Flipper Zero is a tamagotchi form factor pocket multitool project for hackers that I am developing with friends. Previous posts [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ]
I still can't believe it. This is the most exciting article I've ever written. We have come a long way: we completely changed Flipper's electronics twice, survived blackouts and closed borders due to coronavirus, moved the company from Hong Kong to the USA, barely passed all the checks and verifications, and FINALLY READY TO START THE FLIPPER ON KIKSTARTER! Now I just have to press the "Start" button.
Inside I will tell you: what we had to go through, what it takes to get on Kickstarter, as we did in two weeks registered a company in the USA and opened a bank account, how Stripe refused to confirm our company and what happens next.
See - this is Flipper Zero
For six months of work on the project, I answered the question "what is Flipper Zero" thousands of times. Here are my favorite answers:
- Tamagotchi for adults
- Toy for nerds
- Platform for electronics developers and pentesters
- An electronic dolphin that regularly insults you
Before plunging headlong into the development, I checked how much people really need such a device, whether someone will buy it or is it a waste of time. First, I tested my hypotheses by asking the audience for habr. Here are the old posts [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ]. It turned out that the reaction is almost always polar and is either expressed in the phrase from the meme "Shut up and take my money", or, on the contrary, sharply negative: "The author must be imprisoned and then shot, the device must be banned." The ratio of approval and negative on Habré is about 70% to 30%.
In the first posts, I asked people to take part in a survey, tell them which features are more important to them and what they would like to add. A thousand people took part in the survey. The most important functions were found to be the radio module and RFID.
The most unpopular feature is iButton keys (Dallas Touch Memory). For those who do not know, these are such contact iron key pills from intercoms.
People actively wrote reviews and suggested new features. Of all the proposals, we ended up implementing two functions:
- Infrared port for emulating TV and air conditioner remotes with the ability to learn, that is, to read existing remotes.
- GPIO pins. With their help, you can turn Flipper into a USB -> UART / I2C / SPI converter. Or connect peripherals like Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
We set up a forum where we asked people to advise us on which components to choose and how to solve problems. On the forum, it was allowed to write only in English, so as not to be limited only to the local community and to weed out those who do not understand electronics and want to flood.
Then I published several posts on Reddit, in the sections netsec and TechNewsToday . The reaction was very positive, publications reached the top of the section, the percentage of negativity is much less than on Habré. From these posts, we got a couple of thousand pre-orders from the USA and Europe.
For comparison, in a post on Pikaboo, almost every second comment is about what kind of a fool the author is, what should be imprisoned for this, and so on.
This is how the geography of our pre-orders looks like:
: , + , . .
When the epidemic hit, we were not at all ready. The borders were closed, and there was no cargo from China. As a result, the parcel with prototypes got stuck at customs for a month ! Local PCB manufacturers didn't work, everything stopped.
These prototypes will be stuck at the border for a month.
As a result, debugging and testing went through video communication sessions. One camera pointed to the oscilloscope, the other to the board, and the remote hands were controlled by voice. Not very fast, but generally worked. Here is a screenshot of one of these sessions:
Calling the front-end bus
Some sketches from the development process:
For a very long time we were looking for the ideal shape of the case, in which the electronics would fit, while it lay comfortably in the hand and inside it was possible to place the necessary stiffeners so that the case would not bend or break upon impact. All ergonomics hypotheses were tested on a 3D printer. Here are just a few of the prototypes that have been assembled in the corners:
Go to Kickstarter
So, we got a working prototype. We were able to calculate BOM, firmware development, production, testing, delivery, certification and the entire economy with all possible development scenarios. At that moment, we were completely ready to go to Kickstarter and start crowdfunding.
The fact is that only residents of these countries can enter Kickstarter with their own project: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium , Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, and Japan.
If you have a company in Russia, then you will not be allowed anywhere. At that time, we had a company in Hong Kong, and we originally planned to go through it. The only difficulty was the bank account. Sometimes it was closed without explanation. This happened with many Hong Kong companies, which had Russian founders. Obviously, if we are suddenly blocked during or after crowdfunding, it will be a failure. For a long time we tried to solve this problem by contacting different banks, trying to get some kind of guarantees, but banks in Hong Kong look at Russians with contempt.
Company registration in the USA
It turns out that a company in the United States can be registered remotely from any country. You don't even need to show your passport. The procedure is very simple, in a week you can easily open a company of any form of ownership LLC (analogous to our LLC) or corporation (C Corp). On the Internet you can find many services that offer such services: firstbase.io , clerky.com and many others. But it's not that simple.
By itself, the company can hardly do anything. For any transactions with money, you need to get an EIN (Employer Identification Number) - an analogue of our TIN. And this is where the hardest part begins. The procedure for obtaining an EIN involves sending a Form SS-4, attention, by FAX (!!!). I could not even imagine that in 2020 it is still used somewhere else.
However, there is a problem with this: now, due to the coronavirus, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is processing requests very slowly. Many of my friends have been waiting for an answer for more than two months!
We were not satisfied with such terms, so we began to look for another way.
It turned out that EIN can be obtained by a third party not affiliated with the company IN ONE DAY . To do this, you need to have a Social Security Number (SSN) and be a US resident.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Konstantin cl@incorporatenow.com for help with registration. Thanks to him, we did everything in 2 weeks! His company is engaged in the registration and support of companies in the United States, feel free to contact.
As a result, thanks to the help of Konstantin, in 2 weeks we had on hand a package of documents sufficient to apply to the bank.
Getting a bank account
Getting a bank account is the most difficult operation in this case. Almost all banks require a personal presence to open an account. The only bank that explicitly claims to open accounts remotely for foreign-owned companies is Mercury.com . This is not really a bank, but rather a service like the domestic Rocketbank, which operates through the parent bank.
It was scary to work with some hipster service if it was planned to accept> $ 100k. What if the parent bank decides to block us? What if there are some hidden limits? Can I send money to China to pay for production? We decided to publicly reach out to them on Twitter. To get noticed, I asked my followers to do their best to like and reply to the tweet. In the end, this tactic worked, the CEO of Mercury Bank replied to us:
CEO of Mercury Bank responds to our tweet
In the correspondence, he said that it is common practice for them, that their service is often used for crowdfunding by companies with foreign owners, and this is not a trigger to close an account. As a result, a few days after submitting the documents, we opened an account.
Stripe - your company doesn't exist
Submitting a project to Kickstarter consists of several stages: first, you fill out the page, specify prices, budget, team, upload a video. Then you specify the company details, which are verified through the third-party Stripe service.
At this stage, we are stuck for several days. Verification ended with an automatic error that our EIN scan was not valid. I must say that Stripe and Kickstarter's technical support works VERY slowly in this regard. It's okay for them to answer for a week. But again, we were not ready to wait and went to the public to cry. I tweeted again. A couple of hours later, the official Stripe account arrived ready to help. As it is not surprising, but within two hours the problem was solved and all checks passed. It turned out that our EIN had not yet entered the databases and had not been automatically checked.
Publicity Helps to Solve Problems
I am quite sure that if it were not for publicity, we would have been solving this problem for a month, waiting for every reply to the mail for a week. It's a shame to admit, but if you don't have thousands of followers in social. networks, then any non-standard problem can be solved endlessly, and you will endlessly football in the first line of support.
Product check
When all legal checks are passed, the completed page with your product is sent for moderation to Kickstarter itself. There they check if your product violates the rules. This procedure can take up to five days. We sent a request for a review on Saturday, on Monday we were contacted by Kickstarter employees who liked the project, and as a result, confirmation came on Tuesday.
After that, all that remains is to press the Start button and the campaign will begin. After the product is approved, the pre launch page becomes available, the address of which will not change after the launch. This is convenient for preparing advertising campaigns, you can prepare all the pages in which there will already be a working link.
This is how the pre launch page looks like:
It's funny that, being published less than a day ago, our pre-launch page is already in first place in popularity among Upcoming projects, gaining almost a thousand subscribers.
And now I still can't believe this is happening. Probably, according to the short description, from the outside it may seem simple, but for me this is the most ambitious, complex and interesting project that I have done in my entire life. And this is only the middle of the road! Frankly, I was not so worried even before the first sex as now.
FAQ
When do you start?
Literally in a couple of hours. Now we are finishing metrics, counters, analytics, apihi, integrations and other marketing nonsense.
How much will it cost?
On the first day, a lot for a super early bird will cost $ 99 . Further a little more expensive. There will be 400 such lots, so we expect them to be available only on the first day of the campaign.
How does payment on Kickstarter work?
The money is not debited immediately. You will be asked to link the card, but the money will be charged only at the end of the campaign, that is, after 30 days, and only if we collect the required amount of $ 60,000 . If there is no money on the card at that moment, he will try to write off again within 2 weeks.
How will you deliver?
Shipping will be worldwide. Paid separately closer to the time of dispatch. As prices change due to the coronavirus, we will send a separate email to pay for shipping one month before shipment.
Check email
After the campaign, we will ask you to fill in the delivery address and possibly select additional options if we collect on them. Follow the letters.
It is legal? I won't be arrested at the post office?
Flipper does not fall under the description of a special means or device for the secret collection of information. It does not have the ability to fix audiovisual information, it is not disguised as household items. The factory firmware will not have jamming, brute-force and other potentially harmful functions.
Will there be a Linux version of Flipper One?
This campaign is only for the Zero version based on STM32. The fate of Version One will depend on the success of this campaign. If we collect the required amount, we can continue working on version One.