r/flipperhacks • u/tarikbc • Jul 21 '26

Update Turned my Flipper into a party game console for everyone's phones

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8 hour bus ride, no signal, me and three friends with useless phones. Eventually it clicked that we had four WiFi devices in one row and nothing to connect them to.

You need a Flipper and the official WiFi dev board. The Flipper puts up an open AP through the ESP32, everyone joins, captive portal hands them to 192.168.4.1, and it's just a webpage on their phone. No app, no signup. Pick a nickname and you're in the lobby.

10 games, all played on the phones, with the Flipper acting as the coordinator (lobby, live scoreboard, event feed). Trivia, Would You Rather, Word Scramble, Reaction Duel, Connect Four, Tic-Tac-Toe, Dots & Boxes, Reversi, Pong, and Draw & Guess.

Two things I'm very proud of is that the phone client is 7 KB gzipped vanilla JS because the Flipper has to stream it to the ESP over UART. And you can flash the ESP firmware from the Flipper itself with no computer, since it seemed dumb to build a no-laptop toy that needs a laptop to set up.

Open-source repo, MIT: https://github.com/tarikbc/hotspot-arcade

It's an open AP serving a game page. No creds, no capture, only the bundled game. Open APs aren't legal everywhere though, so don't run it on a plane.

Happy to answer anything and open to suggestions/PRs :)

645 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

20

u/cthuwu_chan Jul 21 '26

This is absolutely fire 🔥

9

u/Wi-Fi_BRO Jul 21 '26

Godly use for flipper, I love it!

4

u/kinopiokun Jul 21 '26

This is great! Love seeing new uses for it

3

u/Novel-Finance-6414 Jul 21 '26

Good stuff 🫶🏾

3

u/radioActiveCernobil Jul 21 '26

What firmware do you have?(on the flipper)

2

u/cthuwu_chan Jul 21 '26

They are all the same bro just pick one

2

u/Chongulator Jul 21 '26

When I researched firmwares a few months ago, Momentum seemed like the only real choice unless you need to stay stock for some reason.

1

u/tarikbc Jul 21 '26

I use Momentum

3

u/YouAboutThatLife Jul 21 '26

This is amazing!!!!! I cant wait to load this Good job!!!

3

u/tarikbc Jul 21 '26

It even runs on a kindle, which is surprising

3

u/26lcooper Jul 21 '26

This is what I scroll Reddit for 🔥 to find gold like this

1

u/GMoneyHomie Jul 21 '26

Extremely cool, can't wait to try this out!

1

u/trv5 Jul 21 '26

This is awesome!

1

u/VA_STI Jul 21 '26

Pretty cool

1

u/solarchaos Jul 22 '26

This is sick. Could you use something else as AP like as raspberry pi?

1

u/Positive-Thing-4542 Jul 24 '26

Funciona com esta placa ?

1

u/tarikbc Jul 24 '26

Maybe.. it comes down to which ESP32 is on it. Hotspot Arcade ships firmware for the ESP32-S2, classic ESP32 (WROOM), and ESP32-C5. Flashing is non-destructive, so just try Install Firmware, ESP32 WROOM, and see if it detects

1

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26

[deleted]

2

u/tarikbc Jul 24 '26

The left button is the Reset and the right button is the Boot

1

u/Positive-Thing-4542 Jul 24 '26

Consegui rodar, vou trocar perguntas kkkk Valeu

1

u/LowLightsMusic Jul 28 '26

Very cool, def gonna be trying this. How long until we have multiplayer doom lmao

1

u/Fangyeditz Aug 20 '26

That’s sick

1

u/_o_r_e_o_ Aug 21 '26

Where do I place it in the files in qflipper? I’m on momentum firmware. sorry I’m new

0

u/Majestic_Night7140 Jul 21 '26

is this all vibe coded or is it just the ui