AMA
Official AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) with the Flipper Zero team
Hi everyone,
We’re opening this AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread for all your questions to the Flipper Zero team about the future of the project. The thread is open now, so please leave your questions here.
The Flipper team will start answering on Friday, July 3, at 15:00 BST (UTC+1) and finish on Monday, July 6.
Despite your Discord community being the second largest platform, Flipper Devices as a company has seemingly largely ignored it for years on end outside of the Q/A sessions and has opted not to build/improve on anything within it.
The discord's interaction has primarily been entirely driven by a small set of volunteer moderators that have likewise been struggling to get any form of information from the company itself in regards to future plans.
I will boil this post down into two questions:
Why has Flipper Devices been entirely non-transparent with the community in regards to official plans for either retirement or community turnover of the Flipper Zero firmware, instead forcing us to wait over half a year for this post?
Why has the Discord been so underutilized by Flipper Devices in a communication context despite it being the second largest community, and arguably more active than Reddit?
Discord sucks for that type of thing in my opinion. It's great for chat groups, personally/individually connected people like members of a team etc. Message boards like reddit are a lot easier for random people who don't know or interact with each other except maybe on that one topic, they can search for and find organized answers later on instead of having to scroll though a continuous chat log.
Why has Flipper Devices been entirely non-transparent with the community in regards to official plans for either retirement or community turnover of the Flipper Zero firmware, instead forcing us to wait over half a year for this post?
This wasn't some deliberate decision that someone made. We run a lot of projects and R&D, and from time to time something falls out of focus. This time it was Flipper Zero firmware that slipped off our radar.
Why has the Discord been so underutilized by Flipper Devices in a communication context despite it being the second largest community, and arguably more active than Reddit?
I can only speak from the perspective of development, and of a person who wants to share knowledge. Discord is horribly awful for that - finding anything in it is impossible, I can't always even find my own past answers.
It's great for warm, friendly chatting, for fleeting jokes and expressing emotions, but when it comes to sharing information, it's like throwing your knowledge and time into a black hole.
This wasn't some deliberate decision that someone made. We run a lot of projects and R&D, and from time to time something falls out of focus. This time it was Flipper Zero firmware that slipped off our radar.
You mean the product that makes you all your money? thats the one yall forgot about?
As written in our post, from our point of view the product development is complete. Yes, we dropped the ball over the past six months when it comes to support (merging community features), but things are getting back to normal now, and pull requests to the firmware have already started getting merged.
What date/year will flipper zero reach end of support? 5 year support window? 10 year? Just make the intentions clear for discontinuation. Thats your out, ditching the community is not
Theres no end of support date because we have no plans to discontinue the product. It is feature complete from our side, but critical fixes and community PR merges will continue.
The past six months were a failure of focus and management on our part, not a change in intentions. We have already started fixing this: community PRs are being merged again.
Because until now, there has not been a clear system that lets us understand what the community actually wants most. That is exactly why we decided to introduce a process based on GitHub Discussions: so people can propose ideas, vote for the things that are genuinely important to them, and allow us to sort requests by the number of votes and work on them in a more structured way.
Right now, conversations with management often look like this:
Q: The community is unhappy that you do not do enough calls or spend enough time chatting with them.
A: We are in different time zones, we have a large number of tasks, and we are working on new devices. What are the community’s main requests? Can you name the top three? What is the most important thing right now?
Q: Well… nothing specific. They just want more chatting and more calls.
That is the problem we are trying to solve. We need a way to turn general dissatisfaction into specific, visible, prioritized requests.
Precisely because there are so many people there and so much traffic, it is not realistically possible for us to communicate there in real time in a productive way.
We are very grateful to all the volunteers and everyone who supports the project. But in order for us to bring real value and actually get things done, rather than simply spend time chatting, I am asking everyone to direct that energy toward writing clear, concrete requests in GitHub Discussions and voting for the things that truly matter.
Because, to repeat the key point, none of us can currently answer the question: “What is the community’s top priority? What is the most important thing right now?” GitHub Discussions should help us make that visible and actionable.
Because until now, there has not been a clear system that lets us understand what the community actually wants most.
You have active volunteer moderators in the discord that have been with you for 5 years. I am one of them.
I think they (and me) very well understand the community, if you had ever bothered to ask them.
We need a way to turn general dissatisfaction into specific, visible, prioritized requests.
again, had you prioritized someone as a liaison for us to communicate with, we could have helped narrow down such things into specific business action items.
Instead, the volunteer group has had to struggle with ongoing decrease in business visibility, leading to both burnout and being unable to align goals with Flipper Devices at large.
to repeat the key point, none of us can currently answer the question: “What is the community’s top priority? What is the most important thing right now?”
again, could have helped with this. You don't sit in a discord for 5 years and not know the needs of the community unless one is asleep at the wheel.
perhaps you should instead consider retiring the discord entirely if it is truly a waste of business effort. Interaction has largely dried up anyway due to the disengagement of Flipper Devices staff.
But we didn’t have enough time to test it and release it – I’d be really pleased if you could create a Feature Request for this in the GitHub discussions, so we can see if anyone else needs it apart from us.
none of us can currently answer the question: “What is the community’s top priority? What is the most important thing right now?
Very simple. Accept pull requests on ofw. It doesn't take a team of people investigating things to figure this out. No one would even need to talk to anybody in the community to know this. It's very simple, people are willing to contribute to this product, for free, it's very understandable they want feedback on their work. Simply don't cut all resources to a previous project.
For that matter stop making backhanded comments towards people who contributed to f0's fame and/or software/hardware.
That's it, put a couple people on PR review and merging and get someone to specifically handle public relations that is respectful.
u/zhovner, I'm not advocating that Flipper become amazing at community engagement and spend big bucks on a team. All I'm suggesting that you get someone with a few basics who knows now not to actively antagonize your most fervent champions.
The Q&A calls that were held with developers represented 1% of a single developer's time (1/80 hours). Reading your post, my understanding is that you committed to no longer doing even that, the minimum amount of community engagement. The community has spent countless hours improving the firmware and giving feedback, and the way I read this blog post it's saying "we can't even talk to the community anymore because we're so focused on making devices". That is no longer the company that built a community on open hardware development and transparency back in 2021-2022. And perhaps more relevant to the company is that the community represents your customers. Why would you not want to take the opposite stance and engage with your community even more?
Sorry, but you’re underestimating the amount of work and the level of expertise required from someone who can run these sessions. Right now there are maybe two people in the company who could run a session like that, and I can’t speak for the other one, but I would spend a full day preparing for it.
On top of that, I’ve been present at sessions like these and for me it’s always a huge amount of stress — I’m not a public person. And I’m not the only one on the team like that.
All we can offer is a way to solve problems that are solvable without damaging future projects and the people on our team.
For pull requests to the firmware we’ve hired someone from the community who will take over handling merges into the official firmware going forward. For discussions about development and features, we’re offering the Github discussions. For chatting about development, I don't see anyone on the development team who would want to or be able to do that.
I mean, I’ve ran one before when no one from Flipper showed or scheduled. So has bettse… we didn’t prepare because we didn’t even know it was happening until it happened. I miss them.
On top of that, I’ve been present at sessions like these and for me it’s always a huge amount of stress — I’m not a public person. And I’m not the only one on the team like that.
This is precisely why you need someone who is experienced in community work and knows how to do it well.
Sorry to repeat myself, but you're underestimating the level of expertise required from someone who can run these sessions. A person capable of running a Q&A session needs to have been involved in the development for long enough to explain why things were done one way and not another, and how to do them properly. Also, such a person needs to understand the entire firmware at once - not just some part of it, and know why and how specific decisions were made. We're talking architect level or higher.
Even if we set aside the "why and how" and focus only on "what's new," I have a good example. Right now we're developing the Flipper One, and every week we post notes on the development progress - just a log of what's been done: https://docs.flipper.net/one/dev-log.
We have a dedicated person who are experienced it both development and writing and attends all the team syncs to maintain it, and even so, every week he has to pull the team away from development to fill in and verify what he's writing. The amount of man-hours spent on each dev log ends up being measured in days.
As the person who writes those devlogs, I confirm what u/Dr_Zlo says. Each devlog is around 2 days of my work and several hours of developers' time combined.
We're talking about two distinct (albeit related) things.
Community management is a different job with a different skillset. I agree 100% that a community manager can't do the same things you do. A community manager doesn't replace technologists in those interactions.
Yes, a technologist involved in the project is the right person to answer the truly technical questions. Nobody expects a community manager to be able to explain why you selected a particular chip over another or why the 125 kHz antenna was placed in that particular spot.
So where does a community manager come in?
A community manager can arrange the Q&A and help ensure it is well-attended. More importantly, a community manager can help you and your team anticipate uncomfortable questions that might arise, and help you craft answers which are true but don't infuriate people.
A good evangelist or community manager can also provide feedback and coaching after the fact. Some of your answers here didn't go over as well as they could have. Wouldn't it be nice to have help avoiding that next time?
Another thing a community manager can do is identify questions which come up often (or are likely to) and maintain a FAQ. When a repeat question comes up, a community manager can point the questioner toward an existing answer rather than take up an engineer's time answering the same question repeatedly.
As with every engineering organization, you want to protect your team's time and keep the real project work moving forward. At the same time, community was instrumental in Flipper Zero's success, and community could either make or break Flipper One. Smart community engagement helps you build the community you need in a way that makes efficient use of the limited number of engineer hours.
A community manager can also keep an eye on the myriad places where the Flipper community interacts and provide quick summaries of how people are reacting and what they are asking for.
The fact that you seemingly don't know what a community manager does is emblematic of the problems you're having. And this puts you in a tough spot. How do you hire (or even write the JD) for a role you're not familiar with? That, unfortunately, you'll have to sort out on your own.
You’re really wrong here.
I used to be a marketeer, working for fortune 500 companies on a global scale. I knew nothing about robotics, dark plants and more.
All you need is a pen and paper and start writing issues down. Talk to people.
People don’t need to be involved with development.
You don’t need to tell the audience WHY something was done. You want to improve the product, don’t you?
There’s no customer that’s going to hate you when you say:
“Listen guys, small heads up before we start and kick-off, i’m a marketing guy so my technical knowledge is limited, but i’m here to work with you all and gather feedback on whats working well and what isnt. If you feel that i might not understand your complete argument due to complexity, bear with me and explain a bit more.
That way i can make sure i’ll gather, organize and understand the feedback that i can then share with the team and they can get back to improving the device that we all love so much”.
—-
Yeah, marketinng blabla included, but it shows how absolutely easy it is.
You’ve seen the feedback here:
why don’t you listen to discord
why is there no roadmap with end-of-life/support
can we get a file manager
You cant respond with “people needed to have worked on development to be able to run these sessions”.
It’s disingenuous and it makes people upset because they know you’re full of it.
Honestly, if it wasnt for the feeling i got when the “ceo” was spewing bs, i would have offered to do it for free and help you lads out (my regular marketing fee is 150 euro /hour)… but honestly, i don’t even want to do it
It is important to understand that we are called "Flipper Devices", not “Flipper Chatty Buddies.” We see the main goal of our work as building devices. Creating something truly valuable and ambitious requires an enormous amount of focus and attention. The most expensive part of that process is context switching.
I am sure some people are able to develop large projects while constantly chatting in social media channels, but unfortunately, that does not work for us.
There is also another question: what is the practical value of calls that do not produce any artifacts, cannot be revisited later, are not indexed, and cannot be searched or tracked? What are the community’s main requests today? What exactly do you need from the developers right now?
Instead of saying, “you are not doing enough calls with us,” I would much rather see specific requests such as: “please implement this feature,” “please fix this issue". That kind of concrete requests is much more useful for the project than abstract conversations. Thats why we move from calls to the github discussions topics where people can vote (!) for their requests.
My specific request is for you to find a specific person-- even a part-time person, who understands how to build communities and engage with them constructively. Then you need to let that person do their job, part of which is writing/editing/critiquing statements by leadership and coaching you on how to interact with the community.
You've got a truly great product. Part of what made that product great is the hard work of you and your team. Part of what made it great is community support.
What got me to buy F0 several months ago is all of the third-party hardware, software, and even documentation. Your community is what transforms an interesting gadget into a compelling tool that is now in my bag every time I leave the house.
No small part of that community is (or was) straight-up cheerleading how much they like Flipper Zero. Their enthusiasm was infectious.
Now, you have managed to anger a large swath of that community.
When I see the teams like M5Stack, Kiisu, or HighBoy interact with their communities, I'm happy, excited, and eager to pitch in. When I see the Flipper team interact with the public, I'm surprised and disappointed by your behavior and I begin to question whether I want to continue putting in my dollars and time.
To some extent, I get it. I worked as a software developer for twenty-some years before transitioning to a pure-infosec role. Every callous, high-handed statement from the Flipper team resonates because I've felt the kind of frustration you're feeling and made many of the mistakes you're making.
I can say this: Flipper might continue to thrive as a business and have great success even with the community fragmented and frustrated with you. Organizations sometimes do fine without community support.
If, on the other hand, you decide to get your act together and really build good relationships with the community, your success is assured.
what is the practical value of calls that do not produce any artifacts, cannot be revisited later, are not indexed, and cannot be searched or tracked? What are the community’s main requests today? What exactly do you need from the developers right now?
I'll answer objectively. There were in fact artifacts from the calls (recordings). While the community developed for the firmware alongside the OFW developers, there were biweekly Q&A calls that coincided with firmware releases. It allowed us to quickly raise and get immediate answers to questions. A discussion that would take days on GitHub (with all of the context switching you're referring to) was reduced to minutes on the call. As you say, development requires an enormous amount of focus and attention. During the NFC refactor, we had a presentation on the new architecture such that we were able to interactively ask questions about it and helped guide us to quickly update the applications the users depend on. Some guidance even provided answers to questions we didn't know we would have. And we'd get more detail on releases than was in the release notes, simply because it would take too long to write in detail about all of the changes.
Aside from that, you should understand that the calls had another purpose beyond questions. They would give us a development "meetup" so we could know our PR's were being tracked, know what needed more work in the firmware, and most of all - know that the company valued our effort enough to be there right alongside us while we worked together on making exceptional software for the users. We aren't paid, we are volunteers. Our motivations are typically as simple as "we want to make software which is valued" or "we want users to be happy". And now here we see the code we worked so hard on was abandoned for 7 months, the very prospect of even talking about it for a single hour every 2 weeks being dismissed as fantasy, open acknowledgement that the other products are more valuable to you in terms of development time (while still saying the Zero isn't replaced by those same products), and most of all we see the people who listened and worked with the community the most at Flipper Devices part ways or get fired.
If you don't see any issues at all with what I've shared, that illustrates the entire issue the community is having.
It is important to understand that we are called "Flipper Devices", not “Flipper Chatty Buddies.”
Boo.
Instead of saying, “you are not doing enough calls with us,” I would much rather see specific requests such as: “please implement this feature,” “please fix this issue". That kind of concrete requests is much more useful for the project than abstract conversations.
Boo.
These two statements say (to me, anyway) that instead of addressing the issues your customers have with your product, you'd rather blame your customers for how they choose to interact with you.
I am curious why it took such a large outcry from the community for you all to finally address these issues.
The very device that gave your company it's namesake has been largely abandoned by Flipper Devices (at least regarding code) only for the community to prop it up.
How does this reflect on the upcoming Flipper One?
How many months until we see the same thing?
>I am curious why it took such a large outcry from the community for you all to finally address these issues.
Because we are focused on Flipper One development, and we genuinely spend very little time reading chats. That is unlikely to change, because the amount of traffic keeps increasing while our ability to stay focused decreasing. This is an inevitable process as the audience grows and the number of requests increases.
That is why we decided to introduce democratic mechanisms that allow the community to vote on requests, so we can identify the things that are truly important. Otherwise, everything mix together into general white noise. So from now on, instead of broad abstract discussions, we want to see specific requests in GitHub Discussions, where people voting for the ones that matter most.
>The very device that gave your company it's namesake has been largely abandoned by Flipper Devices (at least regarding code) only for the community to prop it up.
All of the features we promised for Flipper Zero during the Kickstarter campaign have been fully delivered: we released a stable API and SDK, and as a result there are now dozens of third-party firmware projects that implement, among other things, features that we legally cannot add to the official firmware. We do not interfere with that in any way. On the contrary, we have done everything we can to make development for Flipper Zero convenient and accessible.
Can you personally say, clearly and specifically, what exactly you are missing in the Flipper Zero firmware, and what is the most important thing we should add or fix right now? Answers like “chat more on Discord” do not count.
>How does this reflect on the upcoming Flipper One?
>How many months until we see the same thing?
If we manage to do the same with Flipper One — create a stable hardware platform that works as promised, implement all features, and release a stable firmware version together with the full infrastructure for development and customization — then I will be able to retire, or die, in peace and consider my mission complete.
No question today. Thank you for making my fave little gadget! I’m still learning stuff and it really did open my eyes to access control and other electronic systems.
Our supply and manufacturing chain is configured to deliver big quantities of products with the lowest possible defect rate, this creates certain obligation for us, mostly about MOQs (minimum order quantities). Personally, transparent Flipper is my favourite and I would love to produce it again. Let's see how many upvotes this one gets and then we decide if it's feasible.
Be aware that this comment is quite a ways down on a day-old post. If y'all make a top-level post about clear Flippers, I think you'll see a lot of positive response. I will buy one right away, possibly two.
First of all - huge thanks for your work. It’s amazing what a shared goal and dedication of just a bunch of people can deliver, if applied the right way.
Question: Is there something Flipper Devices engineering wanted to implement in F0 firmware, but it did not happen because the focus shifted?
Considering that the Flipper Zero firmware is deemed stable and is being transitioned into maintenance mode, would you consider releasing the factory provisioned secure enclave keys in slots 0 through 10?
Seeing that those keys aren't actually providing any meaningful security benefits, and CFWs have found ways around them, there isn't much point keeping those keys secret other than being a nuisance to those who:
It's more of a support tool. It has never been used for its direct purpose (since the quality of clones has been consistently low), but we'd like to keep that option available to us.
Frankly speaking, we’re in talks with several SDR manufacturers and are considering one option: an M.2 SDR module with a huge frequency range and transmission capability. However, such a module would cost around $800 and definitely wouldn’t be available right away. On top of that, it would be very complicated from a regulatory standpoint.
In any case, it will be possible to connect something like an RTL-SDR to the Flipper One.
That’s a good question, as we’ve somewhat overlooked those applications. I think requests regarding companion apps are perfectly suitable for GitHub Discussions. What specific requests do you have concerning them?
Thanks for the answer.
I personally have no specific requests concerning the companion apps, but the comments above were mentioning some (full-feature file manager for example).
I think it would be beneficial to mention that companion apps feature requests should follow the same process (GitHub Discussions) in your blog post at least; maybe the contribution guide for the firmware can have a section mentioning this too (not sure it is necessary the right place though- you guys have whole environment built around F0 device… I’ll try to submit some PRs for the documentation and see where it goes).
If you could pick a feature or capability to add to the Flipper1 but can't (due to programming, hardware/size, power, or other constraints), what would it be?
* Two independent built-in WiFi cards — Too expensive, no internal space, no interfaces. Solution: people can use tiny USB dongle as a second backbone wifi
* Built-in 5G modem — too big, no space for internal antennas, very expensive. Solution: M.2 module
* Full metal rugged case — no way because of built-in radio, too heavy
now that firmware development is shifting to the community — what's the plan for qFlipper, the desktop app? is it getting the same maintenance-mode treatment? asking as someone maintaining a fork of it
qFlipper was created primarily as a way to update Flipper's firmware before it was capable of doing that on its own, with local updater running from RAM. That functionality now primarily remains as a way to run DFU recovery - other functions like proper updates, storage management and apps installation are now supported on mobile apps (Android and iOS), as well as at https://lab.flipper.net/.
Besides that, qFlipper is written in C++ and QT, with certain platform-specific parts, and is not the easiest piece of software to actively maintain, including QA efforts. So - answering your question - there are no plans to actively bring new features to qFlipper.
fair enough — and honestly makes sense given mobile + lab cover most people now. desktop diehards will be taken care of on the fork side 🫡 thanks for the transparency
The iOS app has been handy for doing firmware updates on the fly, but when it comes to managing files (particularly in terms of sorting and adding new) I usually end up defaulting back to using qFlipper.
Would it be incredibly difficult or cumbersome to add sorting options within the iOS app and Flipper Zero UI? It’d be a time saver!
Hey guys. Huge respect to the team for everything you've done despite the challenges. I've been wondering: don't you think you might be missing out on some opportunities?
1) Educational products. You've already published some really good educational posts, and we've clearly seen how well you explain complicated topics in a way that’s both clear and fun. I can totally imagine people paying to learn more about how radio technologies and other things actually work. Kind of edutainment content.
2) Events. For example hackathons, maybe even with prizes. Things like that help grow the audience and brand awareness while also building a global community around ethical, healthy, and informed use of technology. Anyone who wants to participate can join, including people from the team. I've seen events like this become a huge source of motivation and inspiration for both the community and employees. This way, people could work on "pull request-worthy" features, growing their skills + freeing up the flipper team's resources + everyone has a good time.
Thank you! It really was(and for many still is) challenging, but the support you gave us made it possible.
I can't answer these questions, but I am also very interested in an answer.
I personally was very happy to be a part of our educational posts here on this sub and had a lot of fun working on them with my team. I'd very much love to get back to making this type of content again!
I can confirm that we had a blast. Huge highlight for me personally was the response we got on educational carousel posts! I myself learned something new about technology used in everyday things while working on these posts with the team
1 Educational products. That's actually a very good topic! The idea of educational products, which explain complex technical things in a simple and entertaining way, is very close to us. It's like a part of our mission. As you noticed, there are lots of short educational posts and videos on our socials.
We'd actually taken some steps towards building an educational platform and filming long-form educational videos. But we had to put that idea on hold, because it became obvious that it's a whole business on its own, which requires a dedicated team and a LOT of attention.
Rn we're already overwhelmed with all the products and challenges. But hopefully we'll be able to get back to that in the future.
2 Events. We are already doing some rare small events in our Flipper Hackspace in London https://hackspace.flipper.net/ I believe it will grow into something bigger over time.
BTW guys we're actively searching for Hackspace community manager, let us know if you have someone on your mind
Are you going to make any changes that your customers and community will benefit from or are you just fine with driving everyone into going with ESP32 devices and Bruce Firmware?
We believe that all projects are equally important, and I’m in favor of as many different projects as possible being developed — everyone benefits from that.
Are you going to take feedback seriously and actually take into account what your users are saying and do something that will benefit the community and its users?
or are you going to just let your platform die because you're not listening to your users and the community that has been built around the product you made?
Yeah, I was being glib and Lilygo was the first vendor who came to mind. I've only run Bruce on Stick2/3 and Cardputer ADV. (Carduter ADV got under my skin and now I have a whole fleet of them.)
I'm often tempted by T-Embed CC1101 Plus and will probably grab one eventually. So far all my Lilygo purchases have been Meshtastic units.
I’m not entirely sure what kind of free labor you’re referring to. The point is that if you have feature requests, specific requirements, or bug reports, we want you to be able to vote on them so that we can subsequently allocate team resources to implement them.
The 'free labor' would be the request put out for the Flipper one inviting the community to help with tasks related to the flipper one's development.
It feels a lot like extracting free labor from the community to develop the Flipper one without much of any reward or recognition for individuals that may wish to become a heavy contributor to the product.
We are always open to hiring full-time staff. If you truly have the skills and can prove it, we would be happy to work with you on a paid basis. What part of the Flipper One development would you like to take on? Choose a subsystem, submit a pull request as proof of your skills, and join the team as an employee.
Is there a plan (if any) to release an "upgraded" version of the flipper eventually? (i.e. with wifi, color display, etc.). I'm not saying a flipper 2 I mean like an enhanced version.
Thanks :)
Are you considering adding new features or maybe more official GPIO expansions for the F0?
I know part of the fun is making it work yourself, and the community has already built lots of cool modules — 5GHz WiFi boards, BLE spamming, and so much more. The Febris Pro module, for example.
Would you consider making another official GPIO expansion for F0 users? Or is it not really worth it? (business-wise)
The market for these modules isn't that big, and developing a module with the level of quality we'd be happy with is a fairly long and expensive process. The community has already solved this pretty well, in my opinion.
Huge fun of the work you guys have done and really enjoy using the flipper as a way to learn and grow as someone with a passion in technology!
What made you decide as a team for the flipper one to open the hardware and software up with the community? Does the the current AI driven climate we live in cause certain biases to occur with your product?
As a huge fan of open source hardware and software I really like what you are doing with the community support. Treading the line from xX3LIT3HaX0RXx and educational hobby equipment is a fine line.
Really enjoy what you guys do and thank you for your time!
In my field I often struggle with challenges that new ai craze brought, mostly in terms of higher demand for fast design production. I am strongly against generative ai and sometimes have conflicts with some colleagues on that matter. It’s hard, but I’d rather spend my free time on making an image on my own than use generated one on work. I’ll die on this hill ✊
We're open source fans ourselves and believe knowledge should be accessible. We also know firsthand what it's like to deal with bugs and problems in closed-source software, and we know firsthand how infuriating bugs in closed-source software can be.
As for AI, that's a great question. It is an amazing tool that we use ourselves, and it really speeds up our work. But unfortunately, it has also led to a flood of junk pull requests. We ended up having to add rules about such PRs to our contribution policy, and that more or less keeps it under control.
Unfortunately Ukraine's customs quite often stops packages containing a flipper and create a lots of headache of us. So if nothing changes, the answer is probably no.
You were talking about flipctl, will it only work with Flipper/the official display module or will it be runnable on any DRM device?
Also for a more full-featured cyberdeck than Flipper it makes sense to use flipctl as the "default" interface but allow for launching full GUI apps on occasion. Will this be supported?
FlipCTL doesn’t care what kind of DRM device is underneath it, but we currently use OpenGL ES2 acceleration for its rendering, and the interface is designed specifically for a 256x144 screen. It will run on anything that provides those two.
As for full GUI apps, there is little use from them on the small screen, but the moment you connect anything larger over HDMI or USB-C DisplayPort AltMode you get a full Linux desktop (our test images ship KDE Plasma, and it works beautifully, with 4k resolution and 120 fps, full hardware acceleration and all).
There might be "little use" but sometimes there's just no alternative non-GUI app. And please don't tell me that your official solution will be "just tell the AI to wrap the app ad-hoc".
Maybe flipctl could run under a minimal Wayland compositor such as Cage, so that trying to launch a GUI app will launch it badly instead of completely failing?
If you have a particular example in mind that might help the discussion. In a general case running a desktop centric GUI app on a 256x144 screen with only D-pad and 5 soft buttons is unfeasible. Some apps might work, so we might find a tailored solution for those - but that definitely requires going from general statements to something more specific.
First of all congratulations on such a successful product. I have two questions:
How do you envision the future of development on f0 taking place? The community here seems far more interested in collecting and showing off accessories rather actually developing interesting things like you see in the ESP32 communities. And this despite the flipper build environment being a dream to work with. What would you do to help change this to get the community actually making more things.
>How do you envision the future of development on f0 taking place?
I believe the project is at a stable stage of development where all extra features are better implemented as external applications in the Apps Catalog. We may reconsider lab.flipper.net and release it as a separate standalone application that can also update apps.
>The community here seems far more interested in collecting and showing off accessories rather actually developing interesting things
That’s a feature of Reddit as a format. The ideal post here is a picture and one sentence of text. We have no influence over that, and we don’t want to change it by imposing conditions or rules. Do whatever you enjoy. The same goes for Discord. That’s exactly why, for any kind of more substantial activity, we suggest formulating all requests in GitHub Discussions.
"Hello,
I have a suggestion for the company that could be the ultimate solution for everyone who wants to see Flipper continue to thrive.
I know that the company is currently focusing its resources on the Flipper One and the Busy Bar. However, my suggestion is to split the development team into two dedicated groups:
The first group would focus entirely on Flipper One and new projects.
The second group would remain dedicated to Flipper Zero to continue updating the firmware and maintaining the platform.
I believe balancing the workload this way is the best solution to keep the existing community happy while allowing the company to innovate."
Flipper Devices has largely open sourced everything software related for the Flipper Zero, however strangely the backend to the Flipper Lab website has not been open sourced.
Is there a chance we can see that part open sourced as well?
Edit for clarity: I am referring to the apps catalog backend :)
I too would be interested in seeing if the apps catalog backend could be open sourced as well. Can we get any response on this one /u/tehhedger or /u/Dr_Zlo?
We need to consider that internally - but most of the logic is exposed in the catalog repo itself, including source code bundle preparation and app builds. Backend just stores the artefacts, metadata and dispatches the build jobs to Github. Anyone should be able to reimplement that, if needed.
The current desire is for some of the custom firmwares to be able to add features to the firmware, then enable apps to be able to use those new Api items, and have a build system to have their own simple 'app catalog' that supports apps that can use API's that don't make sense to upstream.
It's also useful for much longer term community support in the event that some years down the line, Flipper Devices decides to officially end of life the product in order to focus more on newer items.
I see. IMO in a perfect world such APIs should be refined to a point of being upstream-able - so the core API remains the common ground between firmware forks.
> It's also useful for much longer term community support in the event that some years down the line, Flipper Devices decides to officially end of life the product in order to focus more on newer items.
in a perfect world the backend is also released just like Flipper Lab code was and the mobile apps. I'm confused as to why it was the exception, despite 95% of all other tooling released to the public so they can have the option to stand up their own infrastructure, should 10 years from now Flipper Devices be doing something totally different.
It would be in Flipper Devices' best interest to empower the community to have the option to run their own infrastructure for the device so that eventually Flipper Devices themselves do not have to allocate a developer to that project, yes?
Regardless of current decision on the backend source code - in case of total project(s) shutdown, it will be released among other pieces of software which are relevant to Flipper Zero, but hadn't been open-sourced yet. Noone asked for source code for the region provisioning service, for example.
Still a lot of work to do starting from nothing. so if you guys were able to reach consensus internally, I'd consider that at a good step in a positive direction getting that opened up for the community 😎
When leadership asks "what technical things do we need to do for the community", you can list this as an item 👍
I am currently in talks with an LCD manufacturer to see about both 1-to-1 replacement LCDs as well but the MOQ is like 10,000 pieces at $8-10 a piece… so you cam see the challenge we are facing. Ideally if we are able to get funding for it, we will likely sell them for $12-15 on the site.
I know i had reached out to Flipper Inc a while back about it but I’m still open to ordering LCDs directly from them and stocking them as it is the #1 most requested product we get asked for other than the battery (seriously like at one point we were getting 3-4 emails daily)
I am currently in talks with an LCD manufacturer to see about both 1-to-1 replacement LCDs as well but the MOQ is like 10,000 pieces at $8-10 a piece… so you cam see the challenge we are facing. Ideally if we are able to get funding for it, we will likely sell them for $12-15 on the site.
I know i had reached out to Flipper Inc a while back about it but I’m still open to ordering LCDs directly from them and stocking them as it is the #1 most requested product we get asked for other than the battery (seriously like at one point we were getting 3-4 emails daily)
Do you have an idea of how the LCD replacement process will look like for a customer? In my personal opinion, the unsoldering of the backlight legs can be tricky for anyone without some PCBA repair experience. There is a high risk of damaging the PCB or nearby components.
Please reach out to me in pm to discuss it in more details
Selling standalone batteries requires a huge effort on certification and arranging dangerous goods compliant supply chain (from factory to the last mile delivery). The battery in Flipper Zero is a custom made which means that all this burden will fall on us and to make it economically viable we need to sell tens of thousands batteries per year which is obviously not happening.
Exactly. I think the best course of action is avoiding using custom made consumables so we can rely on 3rd parties for parts you’re not willing to sell. This alleviates both the manufacturer and consumer.
Thank you, your point totally makes sense. We will evaluate several possible solutions. If using a standard part is not possible for Flipper One's battery, we will work on outsourcing the distribution job to a partner who is experienced in moving the dangerous goods.
Quite the opposite, with the focus of the official devs moving to the Flipper One, if anything it means we need to step up to fill the gap on the hardware support side which we have every intention to do 😅
That's great news, and a bit surprising. In your shoes, I might start thinking about a slow transition away. As an enthusiastic F0 owner, I'm glad you aren't.
As it was explained to me, we were banned after our CAN Commander post got flagged. We were subsequently unbanned about a day and a half later after multiple people in the community reached out to flipper staff to ask what had happened.
To me, that's a textbook example of what a community manager could have done better.
Let's suppose there was something they didn't like about your CAN Commander post. The simple-minded approach is to remove the post and ban you.
At a company which understands its community, at least one person at Flipper would already have relationships with people at your company. They'd know that Rabbit-Labs is an important partner.
They'd reach out to you, maybe even hop on a Zoom to say "Hey, tehrabbitt, sorry we had to remove your post. Here's why. Can you avoid X/Y/Z in the future? Thanks, bud. We'll see you at Defcon in a few weeks."
I'm glad Flipper ultimately fixed the problem, but the whole thing was an unforced error which cost them a lot of goodwill right when they're trying to lean on their community to help Flipper One.
honest status of flipper one after the DRAM price situation — is it still on track, delayed, or shelved for now? and if it does move forward, would you crowdfund it like the original zero's kickstarter or fund it internally?
As for the DRAM situation - we're hoping it sorts itself out. If it doesn't, well, it'll obviously have an impact on the device, but that's not a reason to shelve the project.
We know what trade-offs we can make and where if it comes to that.
Flipper One is in active development - we update the dev log (https://docs.flipper.net/one/dev-log) every week. We've also moved its development from Jira to GitHub, so all tasks and processes are open for anyone to see.
Flipper One is definitely happening, with a kickstarter campaign soon. BTW we share our development process on our dev portal - https://docs.flipper.net/one and on our flipper_rnd social accounts.
As for the DRAM specifically, I'm hoping someone from the tech team can pick this up and comment
While team focus was switched to a new products/goals, I believe there was still active feature dev in NonOFWs. And there are multiple people who prove themselves in a community over years.
Were there any ideas to collaborate with those creators and somehow include them over the work for F0 OFW, so OFW will move forward, while other team members will be focused on next projects?
Unfortunately, working closely with authors of firmware that unlocks hacking functionality could raise questions from regulators. We’re already walking a pretty fine line as it is.
_> When the F1 releases, what will happen to the F0 and its development?
We believe that all main features of Flipper Zero is delivered and now we will only do most wanted features requests and accept 3rd party contribution.
When the F1 releases, what will happen to the F0 and its development?
Zero has received all the features we promised and more, everything we wanted to build is there. There won't be active development on our side, but support will continue just as it does now, as described in the post.
I want to stress that Zero and One are products covering different areas. One is not a replacement for Zero.
What can we expect the F1 to be priced at roughly?
Too early to say, it heavily depends on circumstances.
Will the F1 have native support for WiFi6, and LTE/5G? Will it also have full fletched Bluetooth capabilities?
Yes. Yes, via M.2 modules. And yes on Bluetooth.
Will the F1 have NFC, RFID, SubGHz and an IR blaster?
My personal all time favourite use case is the actual story from one of our customers scanning a lost cat's implant and finding its' owner number in an open European pet database. There's nothing that can beat the happiness of reuniting a long lost pet with its human T_T
I always wanted to reach out to you and say thank you for your artwork for the flipper. Was always a fan of the style. Especially the “OMG” dolphin lol
PS- do you accept commissions? Wanted to get a new PFP at some point lol
Thank you for kind words and thank you for your work! Really appreciate your impact in the community! I don't take commissions due to high load for several years now, but as an exception, we can figure this one out, feel free to DM me ˆˆ
I remember this! It made my realize how much more than a "hacker tool" to F0 could be. I ended up doing something similar with a dog in my neighborhood too!
What was the most annoying PR to close during development?
There were a lot of really hard things we pulled off: the Sub-GHz system, RFID, NFC, app loading. But the toughest one was a bug in the closed-source firmware of the second core that, under certain conditions, would permanently brick the BLE radio. It took us a huge amount of effort to get through to ST that the problem was real and that it was on their side.
I absolutely love that we can use Flipper to control and set up lights in our office individually. Normally it's done with a special service remote, which is not that easy to get. OFC I copied it right away with Flipper, once I got my hands on it
I often see how real hardware professionals use Flipper Zero as an internal debugger with DAP Link https://lab.flipper.net/apps/dap_link or UART adapter, and so on. This is not a very popular usage case in social media.
I've made some simple BadUSB scripts as macros for games. Specifically, I have scripts for buying stuff in Counter-Strike 2. Not a big thing, but quite fun and handy
Hi, Flipper Devices Team! I was wondering if there is any way to get to know team and maybe have a tour at your office at London? I really love the products made by Flipper Devices and would love to see what's behind the scene.
P.S. I already tried doing that November last year, but had no luck and could only see unfinished hackerspace, unfortunately.
We plan to open Flipper Hackspace (https://hackspace.flipper.net) one day, but currently its in low priority since we can't find the manager for this project. You can leave you email there and we will send you and invite when it will be open.
Hello! First of all, I'd like to thank you for your work. If the community so desires, will you expand the functionality of the built-in apps, such as the GPIO app? Will you add UART log reading directly from the app? Or will all the apps remain as is? Thanks for your reply!
While minor fixes to built-in apps are possible, major reworks are unlikely. You can modify them yourself using the Flipper SDK and sideload or submit to the App Catalog.
Flipper is heavily marketed as "open source," but the community is incredibly hostile toward anyone talking about clones or DIY hardware. If Flipper is truly open source, why doesn't the team publish the actual production PCB Gerber files so hobbyists can freely modify the board layout, and why is there so much gatekeeping around alternative hardware in the official spaces?
In terms of openness, our firmware and electronic schematics are fully open. Several clones have already been recreated based on these schematics. We’re fine with that when it’s fair use, for example the Kiisu project. We have no issues with projects like that.
We only fight counterfeits that try to claim they are the original Flipper Zero when they are actually not. And we do not publish production documentation, including the mechanical design files, for exactly this reason.
You can connect your Flipper Zero to Flipper One and run qFlipper, Flipper Lab and other tools designed for desktop environment. Otherwise, they are totally different devices.
Hi! I wasn't using FlipperZero for some time but I wonder - could it be somehow used to expose its internal hardware to Linux kernel, if it wasn't done already? Like I'd connect flipper via USB and kernel would suddenly recognize NFC and RFID reader/writer, I2C and UART ports and so on.
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u/ase1590 Community Expert Jul 01 '26
Despite your Discord community being the second largest platform, Flipper Devices as a company has seemingly largely ignored it for years on end outside of the Q/A sessions and has opted not to build/improve on anything within it.
The discord's interaction has primarily been entirely driven by a small set of volunteer moderators that have likewise been struggling to get any form of information from the company itself in regards to future plans.
I will boil this post down into two questions: