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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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.

AND you can support small enterprises of people who did take the time to make something work well for you to hack around with.

We need MORE flipper zero type projects!

the only way you get more flipper zero type projects is if some subset of people actually do the ordering from Ali Express...

The only way you get more such projects is if some people order from AliExpress and some people do not.

This goes for every facet of the economy and is called 'specialization'. :)

Reminds me of this HN classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Okay - that was an awesome link ;-) Well, I wonder how BrandonM feels about the whole "files synced online" thing now?

> 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.

The full comment by dang has more context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281

Furthermore, he was only wrong on point #3.

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.

"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.

+ If it wasn't OllyDBG, I would never have understood how a computer works.

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.

Well sure, but if you just need one feature (eg. infrared "tv-b-gone"), and you already have an arduino at home, you just need an infrared led.

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.

Today's XKCD seems like it was written as a direct response to that kind of comment.

https://xkcd.com/2648/

"It's hard to believe, but lots of kids today ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules."

I can't draw a dolphin as cute as that one, though.

I already have individual tools that can do all this and more, but it still looks damn nice... wish I could justify buying more stuff

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.

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