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... situational awareness 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...
“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
Basically like using a gameshark/game genie with extra steps.
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
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.
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.
But when I do actually need it, for doing something like reading/flashing SPI, I'm very happy I have it.
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)
Well, if anyone is looking for one in Europe, let me know.
What are we looking at? $400? $500?
Just as a reminder, last year, as in 2025, a raspberry pi with 8gb was $89... so please don't tell me that paying $400 or $500 for this is normal and expected.
this one does https://flipper.net/products/flipper-one-preorder
I still stand by it. I'm not buying anything at these extortionist cartel prices. Not a single $500 usb thumb drive or $1500 ram or $2000 platter and certainly not at $400 thing that would have cost $100 last year.
I guess we’ll just never know.
Genuine question, how do you get through the day?
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.
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.
only to find out nfc-b would never come
meh
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.
https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/
The two devices are complementary.
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
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.
I tend to wipe mine before international travel and just stick on IR remote stuff, juuuust in case someone wants to ask a lot of questions. It’s easy enough to restore the back up I take beforehand.
The flipper one is closer to a Raspberry pi, if the LoRa and Wifi are in homologated modules it would be perfectly legal to carry around. If not, it would be on the same rule of the zero and illegal.