This is a super fun gizmo, it's discord channel is, uh, not great.
One cool thing is that you can talk to it serially. I pretty quickly had it organized with an IoT temperature sensor so that it could send commands to my ceiling fan given the temperature in my office.
I have also used it to capture the NFC code on a hotel card key so that I could still get into my room even after my key was inevitably "damaged" by nearness to other fields.
Some parts of it are silly, like the Tomagachi type game with the dolphin. Doesn't add value for me, but I can see how it might be something for someone.
There is also growing awareness with agencies about its flexibility, some apocryphal stories of them being confiscated by TSA checkpoints have come in.
Writing your own apps for them has a fairly high learning curve.
The dolphin game is to allow them to avoid some import/export restrictions by classifying it as a toy, which it is, and not a hacking tool. It’s not a professional device.
The Discord server is terrible. It’s both overrun with kids and yet also weirdly harshly moderated.
The device itself is fantastic though. Gives me some real Pebble vibes in all of the best ways. It’s very hackable and even though I don’t do crazy pentest things with it, it’s just an overall fun device.
The reddit is the same way. All the threads are new people asking how to use it to “have fun” by “hacking” vending machines and stuff, or for help convincing their parents to let them get one, or whether it’s worth their allowance to get.
I do have one, I think it’s a fun thing to have in my bag, but haven’t had any luck finding forums of responsible adults, or even just adults, discussing development or things to do with it. Even the “adults” who post about it inevitably do something like get fired because they take it to work and try to clone their own badges and the enter their work with the flipper.
Was going to say the exact same thing about /r/flipperzero. It feels more like a fan subreddit full of kids, which.... ain't my scene at all. People on that subreddit make it seem like it is this amazing thing that will get you in jail or something for posessing.
... But after owning one? I dunno. It's a neat gadget but to be honest about the only practical thing I've got out of it is cloning our apartment keyfobs and duplicating hotel cardkeys. Otherwise it's kinda fun opening up tesla charge doors and messing with iphones using Bluetooth LE. Somebody somewhere was starting a project to add CANbus support, which would be a perfect fit for the device.
I feel like the ecosystem needs a better way to add "apps" to the device. I might be missing something but it doesn't really have any official app registry or anything. Something like you'd see for npm, pypi, or platformio.
There's a ton of TikTok/Instagram nonsense showing it out in the world doing those things.
A large volume of the stuff you can do with it is just spoofing a USB keyboard and running console commands. You could do that for years with tons of existing microcontrollers the price of a hotdog, but suddenly script kiddies have taken notice and are willing to pay 100x for the ability.
The dolphin annoyed me immediately, but it turns out that all of the graphic assets are simple to find in the firmware so it should be quite easy to change the look and feel of operation into something other than fun time with dolphin friend.
Friend of mine has 3 yrs old. The "dolphin" is in constant use by the child.
"What is he doing now?"
" Let's check what dolphin is playing with today".
"What does it say"
"Does he miss me?"
"Let's play with him".
It quickly became pal of the child.
Friend told that is one in top 5 toys of the child now :)
One cool thing is that you can talk to it serially. I pretty quickly had it organized with an IoT temperature sensor so that it could send commands to my ceiling fan given the temperature in my office.
I have also used it to capture the NFC code on a hotel card key so that I could still get into my room even after my key was inevitably "damaged" by nearness to other fields.
Some parts of it are silly, like the Tomagachi type game with the dolphin. Doesn't add value for me, but I can see how it might be something for someone.
There is also growing awareness with agencies about its flexibility, some apocryphal stories of them being confiscated by TSA checkpoints have come in.
Writing your own apps for them has a fairly high learning curve.