10 Actually Useful Things the Flipper Zero Can Do | Hacker News Reader

10 Actually Useful Things the Flipper Zero Can Do

gizmodo.com

21 pointsthunderbong11 comments

None of those things are really useful.

Do not bother reading this article

Number two is "start a pomodoro timer".... They ran out cool of ideas after a single idea. At that point just accept that your Flipper Zero is a paperweight.

The one really useful thing is that Flipper can emulate Nintendo Amiibo effortlessly. _All of them_.

I think playing games on it will be pretty difficult.

It can play the kind of games you had on your cell phone 20 years ago, like snake or breakout, and it does just fine at those. It's hardly worth the price just for that, though.

My favorite feature of the Flipper Zero is the comment sections it generates. Nobody tell these people that they also carry software-defined radios around with them everywhere they go.

I've seen this mentioned before, and it makes me wonder. Can I actually use my cell phone as a flipper replacement? By which I mean, I'd like to run flipper apps on my phone, as long as they only depend on RF and not the IR sensor or whatever. I've done a cursory search, and I haven't found such a thing.

This is a very timely question, as Canada is aiming to ban the flipper and it seems incredibly misguided.

On paper, yes. Pretty much all of the necessary technology (and then some) can be found on an average smartphone. The Flipper has a few important differences but function-for-function they're pretty analogous.

In practice, there's a lot of roadblocks in the way of doing that. Phone manufacturers are very stingy with their wireless modem firmware (mostly due to FCC compliance) so they're loathe to give users more control over their radio emissions. If you did manage to get your phone into a Flipper-compatible state, it would almost certainly be against the wishes of your OEM and OS developer.

So... I am being a bit smarmy. Technically phones have mostly similar hardware, but they run different software and try their damnedest to keep it that way. It's usually not that big of a deal either, since WiFi and Bluetooth cover a wide enough variety of use cases to keep most devs/users happy. It is a bit funny to think that the only thing enabling the Flipper is less compliant software though.

I think this is a case of getting away with it due to obscurity.

I suspect if phone baseband / NFC firmwares weren’t locked down, there would be enough script kiddies sideloading “hacking” apps running around doing silly things and ruining it for everyone.

At least this way there is a $90 barrier to messing around and screwing things up, which is probably just enough to keep it obscure.

I’ve found mine useless. My PM3 on the other hand…

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