[ObsoleteNerd]

Is this anything more than a pipedream at this point? I've seen it come up multiple times over the last year, and yet a quick skim through the Github shows that there's not really anything done other than some basic planning/brainstorming. Seems a bit early to be taking preorders.

[bri3d]

Their development blog is very detailed: https://blog.flipperzero.one/review-and-producing-plan/ . It's definitely past the "pipe dream" phase IMO, the drawings they've posted in the blog post demonstrate an awful lot of work and are a far cry from "idea kicking around." But, I also have pretty low expectations for the firmware for a while, and the delivery timeline as well.

I think they've decided to do the initial firmware development internally, which is a bit worrying but doesn't seem too unreasonable to me given that the signal-to-noise ratio for open sourcing this before it's done is probably pretty bad (while you may pick up a few contributors, responding to the "hax wen" crowd is almost certain to slow you down at first).

[archagon]

Wow, that's a fantastic mix of technical depth and endearing art!

[neilv]

I participated in the Kickstarter last year, along with a gazillion other people, and am waiting patiently for my Flipper Zero pet.

They asked the Kickstarter funders a month or so ago for their CC numbers for shipping cost, as well as shipping address, color preference, and any additional accessory&unit orders. But I don't know how soon the main production run will happen.

(I did find that a little funny: the idea of a bunch of customers of a "hacking" gadget, earnestly sending their credit card numbers and home addresses to a group of other hackers. :)

[reidjs]

I always thought it was odd that people are afraid of giving away their CC# but willingly give away their browsing/shopping history, home address, phone, etc.

My CC has fraud protection, and I can always get a replacement. all those other things have 0 protection and are not easily changed, especially home address.

[ryukafalz]

They posted a video of a preproduction unit that looks pretty far along: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDvdWo2h10c&feature=emb_title

Seems like a reasonable point to start taking preorders to me.

[ObsoleteNerd]

Ok that's fair, I hadn't seen that. They really should have more "real" photos/videos of it on their website then. A flashy website full of renders then a link to a Github that's 99% empty and full of "We're at Stage 0" etc just gave off lots of warning signs to me personally.

[saul_goodman]

It's a kickstarter, so it's going to run behind. I consider it gambling for fun toys, sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. They've sent out a stream of updates over the past year so i'm really not worried about them defaulting. They've taken a step back and redesigned the hardware since they reached enough funding stretch-goals to include several kitchen sinks now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDvdWo2h10c

Over a decade ago I backed the Bus Pirate early on and even though I got a unit shipped, it never worked. Defective code shipped on my batch and it wasn't until a few years ago that I figured out that's what was wrong. Even if I had figured that out early on I don't have access to an expensive Pic programmer then so I couldn't do anything to fix it then. The Flipper is Arduino compatible so updating the code shouldn't require a programmer unless something blows up the chips bootloader.

They are hiring, if you speak Russian that is: https://www.flipperdevices.com/jobs

[jmiskovic]

I reflashed my Bus Pirate to behave as OpenOCD-compatible JTAG programmer. It was quite easy process with their bootloader. Perhaps your board was so early that they still haven't put the bootloader on it?

[VectorLock]

This makes a lot of sense. I was looking at this thinking "that is a shitload of feature" so it makes sense they're future-hopeful features.

[dmd]

The last update I got from them said:

> In the last two months, we have been actively working on hardware validation, covering all the use cases with tests, and now we are almost ready to lock the BOM and start Flipper's production in EVT (Engineering Validation Test) phase. Devices from the first batch will be sent to contributors who participated in the development.

That seems like they're pretty far along.

[cgb223]

Is there a different tool that’s available now in non-tomagochi form that accomplishes more or less the same features?

[daniel_iversen]

It says they took some inspiration from the DIY pwnagotchi [https://pwnagotchi.ai/]

[saul_goodman]

I have most of the parts to do the individual tasks this thing is supposed to do. What I don't have is the time or desire to whip it all up into a functional tool including a display, buttons, etc. It doesn't do anything that you can't do right now with parts available from SparkFun/Ada Fruit/etc. It's the form factor and interface that makes it desirable.

In fact the form factor is too sexy for its own good in that it made it so desirable it has slowed down development as they had to go backwards in development to include several kitchen sink features that should have been left behind. But hey I'll take an extra kitchen sink when it comes.