My Flipper Zero is Useless (and Other Silly Stories)

The Flipper Zero has a reputation as a hacker’s multitool capable of cloning keycards, starting Teslas, and stealing WiFi passwords. Curious about the hype, I bought one to see what it could actually do.

In this talk, I’ll introduce the Flipper Zero and explore the wireless technologies it interacts with, including infrared, RFID, and NFC. Along the way, we’ll explore how access cards work and why many real-world systems are harder to clone than internet hype suggests.

But the most surprising part of my Flipper Zero journey wasn’t hacking, it was discovering the joy of building software for a tiny open device. I’ll share a few small projects, including my first simple knit counter app and a silly scorekeeping app using the Flipper Zero, Grafana dashboard, Google Sheets as a stack.

This talk is about curiosity, creativity, and my journey as a so-called hacker who set out to hack things, failed completely, and ended up building wholesome and unexpected projects instead.