and greatest.
[1] https://flipperzero.one/faq
[2] https://www.flipperdevices.com/
LinkedIn indicates 15 of their 16 employees are based in Russia.
You aren't in control of your own net access?
> LinkedIn indicates 15 of their 16 employees are based in Russia.
What difference does it make? According to Linkedin I live in Falklands, that doesn't mean anything.
src: personally know the lead guy.
If you're familiar with arduino/esp* programming, you can get the components (eg. esp32, cc1101, nfc reader, and infrared transciever) for a lot cheaper on aliexpress or your local reseller, and all of those things are in stock.
(or in other words, if you're one of those people who buy stuff like this, play with it for 2 minutes and then put it in a drawer, and now you're in the middle of thinking about how you could open your neighbours garage to mess with them... well, you can do it chaper)
This device lowers the entry barrier into hardware for software people.
We need MORE flipper zero type projects!
This goes for every facet of the economy and is called 'specialization'. :)
https://xkcd.com/2648/
"It's hard to believe, but lots of kids today ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules."
You're right that one could put most of the functionality together, but not in a package that you're gonna toss in your pocket for EDC.
> I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here.
The full comment by dang has more context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281
People make fun of this post on account of Dropbox having been a commercial success, but the first points are still valid (and even more true today, with modern tooling) that FOSS self-hosted solutions are far better, more flexible, and serve as a learning/building opportunity - something the 2022 world of vendor lock-in, dumbed-down "user friendly" solutions, and vast data collection sorely needs more of.
> without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Dropbox was initially pitched as a free service, which was absolutely not sustainable, and someone would have been right to be very skeptical about the underlying business model. People might not have been quite as enthusiastic if they'd said from the beginning "oh, and it'll be $100/year for the rest of your life, or until you get your shit together and move your data elsewhere".
The relevant bit to this is the “quite trivially” do X, Y, and Z non trivial thing.
Technical people often underestimate the value of good UX, generally there’s a lot of demand for it. That’s also where a lot of the value is in making something good. He also acknowledges as much in his reply to Drew.
In this case the “main benefit” of the flipper being ease of use, software, and hardware vs. some random components off of Ali express just reminds me of that.
This is like the usual flame war about macbooks vs everything else.
More than a nice hacking tool, this is a pollution and waste of resources tool. There is nothing positive about that.
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/mike-murray2/homemade-t...
If you want to open garage doors, you just need a cc1101 and an esp8266
https://github.com/gusgorman402/RFmoggy
If you want to clone rfid cards, you need one of the cheap readers, an empty card an an arduino
https://github.com/miguelbalboa/rfid/blob/master/examples/RF...
Yes, it's ugly, but it's cheap.
I hadn't actually written an original line of C code since the 1980s. After a couple evenings of following one of the tutorials, I was able to create some new functionality to a button that currently doesn't do anything.
At least one person on the Discord (Flipper Devices, I think) watches when someone mentions how they think it would be cool to make changes to the firmware, When that happens, they upload a PDF of the K&R book "The C Programming Language" to the chat.