[HN Gopher] CapibaraZero: A cheap alternative to FlipperZero bas...
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CapibaraZero: A cheap alternative to FlipperZero based on ESP32-S3
Author : andreock
Score : 373 points
Date : 2024-10-15 20:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (capibarazero.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (capibarazero.github.io)
| nine_k wrote:
| > _For the moment the only option is to make capibaraZero with a
| breadboard but we are working on a PCB to make device more
| portable._
|
| Radically low-cost, can't disagree :)
|
| PCB files are actually available:
| https://github.com/CapibaraZero/resources/tree/main/PCB/
|
| OTOH it's nice to be able to literally see every part, and how
| they are connected.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Remember hardware != software. These PCBs may still be WIP.
| nine_k wrote:
| Yes, updating a PCB means building a device anew, and to
| build it you can't just type "make" and go grab a tea.
|
| This us why the idea to go for the breadboard first and thus
| always have a working prototype is so obviously right.
| andreock wrote:
| PCB is ready, it's a typo in docs, I will update ASAP
| canadianfella wrote:
| What part was a typo?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > _For the moment the only option is to make capibaraZero
| with a breadboard but we are working on a PCB to make
| device more portable._
| shaxa wrote:
| That's awesome! I love the idea of starting with a breadboard--
| it makes everything more hands-on and helps visualize the
| connections better. Having PCB files available is a great touch
| for when things need to go portable! Are there any music-
| related (https://sites.google.com/site/legitticketsites/vivid-
| seats-r...) projects or builds you've seen with CapibaraZero so
| far?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Does anyone know what the legality of these are? Can you get in
| trouble just for purchasing things like flipper zero? Or just for
| using them in some way?
| diggan wrote:
| Depends on your country. Usually it's the action of using it
| for specific things that are illegal, not just
| purchasing/owning it. But if you're caught breaking into an
| office with it, I'm sure many countries' courts would see that
| as additional tooling for the break in, for example.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Your country may be of relevance to the question, but in most
| countries owning or using a flipper or similar, provided you do
| not interfere with devices you do not own, will not cause
| issues.
| Havoc wrote:
| Transmissions are pretty tightly regulated in most countries.
| Receiving less so but those laws can be pretty catch-all.
| Unless you enjoy static noise you're probably intercepting
| _something_ and thus potentially running afoul of lawful
| interception rules.
|
| Exactly laws & whether anyone cares are ofc dependent on your
| country
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Flipper Zero was banned in at least one country: Brazil.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/03/flipper-zero-devices-b...
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/brazil-seizin...
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's probably not illegal to own in most countries, but
| nevertheless won't be the smartest move to actively getting
| involved with it, the idea around it is just too malicious.
| feanaro wrote:
| What are you even on about, mate? A hacker's multi tool with
| infinite potential for exploration is an idea "too malicious"
| to consider?
| andreock wrote:
| It depends on usage, if you make an ARP poison attack on your
| home network, for example, it's not a big problem, if you make
| it on someone else network, can be a problem :). Also pay
| attention on SubGHZ frequency, country restrict free frequency
| range
| philwelch wrote:
| Canada was going to ban Flipper Zero but rolled it back earlier
| this year. https://www.pcmag.com/news/canada-walks-back-ban-of-
| flipper-...
|
| HN discussion at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778185
| beeflet wrote:
| I wish this functionality was in Watchy v3
| (https://watchy.sqfmi.com/), which is also based on EPS32-S3
| daghamm wrote:
| Ah man, this thread is horrible for my wallet.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| M5stack.com makes a whole bunch of ESP32 modules with display,
| enclosures, batteries, etc already integrated, and they're cheap
| and robust. You can get one with a built-in keyboard for $30.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Espressif(the ESP* company) bought M5Stack earlier this year.
| So M5 products are basically official ESP* reference platform.
| radicality wrote:
| Oh wow, had no idea. I like their products, have a bunch of
| sensors and liking the ease of use. Most recently got the
| SCD41 co2 sensors to migrate away from all the crappy cloud-
| based sensors, and works great!
| RachelF wrote:
| For the more budget concious - you can get ESP32 modules with
| USB C, Wifi/BT and a few IO pins from AliExpress for $4. These
| things are amazingly cheap.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Agree, but M5stack devices also start at $5 and come with a
| case. Add $10 or 15 and you can get a device with a screen,
| accelerometer, buttons, microphone, and more. No soldering
| required.
| ruph123 wrote:
| Which of theirs is the most comparible to the flipper zero?
| Besides the cool looking Cardputer it is quite hard to make
| sense of their product lineup and compare features.
| barrenko wrote:
| Care to recommend one? Appreciate it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It depends what you want to do with it and how many modules
| you want to hang off it (or not). The 'entry level ' one is
| the M5stickC, which is about the size of your thumb, has a
| couple of buttons, a screen, a grove connector (to attach
| peripherals), an accelerometer, a real time clock chip, and a
| battery for around $20.
|
| All their stuff is programmable in C or in MicroPython, and
| they have a Scratch-type building-block interface called
| UIflow which lets you prototype in MP very fast, and is
| extensible with your own modules. You kind of need it even if
| you're competent in Python because the documentation tends to
| be barebones and focus on the electronic schematics, so the
| UIflow software components _are_ the API documentation.
|
| Expressif's own documentation is very good so this may be
| changing since they acquired M5stack, but I still find UIflow
| the fastest way to get hands-on with a new module.
| andreock wrote:
| I will check it, thank you.
| ingen0s wrote:
| Thank you
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The big advantage of the FlipperZero is the community developing
| software. This seems to be a based on a different chip. Does the
| Flipper software run natively on this, or do we need to port
| everything?
| bigiain wrote:
| I find my FlipperZero is a super fun tool for exploring stuff
| I'm even vaguely curious about, which I can then use to
| design/build things I want.
|
| Both my motorcycles now have about $8 worth of AliExpress parts
| including a CC1101 rf module hooked top to the high beam globe,
| so I can just flash my hi beams at the garage door and it opens
| via 433MHz magic. It was super easy to know how to build that
| when I'd experimented with "listening" to the keychain garage
| door opener with the FZ, and playing back the signal at the
| garage door. To get from there to a first prototype with a
| CC1101 module and an Arduino, then a second prototype with a
| CC1101 and an AT-Tiny installed on a bike was so obviously just
| going to work that it was a heap of fun. Without the "instant
| gratification" of being able to record the garage door opener
| key fob with the FZ and play it back to open the door, and the
| knowledge that the FZ did that just by using a inexpensive
| microcontroller driving a CC1101 module itself, I'd probably
| never even done more than wonder about how to do it.
| sedatk wrote:
| > "listening" to the keychain garage door opener with the FZ,
| and playing back the signal
|
| That would only work with older garage doors that don't use
| rolling codes, wouldn't it?
| ddulaney wrote:
| Yep! That's an unfortunately (or fortunately, for the
| hacker unconcerned with garage theft) the vast bulk of
| installed garage doors.
| szundi wrote:
| How old that door can be? 30 years old? Even in the EU we
| installed rolling codes 30 years ago
| sedatk wrote:
| 30 years is new construction in US standards.
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| The key take-away is "rental property".
| bigiain wrote:
| Yep. Non rolling code garage doors seem to be ubiquitous in
| rental properties here (Sydney Australia).
|
| Rolling codes are better. But if you haven't seen it, Samy
| Kamkar has a device called Roll Jam, take a look at the
| last ~5 mins of this Defcon23 talk:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNgvShN4USU
|
| (The TL;DR of the trick there is: Jam the radio signal a
| key fob sends so a car/garage fairly wide band receiver
| can't hear it. At the same time listen with a better tuned
| receiver. Wait for someone to press their key fob and
| record the code, then wait for them to press it again and
| record the second code - then stop jamming and replay the
| 1st code you captured. Door opens and person goes through.
| But you now have a valid second rolling code that will
| work. You can do this with a Teensy3 and two CC1101
| modules, about $40 worth of hardware.)
| Elhana wrote:
| With a basic rolling code that works and maybe still used
| in garage doors, but afaik current decent car alarms
| exchange encrypted keys several times between car and
| keyfob that you can't just replay. Even simply generating
| totp based keys and invalidating them in a few minutes is
| enough to make that kinda useless in practice.
| buescher wrote:
| > But you now have a valid second rolling code that will
| work.
|
| Once. Note also that the same technique will work on
| other OTP schemes that are not time-based.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm surprised there aren't any binary compatible clones of the
| FZ.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah me too, usually the chinese copyshops are pretty quick
| with this.
| RachelF wrote:
| Good to see some competition, the FlipperZero is very pricey for
| what it is. Then again, I guess you're paying for the software.
| k_roy wrote:
| You are paying for a complete package that you can fit in your
| pocket.
|
| This is still at breadboard stage. If you want to put something
| together for yourself at sub $35 you can. It's just not going
| to be portable, pretty, or probably even usable. I carry my
| flipper zero everywhere for a variety of tasks.
|
| The flipper zero isn't doing anything special that you we
| haven't been able to do for decades with a variety of parts.
|
| * SubGHZ, you need an RF module.
|
| * Bluetooth? yep
|
| * IR, you need IR,
|
| * network, hey WiFi.
|
| * SD card for any kind of storage? yep, another module
|
| * USB anything but charging? Yep, more wires and modules.
|
| But hey, most devices want at least 4 wires (VCC/GND/A FEW
| SIGNALs), and other devices want more, to handle clocks and
| timing. And that's only if your thing supports IC2 and you have
| enough GPIO. Otherwise you need multiplexers.
|
| Any one of these things can be done with less than a dollar in
| parts. But have fun combining them all into something workable
| AND can do them all.
|
| But hey, you are paying for the software right?? Come on.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The complete package is far more valuable because of the
| software that drives it. More valuable than not needing to
| solder the wires is not needing to figure out how to make the
| IR blaster do useful work by editing code. Because if it was
| just the hardware, the moat discouraging a non-open source
| competitor wouldn't exist and there would be competition
| already.
| k_roy wrote:
| What you are saying doesn't even make sense.
|
| They are discouraging open source hardware therefore that's
| what makes the software more valuable?
|
| I invite you to hit up ChatGPT or something and shit out a
| flipper app. It's fun, and straightforward and most people
| could pull it off with a bit of time and slogging through
| it.
|
| I would LOVE to see your Gerber design that fits in a case
| that's around 100x40x25mm and only weighs 104 grams. OH.
| And because of the parts involved, I'd love to see it
| because you'd need VERY advanced soldering skills to put it
| together.
|
| I'll write the OS/SDK. But it has to be the same size or
| smaller and have:
|
| 1. A screen
|
| 2. NFC
|
| 3. 125 kHz RFID
|
| 4. IR Blaster and Receiver
|
| 5. Bluetooth
|
| 6. USB controller that can be tons of things
|
| 7. HID Controllers for lots of things
|
| 8. Still lots of exposed GPIO pins for external stuff.
|
| 9. SD Card
|
| Any single one of these requires a sub $1
| microcontroller/arduino/ESP + soldering ability + 10 lines
| of boilerplate code.
|
| Yeah. tell me again the hardware isn't anything special.
| bigiain wrote:
| > You are paying for a complete package that you can fit in
| your pocket.
|
| Yeah. I've got raspberry pis, and some USB Wi-Fi adaptors
| specifically bought for having monitor mode, and a few
| different RTL-SDRs, and a HackRF One, and an Ubertooth One.
|
| But I'm _way_ more likely to have my FlipperZero with me when
| my curiosity is piqued while out somewhere. I'll often have
| it in my pocket to use as the world's most expensive tv-b-
| gone.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Side note that I learned the hard way; once you buy a Flipper
| Zero and get bored with it, they are very, very hard to sell.
| Both eBay and Facebook Marketplace seem to not allow them to be
| sold, and simply asking around doesn't do much.
|
| I got mine awhile ago, played with it, did what I wanted to do
| and lost interest as I moved on to other things. So now I have
| a costly device knocking around in a drawer.
| stereo wrote:
| How do people end up selling it? If you are anywhere near NYC
| I could be interested in yours.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I honestly don't know. I also advertised on a few less
| regulated forums, but no bites. Not in NYC, but if it makes
| a difference, I am in the US and shipping is always an
| option. If we can establish contact outside of HN, I'm
| willing to work something out.
| dgacmu wrote:
| You might update your profile to include contact info?
|
| Or email me if you don't hear back from the first person.
| :) dga@cs.cmu.edu
| stereo wrote:
| Yes! You can email me at hn at stereo dot lu
| snvzz wrote:
| Cute, but I'll wait for the ESP32-P4 version (RISC-V successor to
| the now deprecated S line).
| auguzanellato wrote:
| Not really a successor, they're different chip lines (more I/O,
| video engine, more hardware crypto stuff but no wireless
| capabilities we all know and love from Espressif)
| snvzz wrote:
| Hmm, I had missed that. Perhaps the C line (e.g. C6) would be
| more suited.
|
| Espressif CEO expressed commitment to RISC-V (now already
| years ago) and they've stopped releasing new chips with
| tensilica ISA.
|
| As the ecosystem, toolchains and such aren't comparable to
| that of RISC-V and this gap will only widen, they really
| shouldn't be selected for new designs.
| auguzanellato wrote:
| C line isn't also very comparable: single (C-series) vs
| dual core (S3), and S3 has USB-OTG capabilities whereas C6
| only has USB-JTAG.
|
| Tensilica ESPs aren't formally in NRND stage as of right
| now, for some usages they're still the only choice, even if
| RISC-V is clearly the path forward.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| But it has no bluetooth or WIFI.
| asadalt wrote:
| is S3 depeecated?
| antirez wrote:
| Much more usable if this will target directly the LILYGO T3 and
| T3/S3. One would optionally add more hardware if needed to
| support the IR blaster, NFC and so forth, but the LoRa chip is
| already included.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| Or the LilyGO T-Embed CC1101.
| andreock wrote:
| CC1101 boards(at least the cheapest ones) have problems with
| shared SPI bus(SD card and Subghz module)
| andreock wrote:
| I saw the board, interesting, a really compact board with
| almost all module already soldered on it. The project structure
| and build system makes it easy to integrate new board, I
| consider it a valid option to reduce space and avoid issues of
| soldering all components. Thank you for the advice!
| daghamm wrote:
| Thank you, we really need a good alternative to FZ.
|
| I haven't looked closely at the files, but I wonder if there is
| anything stopping us from using the new C3 riscv version instead
| if S3.
|
| C3 seems to be cheaper and more stable, but maybe the performance
| is a bit lower?
| andreock wrote:
| I have a bunch of esp32-c3 and build system of capibaraZero
| make it easy to integrate it(like other device of esp32
| family). The only problem with esp32-c3 is the absence of USB
| OTG feature.
| daghamm wrote:
| Is OTG a requirement? Or just good to have?
|
| I have a bunch of C3-mini boards and it would be great to
| finally use them for something more interesting than a
| temperature sensor.
| andreock wrote:
| Not really a requirement, you won't see USB section on the
| GUI. The capibaraZero is designed to support almost every
| device that support Arduino Wiring framework, so if a
| device doesn't support a feature, it will be hidden in GUI
| axegon_ wrote:
| A good PCB design + a few STL files and this would truly be
| marvelous. I do own a flipper zero(I was one of the first backers
| so I've had it for a while). Admittedly it's a bit over-hyped and
| I never saw it as an rf swiss army knife because of it's
| limitations and shortcomings.
|
| The two shortcomings I saw were the price and the lack of WiFi
| built in. In reality, if this project gets paired with a single
| board computer, this would truly be a match made in heaven. An
| 18650 lipo battery to power them on, a cheap stl file for a 3d
| printed case and you have a disposable one-off hacking device(as
| in drop it somewhere for a one time task and do everything
| remotely over ssh and a proxy like ngrok or bore).
|
| Admittedly I started working on something of the sorts a while
| back though I never really got anywhere due to the lack of time.
| I actually wanted to include LoRa to the equation to make it
| truly off the grid. I got as far as writing some boilerplate code
| for the project and it's been collecting dust ever since...
| "Someday" as we all like to say...
| nateabele wrote:
| Push it!
|
| I can happily pick up the torch on everything except the PCB
| design.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Well the PCB design isn't my strong side either - I am
| completely self-taught in that regard and I'm sure people who
| have studied that will tare me apart for any decisions I've
| made(also valid for all of my projects involving PCB's in the
| past, even more so considering I make the PCB's at home with
| a diode laser). Likewise, software is my domain.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| There are PCB designs linked (maybe not good?) and an STL for a
| case. Just didn't know if you had missed those.
|
| I was not able to find a photo of the finished device.
| andreock wrote:
| I will upload photo and a guide soon
| atVelocet wrote:
| There are many ESP32 boards with a SubGHz radio. But they are
| either ESP32 with a SX127x or ESP32S3 with a SX126x. A lot of
| them come with built in battery support.
|
| The next problem with this project is the used radio: The
| SX12xx series from Semtech is good but lacks a lot of features
| like the CC1101 as used in the Flipper Zero.
|
| I really like the idea of using an ESP32 but the choice of the
| used radio is a bit akward.
| andreock wrote:
| why do you say this? I find SX1276 a perfect replacement for
| CC1101( that have problems with shared SPI bus). Also SX1276
| support LoRa and have a wider frequency range than CC1101.
| atVelocet wrote:
| The SX127x doesn't have the same features and CC1101 has
| way more options to fine tune any aspect of the radio.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I see several boards with ESP32 + SX1276 built in for a couple
| tenners so they might do. I have to check still which ones
| work.
|
| Edit: They are not ESP32S3 as other commenters have mentioned
| :'(
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Nice! The FlipperZero is too expensive for me so this would be a
| great option.
| phkahler wrote:
| So I forgot what a FlipperZero is, and this website doesn't say
| squat about what this this actually is or is used for other than
| claiming it's a FlipperZero clone of some sort.
|
| How about saying what the thing is all on your own rather than
| ONLY making sense as an alternative?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Guessing their "audience" will already know.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Those esp32-s3's are super hot right now. Lots of improvements
| over the older esp32's like the ability to assign any set of pins
| to your SPI bus. Previously there were a fixed set of pins you
| could use.
|
| Back on the 8266 it was even worse as there were a lot of gpio
| pins you couldn't use at all!
|
| The S3 also has a built in hardware debugger accessible with its
| new built in USB pins. Previously you had to attach an external
| jtag debugger.
|
| The one thing I've noticed is the S3 is a bit of a "breaking"
| hardware revision and things like the arduino pin library haven't
| quite caught up yet to some of the new features. Things like WLED
| or FastLED haven't caught up quite yet either.
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