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Quick Start Guide for Flipper Zero

451 points| aphroz | 3 years ago |blog.flipperzero.one | reply

137 comments

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[+] NietzscheanNull|3 years ago|reply
I received mine recently, and I’ve been consistently impressed at both the build quality and overall attention to detail. I know many Kickstarter projects (and hardware startups in general) end up aggressively compromising on features and construction to meet deadlines and cut down on BOM costs, so I was very pleased to see no evidence of that with the Flipper Zero. It’s one of those products where you can immediately tell that a very passionate team invested a ton of time and took special care with the engineering and design process.
[+] filoleg|3 years ago|reply
> [...] aggressively compromising on features and construction to meet deadlines and cut down on BOM costs, so I was very pleased to see no evidence of that

Tbh the team made the right decision to push the deadlines in order to deliver the quality they would be satisfied with. And I wholeheartedly support them in doing so.

I am totally ok with the device being delivered to me almost a year after the initially promised deadline, as long as that extra time went into getting the quality up to the level. So props to the team, I am happy that they actually took that time to polish up to the current level, instead of trying to meet an arbitrary deadline.

Their development blog played a heavy role in convincing me that they were not just stalling (which, sadly, has been my previous experience with quite a few promising hardware Kickstarted projects). Every single post has so much attention to even the most minuscule details that 90% wouldn't care for, it definitely reassured me that they were trying to be as transparent as possible about the whole process and their decision-making. I cannot say enough good things about writing quality of their dev blog posts. It was incredible and easy to digest, even for someone who hasn't worked much with such close-to-hardware level.

[+] seaourfreed|3 years ago|reply
I wanted to know what a Fipper was. I went to the website's hope page. It never told me what a flipper is. I walk away not knowing what a Flipper is. What a waste of my time. Their website home page is a failure.
[+] zhovner|3 years ago|reply
Thank you so much. Shared your comment to the team.
[+] nickthegreek|3 years ago|reply
Been loving mine. Cloned my work and local makerspace ID cards, can control all my IR devices and even read the rfid chip I got in my hand.

Here is a collection of some of the bigger projects being built for it. https://github.com/djsime1/awesome-flipperzero

[+] tgsovlerkhgsel|3 years ago|reply
This post was the first thing I found that explained what it does. I literally thought this was some kind of open source Tamagotchi.

Here's a description: https://flipperzero.one/ - it's a multitool for various wireless, IR and RFID (including 125 kHz) protocols, has GPIOs and contacts for certain electronic keys. And apparently also a tamagotchi.

[+] dmosley|3 years ago|reply
What kind of implant you do have? I can't get mine to read the LF side of my NExT. I think it's the type being emulated but I don't have a different ID to test.
[+] zhovner|3 years ago|reply
Thanks for your repo. We will plan to add it to documents in community section.
[+] idkyall|3 years ago|reply
Well, those projects they showed really make me want to buy one even though I have no real use case for it. Seems like it'd be fun for hack projects or pen testing RF devices. In a more meta sense, I really like this new trend of gadgets with a personality, so to speak - makes me think of that game console the "playdate".
[+] BonoboIO|3 years ago|reply
Same. Play with my complex garage door ... well mhmmm, no idea what to do after that but I want one ^^
[+] kstrauser|3 years ago|reply
I've never wanted something so badly that I didn't even know existed until 5 minutes ago.
[+] r2_pilot|3 years ago|reply
It's pretty nifty, I got mine a few weeks ago. I'm not sure it was worth waiting 2 years, but their team has been very transparent about their hardships and I've learned about manufacturing at scale from their updates. I do wish they let their devs spend more time on the tamagotchi side to liven it up some(although the whole software interface could use some more work too - they're still pre-v1 firmware)
[+] muznar|3 years ago|reply
Exactly what I felt. I got to learn about Flipper Zero a couple days ago and since then I see it online everywhere.

I always wanted to "jailbreak" the NFC cards and key fobs I get from work and apartments. This minimal device seems fun and functional.

Probably thats why if you search on eBay there are a lot of scalpers.

[+] Simon_O_Rourke|3 years ago|reply
I've never wanted something so badly I've ordered about 6 months back!
[+] amelius|3 years ago|reply
Resist the urge. Your smartphone is far more powerful.
[+] ShakataGaNai|3 years ago|reply
It's a very cool device. You can do everything they show off with other tools, somethings like cloning cards can be done with cheap $30 cloners from China. However there are few tools that allow you to do ALL the different sub-ghz for relatively cheap, and in a very user friendly package. Closest I know of is HackRF Portapack... and that's well into $500 - but also for different target tooling.
[+] alimov|3 years ago|reply
I’ve heard good things about the Portapack, have you had a chance to play with one?
[+] samstave|3 years ago|reply
Is there ANY way to detect the presence of one of these devices, OR the use of a device when a tag ID is scanned?

The reason that I ask, is that I was on the design team for lockheed when we were selling RFID tags for shipping containers at a shitload per pop... (123 and 433 mhz)

and I brought up we had zero auth on any of our systems... and was just told to not speak about it.

[+] bdefore|3 years ago|reply
Poked around the start guide and the site but couldn't find much about what the Flipper Zero does.
[+] somesayitsluck|3 years ago|reply
Seriously, I thought I was crazy for not being able to figure out what this device actually does, despite scrolling through the whole site.

I still thought it would be an mp3 player after reading about the battery modes and the sd card installation and the file system menu...then I gave up.

[+] duiker101|3 years ago|reply
From what I gather, it does whatever you want it to do with a whole lot of interfaces. From the homepage I gather it has Bluetooth, GPIO, Antenna, iButton, RFID, NFC, infrared
[+] simulate-me|3 years ago|reply
Can these clone passive RFID dongles? My building uses them and they charge $60 for a copy. Not needing to buy a copy from my building would almost cover the cost of this device.
[+] rrrrrrrrrrrryan|3 years ago|reply
You can clone most RFID keys at the key-copying kiosks inside supermarkets. I turned my most-used key into a sticker that I put inside my phone case for $10.

It's pretty nice: one less thing to carry around.

[+] tgsovlerkhgsel|3 years ago|reply
Some. A well designed key card will be uncloneable.

Most are not well designed.

[+] WaxProlix|3 years ago|reply
Yes, I've cloned a few RFID dongles with mine already. Work, a parking garage entrance, that sort of thing.
[+] kn0where|3 years ago|reply
There are cheap RFID cloning devices on AliExpress for $10-$30 depending on what kind of card you have.
[+] t-3|3 years ago|reply
Definitely. I managed to clone my RFID enabled cards with mine.
[+] jordemort|3 years ago|reply
I admit to mostly having bought mine to have an Amiibo emulator with a screen and a menu that I can pick things from, and it performs this function admirably. I tried to use it to clone a hotel room key but its emulation was unsuccessful at unlocking the door. There is a LOT of functionality available in the hardware that isn't yet fully exploited by the firmware, and development is proceeding at a rapid clip, so I expect the device to only get more interesting as time goes on.
[+] outworlder|3 years ago|reply
It seems that every day we are getting closer and closer to a 'tricorder'. I used to laugh at fictional devices that could detect/emit any frequency and communicate with anything. Not laughing now.

Pair something like this with a smartphone(specially those with ML cores) and things could get... interesting.

[+] zmix|3 years ago|reply
> It seems that every day we are getting closer and closer to a 'tricorder'.

Only, if we go full Cyborg / Trans-Human ;-)

[+] hroa|3 years ago|reply
I ordered two, and thy work great. However, note that they are not water resistant.

I took one out with a simple spill, and I now cover the ports on the working one with electrical tape. I use a usbc dust plug for the charging port.

[+] vorpalhex|3 years ago|reply
Did you disassemble the fouled unit? What was the point of failure?
[+] phlipski|3 years ago|reply
What a totally fascinating little device. Feels like this should be part of any embedded engineers toolbox.
[+] jrussino|3 years ago|reply
One thing I'd love to do with this, but which I don't think is possible - clone my car key. My family has two cars and I just wish I could have one device that is able to unlock & start both of them so that I don't have to carry two bulky dongles on my keychain.
[+] jordemort|3 years ago|reply
The Flipper can unlock some cars, and the hardware has support for rolling codes, but as I understand it, the standard firmware deliberately does not enable this functionality to discourage abuse. Several people on the Discord have managed to unlock their cars once or twice, and inadvertently desync their cars from all of their key fobs in the process, leaving them with no devices that can unlock their car.
[+] melenaos|3 years ago|reply
I think that's for a good reason. I suppose the implement a hardware public-private encryption and they transmit random data everytine you press a button
[+] _pdp_|3 years ago|reply
Bought Flipper Zero for the entire security team for R&D. Good investment and also fun!
[+] no_time|3 years ago|reply
Not something I'd ever buy that I'm glad it exists. It's just so charming.

They even went the extra mile to use Qt for the client instead of Electron.

[+] pbronez|3 years ago|reply
It takes a MICRO SD card! The documentation just says "SD Card" - don't buy the wrong one like I did lol
[+] throwanem|3 years ago|reply
At this point I feel like that can just be safely assumed, since ~every Micro-SD card comes with a fullsize adapter, and Mini-SD no longer exists.

The only fullsize cards I even still bother buying are UHS-II ones for my cameras.

[+] muxneo|3 years ago|reply
Who made your website. love it. Please let me know.. I want to hire the person/company.
[+] mutagen|3 years ago|reply
Looks like the Ghost blogging engine with the Casper theme. More than just the theme, the images and graphics are great too.
[+] anfractuosity|3 years ago|reply
I found this interesting - https://hackaday.io/project/170875/logs I hadn't realised that they initially prototyped with the pi zero.

It looks like the CC1101 supports quite a few modulation schemes, kind of curious though if you could build an SDR with a similar form factor to target things like lora too

[+] Vexs|3 years ago|reply
I recently made a little IoT thingy off a rasppi- just a weeny air quality sensor stack, but the ease of prototyping compared to more traditional hardware that I'm used to was incredible.
[+] Raed667|3 years ago|reply
Is there any hope that it will be available anytime soon?
[+] nimish|3 years ago|reply
You can make a very limited clone using the st25r3916 mikrobus click board and a sparkfun rp2040 carrier

Not the same but actually available to buy. Same NFC chip, no ui, no sub ghz sdr chip.