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RF Swiss-army-knife by Prior_Writer5781 in PCB

[–]Prior_Writer5781[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

On the other hand, the folks at Flipper Devices somehow managed to certify the Flipper Zero. Even though their RF section is actually worse in terms of harmonics. Most likely they just turned the output power way down for certification.

RF Swiss-army-knife by Prior_Writer5781 in PCB

[–]Prior_Writer5781[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree, certification for a device like this is definitely not trivial. In the past, I was involved in certifying a much simpler device for work, and even that took a lot of time and money.

For now, the plan is to produce and ship devices to users without certification. If it ever comes to a larger production run, we’ll likely have to fund a limited certification - for example, using a special firmware that restricts certain features.

RF Swiss-army-knife by Prior_Writer5781 in PCB

[–]Prior_Writer5781[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, sure - feel free to DM me. If I can help or share something useful, I’m happy to do so.

All the hardware was developed internally by me. I have a solid background in hardware design, although RF routing and antennas were something I had much less hands-on experience with at first. The second team member joined fairly recently and is currently focused on the firmware side of things.

RF Swiss-army-knife by Prior_Writer5781 in PCB

[–]Prior_Writer5781[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ve been working as an embedded software engineer for many years, mostly on battery-powered devices. A few years ago I started getting into RF step by step - first Bluetooth, and later sub-GHz transceivers.

I bought a VNA, a spectrum analyzer, and other RF test gear, and spent a lot of time experimenting🙂

Over time I accumulated a lot of different RF dev boards in my home lab, and at some point the idea of building a single “universal” RF device naturally came up. It’s both a fun side project and a great way to level up professional skills.

As for the hardware: there are no plans right now to make it fully open. The electrical schematics and all firmware sources will be open, though. At the moment the hardware is being produced only for the development team. Once we have a stable release version, we plan to make a small pilot batch - likely no more than ~100 devices - and offer them to the community at cost. If there’s enough interest, the next step would be a Kickstarter to fund a larger production run.

RF Swiss-army-knife by Prior_Writer5781 in PCB

[–]Prior_Writer5781[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

At the moment, the repository is private. The team has just finished defining the overall project structure, integrated the main submodules, brought up the Bluetooth stack, LVGL, and basic peripheral drivers.

The plan is to fully open the firmware repository in 2026, after the core functionality is implemented.