alt.hn

7/12/2026 at 9:27:29 PM

Kode Dot Programmable pocket device for makers, pentesters and geeks

 https://kode.diy

by iNic

7/13/2026 at 11:54:49 AM

I think it's great!

I looked into ESP32, M5 Stack, Arduino, etc. but as someone without experience it's very confusing. Which parts go together? Which case fits? Does that have a battery? All of this can be found out if you study the specs but it's not intuitive.

If all you want is tinker with a device, this device here is optimal.

For the people saying you can build this yourself: Yes. You can also build your own guitar from invidual parts and it will be cheaper than a store bought guitar. (I have done this). Is it super fun to build? Yes. Can everyone do it? No.

by tom2948329494

7/13/2026 at 8:10:53 AM

For £160 you can buy three JC1060P470, 7 inch proto-tablet systems with the same P4+C5 stack, with GPIO, ethernet in some models.

I get that the expense here is miniaturising and integration, but even at half the RRP, I'd be wincing. The maker market knows how to work out a napkin-BOM, and knows that this is a lot of money for what you're getting.

by oliwarner

7/13/2026 at 2:47:51 PM

Miniaturization and OS customization are significantly more expensive than the BoM suggests. By that logic, every Android phone is a Qualcomm board with some bits stuck on, why does Samsung charge so much for it?

by glitchc

7/13/2026 at 9:47:37 PM

This is not phone-grade miniaturisation.

As a maker, I see somebody selling a dev kit that with £20 more in buttons, battery, and an afternoon in CAD gives me a Steam Deck sized version of this for a third the price. It's not the same format, but it's not a disparate bucket of parts either.

Again, you market yourself at people like me, this is the pushback you have to expect.

by oliwarner

7/13/2026 at 11:48:16 AM

Well, flipper zero BoM is also significantly lower than the unit price...

by throwa356262

7/12/2026 at 10:29:34 PM

Is this similar to a Flipper Zero? It seems some of the capabilities are there but maybe not all even though you could add anything with the extensions it seems.

by jvilalta

7/12/2026 at 10:15:09 PM

Why would you use this compared to the M5 stack which kind of does the same thing? This just looks like it's packaged in a "cuter" sense.

by monksy

7/13/2026 at 1:20:34 AM

If it takes cute packaging to get people into it, so be it. This seems like a great project. The more the merrier

by cush

7/12/2026 at 11:12:00 PM

For me the fact that it has NFC built-in makes it perfect for my usecase. I looked at the M5 and friends but having to add an extra add-on box with a cable was a nonstarter for me.

by ranger_danger

7/13/2026 at 6:58:48 AM

I understand the rationale, but it looks like they decided to go the Sisyphean route on this.

ESP32-C5 ~$10

ESP32-P4 ~$5

Display ~$10

Case is maybe 90 cents (let's round to $1) if you print out of ABS.

The rest of the components? Let's say another $15 worst case.

~$41 or around that much? Sure, but definitely not ~$193.

by hxii

7/13/2026 at 8:25:19 AM

What about design, build, marketing etc.?

I don't get why the maker market complains so much about the idea of businesses selling products at a healthy markup. Just because you know how the sausage was made doesn't mean that the logic of operating a business is any different to how it works in the consumer world.

If you're skilled and motivated enough to make it yourself, you might save some money. You'd loose a lot of time though and that's worth something too (perhaps a lot more).

by notarobot123

7/13/2026 at 1:44:21 PM

Roughly $200 is simply far too expensive though. If it were $100-$150, then I could wince at the price that ultimately is necessary for the product to exist. But $200? I just feel like I'm being ripped off. For that price, I'd recommend people buy a raspberry pi and some parts from adafruit and make their own ultimately better version

by mghackerlady

7/13/2026 at 9:51:34 AM

The cost of design, build and marketing do not triple the final price by themselves.

The kickstarter was successfully funded, yielding in over $3.3M. The device back then was $149 at 20% off, with $169 being the full price. That's still not $193.

Again, this is just my personal opinion, but even taking everything into account and factoring in a nice profit margin, being OVER $100 is very, very hard to justify.

by hxii

7/13/2026 at 2:51:58 PM

Surely an Android or other mobile and a USB GPIO device can do much the same. For most the outlay is then just the USB to GPIO. 15 USD from Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264

by ninalanyon

7/13/2026 at 12:31:48 AM

Hardware is hard and I applaud every effort to make it easier for tinkerers to build atop a platform. I've been away from it for a long time but how does the RPi system stack up in comparison? With all the hats available and the variety of cases, it shouldn't be too difficult to match the aesthetics, power consumption and exploit all the pluggable peripherals. What are the blind spots?

by farhanhubble

7/13/2026 at 12:25:50 AM

It's nice but should be half as much.

by sampton

7/13/2026 at 4:43:44 AM

Yeah I’d be interested at about a third of the asking price

It’s hard to beat LilyGo’s lineup in this area

by jordemort

7/13/2026 at 1:51:42 AM

Their main selling point is that "most projects die in the setup: a screen, buttons, power and sensors to wire up before you can even begin". With their product, you get plug-and-play blocks for everything. But that idea has been tried many times before. It's Aduino "shields", Beaglebone "capes", an entire ecosystem of Raspberry Pi accessories, etc.

Maybe it'll take off this time around, especially if they can make it cute enough, but at nearly $200 for the base device, I think they're gonna face an uphill battle. I still wish them well.

by zerobees

7/13/2026 at 6:06:30 AM

No, it starkly contrasts the RPi ecosystem because it has an "all in one" main unit, which works without shields, cables, extra cases, etc. It's approximately as self-contained as a mobile phone. But on top of that it offers GPIO pins.

by nine_k

7/13/2026 at 12:53:34 AM

Very long-time lurker here; I made an account specifically to say what I am about to say:

I am so sick of gameboy-style devices only ever having two buttons without a start, select or literally anything else.

Playdate did the same thing and it makes games really super infuriating because nobody wants to perform a hadouken just to open a gosh-darn pause menu.

I'm exaggerating of course but good lord please just give me a dedicated pause button.

by lardosaurusrex

7/13/2026 at 2:28:19 AM

I don't think this is for gaming. It has arrows plus two buttons, probably for conceptual equivalents to "tap/click/enter" and "back/escape".

If you want a DIYish handheld for gaming there are much better options on the market.

by stackghost

7/13/2026 at 3:16:14 AM

Not to be rude but the page literally says "Browse what the community ships: games, tools and toys. Run them on your Kode Dot."

by lardosaurusrex

7/13/2026 at 3:35:28 AM

Perhaps I should have written "I don't think this is well suited for gaming, despite the marketing copy"

by stackghost

7/13/2026 at 11:33:07 AM

The focus being here: community. Gaming is an option, not the sole purpose, and community is always adding games to everything, but that's not the designers fault.

by PurpleRamen

7/13/2026 at 4:01:36 AM

What? Playdate absolutely has a menu button.

by moron4hire

7/13/2026 at 9:11:44 PM

That is not a "pause" button that is an abomination. Knock it off; you know what I mean. A start button.

by lardosaurusrex

7/13/2026 at 5:17:23 PM

So refreshing to see a page that is simple and yet cool. Too tired of 100% claude designed websites in hn

by lgcmo

7/12/2026 at 10:11:03 PM

Price is too steep. Cardputer is 30 bucks.

by tokamak

7/12/2026 at 11:09:39 PM

There can be other valid usecases than yours where the price is not an issue.

And surely you are aware of the challenges of supply+demand and the issue of using offshore labor... that means most products made ethically and at low volumes are inherently going to be expensive.

This has NFC built-in which is something I've been looking for for a long time, there are no other ready-made programmable devices on the market you can buy that have a screen, touch, NFC and a battery, that I know of, so it's perfect for me, and the price is not a concern.

by ranger_danger

7/13/2026 at 5:08:14 AM

I'm an NFC enthusiast as well! Technically the flipper zero meets your criteria, but I'm guessing there's something else about it that doesn't quite meet up to your needs. When you say programmable, although the Flipper zero is "programmable", it's more like apps and you don't have full control over the device, which could be a limiting factor for whatever you're doing.

by EricBetts

7/14/2026 at 12:50:32 AM

My flipper zero at least, does not have touch, and that was one of my requirements.

By programmable I mean "I can modify/flash my own firmware", which is also true for the flipper as it's all open source... and I had to do that anyway to fix their 14443B reader code to work for my application.

by ranger_danger

7/13/2026 at 1:46:07 PM

It seems a bit expensive for what it is. I think this would be really cool for a younger hacker just getting started in the kind of scene this project is aimed at, though

by mghackerlady

7/13/2026 at 2:57:11 PM

> Built-in speaker and microphone

No audio module? Audio is a great introduction to signal processing and programming overall.

by Tade0

7/12/2026 at 11:10:54 PM

[dead]

by AmenBreak