[azalemeth]

This looks flippin' amazing, but also like the definition of project scope creep. I imagine it will be brilliant, unaffordable, surprisingly cheap, terrible and awesome (in both senses of the word) all at the same time. 3GPP really needs a light shining through it.

I sincerely hope I work out a way of getting someone else to buy the thing for me. And the push towards all in-tree source is fantastic. Genuinely impressed.

[wateralien]

Some projects are meant to scope creep. Like this one. If the project manager of the swiss army knife had defended it from scope creep it would have 1 knife.

[red-iron-pine]

IIRC the original scope was the 8 most common tasks that literal Swiss soldiers did. that was their scope.

sewing and maintianing clothes was one of them, for example, so thats why it has a punch. They'd need to be able to open cans, as that was the most common long term ration, and they'd need to be able to maintain their rifles which had screws, thus screwdrivers.

a version with a wine bottle opener was made for officers and became common

[normie3000]

How often do they get stones out of horses' hooves?

[wiml]

In the 1800s? Pretty often, I'd guess.

[dylan604]

>IIRC the original scope was the 8 most common tasks that literal Swiss soldiers did

Never realized opening a bottle of wine was so common to Swiss soldiers

[dieortin]

The comment you’re replying to already explains why they have a corkscrew… I’m used to people not reading the article they’re commenting on, but this is the first time I see someone not reading the comment they’re replying to.

[dnnddidiej]

Scope creep only can happen after you decide what you want though.

[NGRhodes]

Which would scope creep anyway to a box of knives.

[Aurornis]

> surprisingly cheap,

What would you consider surprisingly cheap?

Their last product announcement was the BUSY bar, a desktop timer with a display to show that you're busy. Pre-orders launched at $250 but they dropped the price to $219. Has not shipped yet: https://busy.app/

The Flipper One specs are significantly more expensive to manufacture than the Flipper Zero or Busy Bar. I don't think this will be a surprisingly cheap product.

I do think it's cool that they're building the product they want to build and letting cost be a secondary factor.

[hyperbovine]

Wow this crazy -- "Built-in Pomodoro timer" means they are literally replacing a $5 plastic tomato-shaped mechanical timing device with something that costs $220 and features WiFi and app integration. What could be more antithetical to the original pomodoro ethos, I don't know. It's like an episode of Silicon Valley.

[dylan604]

If that's crazy to you, let me introduce you to Juicero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

[jjkaczor]

Am so "teh old", that honestly - I can't say whether or not that product was worse than the "CueCat":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

(Naw - the CueCat was better, at least it was a generic barcode scanner)

[dylan604]

I love that Belo was so involved in this epic failure. They are one of those large media companies I love to hate on. It probably helps to be a Dallas native to have that sentiment though

[vel0city]

CueCat was just ahead of its time. These days scanning graphics to load links is quite common. I see QR codes and similar all the time.

[dylan604]

Part of the success of QR codes is the ubiquity of the device to scan those codes. CueCat needed a wired device which is not something as easy to use as a wireless mobile device.

So yeah, ahead of its time to be sure

[jonah-archive]

This teardown and commentary remains a favorite of mine, really worth reading through: https://blog.bolt.io/juicero/

[dylan604]

"high-voltage custom power supply that converts 120V/240V AC line voltage to 330V DC power for the motor and 3.3V/5V/12V DC for the communications board"

When I read that, my brain flipped thinking surely that has to be a typo. Then, "he motor is seemingly custom to account for the exceptionally high rated power (stalls at 5A at 330V DC, which is hard to believe, possibly even a misprint on the motor casing)"

So if it's a misprint on the motor, they designed a power supply for something totally unnecessary. Otherwise, if it's not a misprint, that's one helluva motor

[zhovner]

Can you name the pomodoro timer that support Matter?

[ZeWaka]

That's a pretty crazy price for a pomodoro with a screen, lmao.

[embedding-shape]

> but also like the definition of project scope creep.

To me it seems like the opposite, it has more connectivity and I/O than the Zero, but also scaled down, while using better materials, like they decided to outsource the project scope creep to the community, which makes sense to me.

[salomonk_mur]

Man, they put 2 processors in the thing and are building their own OS. They even say they are not sure how to get it accomplished.

Scope creep to hell and back. Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running.

They even - for some reason - want to waste time "training their own AI model because general ones don't cut it" (which no one is likey to use). Could just build a normal RAG + context stuffing pipeline in an afternoon but nah, let's devote a few months to this completely unnecessary non-feature.

100 bucks say this doesn't see the light of day before 2030 (if it ever does!)

[lxgr]

> Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running.

This is actually quite common in embedded devices and even elsewhere. Every Apple device does this, for example (the Secure Enclave is a completely separate OS running on a separate computer).

If you think about it, most laptops have been doing something like this for decades as well for things like brightness control etc., not with a different CPU but definitely an OS-like thing (i.e. the BIOS, using SMIs etc.)

The idea of the "single OS, single CPU computer" has been a myth for a while now.

[miladyincontrol]

Yeah, CPU + MCU isnt exactly a foreign or strange idea. And they're hardly developing "their own OS", just configuring a default linux distro with various integrations particularly around display, IO and custom applets to interface with existing linux terminal programs and libraries.

[rincebrain]

They do appear to be trying to build something a bit more bespoke than that, where they want something like Fedora Silverblue or what systemd seems to want to present, in terms of contained overlays for snapshotting when you make changes and then going "oh no" without requiring a full reinstall.

God knows if they'll end up scaling back their goals, but the vision isn't "just" a few custom integrations.

[reaperducer]

The idea of the "single OS, single CPU computer" has been a myth for a while now.

At least since they started running Java on SIM cards.

[lxgr]

Good point, and quite on topic given that this thing will have a SIM slot, so we're at at least three OSes and CPUs and counting :)

The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chipsets usually have their own CPU as well.

[tmountain]

Big dreamers, which is awesome, but they need a disciplined PM type team member to bring them down to Earth (ROI analysis on their roadmap).

[embedding-shape]

> ROI analysis on their roadmap

I think we've developed software with "ROI" in mind for so long, that by now most people forgot how it was to use devices and interfaces that were made with passion and by taking your time, experimenting and finding the right way, rather than just rushing through stuff and optimizing everything for money.

I remember Flipper Zero had a ton of doubters early on too, myself included. I think I'm now willing to give them more slack to actually experiment and create something even more ambitious, as they successfully executed it the first time most doubted them.

[Aurornis]

I've worked in startups long enough to see many founders build without considering ROI.

It's not rare at all.

The reason you don't see those projects is because they don't make it very far. Big projects take a lot of effort and people and most people expect compensation for their effort. You can't compensate them without ROI.

As an open-source project they have some benefit of getting contributors to do some of the work. The hardware still needs ROI to exist. Making those custom parts requires up-front capital, which is going to need ROI to pay back.

[semolino]

Could you clarify what you mean by saying it may be both unaffordable and surprisingly cheap? (Expensive but less than expensive than it could be? Expensive but of poor build quality?)

Also why would you want/need someone else to purchase it for you? Because of your country's import laws, or reasons related to privacy/anonymity?

[iamtheworstdev]

probably means - more expensive than any of us would spend on a "toy", but far cheaper than what an expert might on an industry standard version of this.

[azalemeth]

Exactly. A decent digital communication, spectrum or vector network analyser from the likes of Keysight (AKA HP or Agilent) or R&S is crazy money – many thousands.

Compared to any piece of "proper" test and measurement equipment even if Flipper 1 is $1k it's a steal, for example. Heck, the last thing I put on a grant application was a 220 GHz AWG that was something like $1.5m. Admittedly quite different from a single m2 plugin socket but a 1 GHz spectrum analyser starts at $2.4k and everything fancier is "price on application" [0].

I realise this is not the same piece of kit as Flipper One, but with the right daughter boards, hackability, and <s>graduate student</s> labour I imagine you could do a lot (I am interested in RF at <1 GHz for NMR reasons as well as electronic Larmor frequencies at ~100 GHz frequencies). Their SDR daughter boards are designed for communication but there's a whole world of academic nerds who do weird things and would love a genuinely open, hackable broadband SDR (they exist, with limitations! I have a lime SDR somewhere…)

[0] https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/products/test-and-measureme...

[risyachka]

just fyi its also russian