While I do agree it was/is weird, and it was/is hard to qualify, toy isn't the word I'd reach for. I find myself using it for some odd task once every few months. Cloning a keycard, temporarily standing in for a broken remote, etc. I'm glad I have it, but I was given it for free and I wouldn't pay for it.
I've wanted a device that could for eg spoof itself as a USB device (I needed to boot linux and thought a computer instead of a pendrive would be cool) and went down a rabbit hole of the hardware requirements. I doubt the flipper (zero)'s processor could do that kind of work tbh.
Not even. It's an ARM SBC in a weird case. The F0 was interesting because it had a bunch of oddball radio/IO peripherals; F1 doesn't seem to have anything comparable.
only to find out nfc-b would never come
meh
It really bugged me that one of its selling features was the ability to open doors and gates and such, but it refused to open my garage door (which has an '80s pre-rolling-codes old fashioned signal, but it's within the standard bands) because of some FCC technicality. I heard there was some third-party firmware that enabled such things, but it made me wary that it might be illegal to install...
I imagine they could be used to do physical pen testing just as easily. From my experience with digital door locks, their level of security is on average, somewhere between a piece of tape and a $5 padlock.
Used the findings to release a jailbreak so you can program the cheap consumer version ($1.6k) as though it were the expensive research version ($15k)
Very fun exercise
Basically like using a gameshark/game genie with extra steps.
Yes, because technically there are already plenty of solutions out there that can do what the Flipper One does.
No, because Pavel (the guy behind F0 and F1) has explained what makes their approach different, especially when it comes to UX. They even built their own UI kit around their design principles. And what they do basically the level of detailization that nobody goes that deep.
They have done it once with Flipper Zero (many other solutions existed before F0), they do it now again.
A new hardware and software product is in the works which will have this type of functionality, including KVM control + AI computer usage. We're aiming to get a Kickstarter out for it early 2027.
A use of this is to load badusb attach it to target USB, get on a wifi as a proxy between your LLM and hardware target, with the LLM writing badusb scripts for terminal control.
I suppose the idea is it combines workflows you'd use a flipper zero + pc for into one device. Neat in idea, im not certain who it's truly for in practice. A flipper zero 2 with wifi built in and some minor improvements would have been much more welcome in my eyes.
but it broke too much and I found a better solution
The flipper was still a very nice thing to put in the pocket for along time for sure
Cardputer has a new pi zero variant coming out this month that runs full Linux, half GB Ram only, but should be fun nonetheless
Why Clones Underperform
Stable RFID requires accurate timing and tuned antennas for perfect coupling.
Cloned devices compete on price. Reducing the price means using lower-quality components (less precise, wider tolerance), which results in poor performance. Likewise, lowering testing standards means a cloning factory has fewer rejects - but customers receive devices of unproven stability and performance.https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/
The two devices are complementary.
Flipper Zero is for the physical layer: radio, RFID, IR, etc... It is based on a small microcontroller and is mostly "bare metal", think Arduino, ESP32,...
Flipper One is for the network layer: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 5G, etc... It is a "real computer" running Linux, like a Raspberry Pi.
RFC 2321 suggests that they are "political and religious" layers. https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2321/
In this document we introduce a new hardware-based tool for diagnosis
and repair of network related hardware and software problems. This
tool is best suited to addressing nondeterministic problems such as
those described above. This tool has broad areas of application at
all levels of the OSI model; in addition to uses in the physical,
network, transport and application layers, it has been used to
successfully address problems at the political and religious layers
as well.Flipper One – we need your help - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48220647 - May 2026 (482 comments)
Flipper One Tech Specs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212046 - May 2026 (177 comments)
My F0 is always close at hand, doing everything from being my go-to trigger for whatever random thing I'm playing with, to being an instant output for any signal I'm trying to read. Plus it's a really fun educational tool for myself and various kids around - I keep a load of little NFC 216 tags around, in my bag, in a pouch attached to my Mac, and showing both young and old how to use them, and read them with the phone, leads to conversations about treasure hunts, hiding them in the pub, showing counters with amusing messages...
We used it as a metronome the other day with its blue light, and on the flip side I've been looking at ways to integrate it into my EDC as a modern key, or a programmable keyring. It isn't super-secure, but that does make it easier to work with.
I'm excited about the F1, mainly curious about its logic analyzer capabilities, since I'm actually designing and building one - even it is fifty times worse than a commercial one, I just want to know how they work. And these little devices help find out how other things work.
Also, this feels.. redundant, i already have those in my laptop, unlike flipper zero, it was about radio, rfid, nfc, ir, among others with great battery life. Right now my laptop i had it customized with modular 5g modem, SDR, meshcore, alfa, among others.
But when I do actually need it, for doing something like reading/flashing SPI, I'm very happy I have it.
Well, if anyone is looking for one in Europe, let me know.
“Multi-WAN network toolkit — connect up to 5 uplinks. Configure dynamic routing, failover, load balancing, and firewall rules. Use it simultaneously as a Wi‑Fi hotspot and client. Tunnel traffic through a VPN and multiple gateways. ”
I haven’t been able to find an off the shelf device that provides this. I travel a fair bit and when sitting in an airport mobile hotspotting is often unusably slow. If I can use this to securely connect to public unencrypted wifi, it will make travelling that little bit easier
You just solved a big worry for me, thank you!
* Dumb hotel policy wants you to pay a fee for every WiFi device you connect? Fine. I’m only connecting one.
* VPN back to my house for every device, including a Switch or ereader.
* Last weekend we were in a hotel with no LTE coverage and crummy WiFi. The Slate connected to the hotel WiFi much better than my phone or laptop could. It has better antennas and probably more power because it’s not optimized for battery life. My phone on WiFi: 2800ms pings (!!!). My phone connected to the Slate connected to the WiFi? 15ms.
It’s high on my packing list. I’ll never travel without one again.
I have a friend who does, exposing his Synology NAS and Windows server through Ubiquiti UDR7 on Bell Gigahub, but honestly, I feel he's doing that more out of different risk assessment / "Little knowledge is a dangerous thing" rather than sheer expertise and assurance.
For those who allow VPN access from outside into your home network - how do you have confidence that your configuration is correct, you understand all the config options and their interplay on your modem/router/firewall/OS stack, you're up to date with vulnerabilities and permissions, trust the apps and containers, etc? Are you network admin during daytime, or have fully nerded out about it for years, or have a risk threshold that's met, or something else? :)
I didn't set out to make a hypersecure setup, but approached it with "least access" in mind. I started with the default-deny firewall, and when I needed an exception, I added that one single exception. Honestly, if you follow that principle — don't allow it if you don't require it — you've done 95% of the work a dedicated expert would do.
That's the approach I took when I had VPN to my LAN ~20 -> ~10 years ago; now I worry about the massive "unknown unknowns" - sure, that Linux box doesn't have access to anything else... officially. But what vulnerability is there on that Linux box, or on the plex server, or anything else on your network, that might enable massive expansion of access?
But there's still a calculated risk. To get into this, someone would have to compromise the VPN, then compromise the firewall, then compromise the reasonably-hardened servers running behind it. Sure, those things might be possible. Even with AI, though, is it likely? I don't think it is.
"A ship in port is safe. But that’s not what ships were built for." - Grace Hopper
An I missing something here?
I also have WireGuard on personal devices.
There's other reasons too, such as not having to configure arbitrary wifi connections on your devices, as well as making sure there's zero traffic outside the VPN (eg, during the initial few seconds before an on-device VPN connects).
Also we do need that option to reimage, we have a custom image that we install on each laptop. We don't use windows autopilot for reasons :P
I also have to remember to turn the VPN on before I connect to the wifi, but only some wifis
Sure they are minor inconveniences, but configuring a device once and being confident I haven’t skipped a step or made a mistake and my network connection is secure - that’s a big deal for me.
Even when working from a fixed desk, I appreciate alternating desk work with strolling-thinking, when the environment permits it. Now, with incoming HMDs capable of laptop-like angular resolution, I've been exploring what an all-day NYC wander-and-pause setup/build might look like. Mobile local computes are easier now than they've ever been. Perhaps a SFF PC with multiple snap on MCIO/quick-disconnect-water GPUs+radiators? But agentic power demands... strolling with rolling battery luggage? Eep.
So perhaps ultra-light instead, a cloud PC, and always-on mobile networking to it? Multiplexing multiple cellular providers, and wifi? Perhaps with panel and cantennas. And... clueful juggling of the local wireless environment?
To get "for a better signal, I should walk along here rather than there"? Accumulating a personal neighborhood heat map? Or maybe "neat, in this weather, a cantenna gets library community wifi from across the river"? Or ...?
Wireless environment awareness has long seemed to me a fun concept, but with unclear use cases. It just now occurred to me this might be one? If not the Flipper One necessarily, something...
How are they outperforming everyone else here? Even Raspberry Pi lags a little on mainline, to say nothing of the long tail of other SBCs (let alone Android devices)
https://docs.flipper.net/one/cpu-software/rk3576-mainlining
But I'm guessing it's part Rockchip being more Linux-friendly than Broadcom and a group with a specific goal of a more open boot process. Or more simply, just different objectives or priorities than others in the space. And just to be clear, it's not as if they have everything working completely in vanilla Linux, they list peripherals or functions that aren't supported (NPU, video encoder, CSI).