Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

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That is true you can cobble shit on a breadboard. And it's highly non-portable and extremely anti-usable.

Having a simple nice form-factor for something that can do under 1GHz am/fm, BTLE, IR, dallas 1wire, and pinouts for expansion in a simple smaller-than-cellphone device is pretty sweet.

Sure, script kiddies will be script kiddies. And sure, they shouldn't do bad shit, but they will. It's also your responsibility to run reasonably secure stuff.

And no, the FCC won't help you. You're not big money like cell, digital TV, or avionics.

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EDIT cause of too many comments bullshit:

This conversation chain is sure sounding like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 , the whole "dropbox is inferior to FTP". We all know how that worked out.

Having done actual RF, electronic, software, and encasement design - it's nowhere as simple as "cobble it and 3d print a case and done". If it was, we would have seen a Flipper Zero like thing ages ago.

Prove me wrong. If it's that simple, point me to a blog or github that you execute on all the assets within a week. (because it aint)

> That is true you can cobble shit on a breadboard. And it's highly non-portable and extremely anti-usable.

For the kind of person who does that putting it in a 'ok' case is not that much work...

Especially since many likely have a 3D printer, or a friend with one.

The case is not trivial, not crazy, but not trivial. It's also the least hard part about putting together a similar package. A non-EE type person could probably get some dev boards from sparkfun/adafruit, and connect them up to a raspberry pi with some sort of display with some buttons. But that last mile of getting them to play nice, not be a massive battery hog, and have simple/usable software is man-months of work. This also assumes you have a passing knowledge of circuits and are decent enough programmer to get a job, neither of which are low bars

This is likely @pierat's point: sure, it's possible, but your diy version will be objectively worse in a variety of ways while also taking you a pretty long time to put together.

I agree, the skill acquisition time and effort would keep out script kiddies and normal consumers, but there's a large number of people who do have these skills, especially on this site.

> That is true you can cobble shit on a breadboard. And it's highly non-portable and extremely anti-usable.

I've already done basically this level of stuff for my own custom bluetooth mechanical keyboard projects (a keyboard is larger overall, for obvious reasons, but the space beneath it where you can fit electronics is quite limited) and I've made a few resin cases for other electronic hobby projects. The software side of the Flipper is much more time investment but still something I could do if I was fully motivated and had no other obligations getting in the way. Or I would just cheat and specifically use the same STM32WB55 microcontroller and re-use the existing Flipper's firmware directly. Designing a case and a PCB for something of the Flipper's complexity is really not that hard. A day or two each.

Honestly, I find the Flipper's case to be pretty poorly designed for actual usability, it's mostly just directly exposing hardware externally in as small of a space they could get away with, it's a complete pocket brick otherwise. It's a striking visual design with the angles but actually kind of terrible at slipping in and out of your pocket and is awkward and clumsy to use one handed or subtly. Cell phones (at least up until very recently) carried similar radios, IR blaster, SD slots and ports in much better and smaller form factors, and are so normalized in public use that it might have flown under the radar both in consumer's eyes and regulator attention if it wasn't actually so visually distinctive.

I'd be highly interested in a cheaper DIY version, even if it were slightly uglier or bulkier. I don't feel I could do it well from scratch, but a tutorial or even a kit (like truSDX).

I'd be highly interested in an aliexpress version that has the same features and is software-compatible but at 1/5 the cost.

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