Over the past few weeks, Several people have started to jump on the "GPIO Add-on Board" bandwagon. It's great to see some of the things people have come up with :) I have met some awesome people along the way and I've learned some valuable lessons as well that I figured I'd share.

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1.) Many people are looking to "get rich quick" by selling thrown-together boards on Etsy, Ebay, etc. with lots of hot-glue shrink-wrap, and wires for prices WAY higher than they are worth (I saw an NRF module selling for $100 the other day for a $15 module on $2 worth of protoboard) . These "mods" are barely worth the hot glue holding them together. This is similar to people Scalping graphics cards and reselling.

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2.) Some people decide they are going to design a PCB and sell them. This is AWESOME and I love some of the creative and nifty designs people have come out with :) it's great seeing what this community can build and the creativity people have. That said, there are still many people who cut corners, looking to maximize profit at the sacrifice of safety to modules and the flippers. There are also some designs that have no malicious intent, but instead just left out some simple things that can easily be fixed in a revision.

I've seen many "5v mini CC1101 modules" for instance that have just a voltage-regulator between the 5v pin, and the module, or worse, just a resistor, with no decoupling capacitors for noise (or the wrong type), reverse polarity diodes are missing, etc. While they *can* work, they might not work long, you might damage your module or flipper, or you might run into other issues when using them.

My advice, is if you see a module you like, and you think it's something you'd like to add to your flipper, if you don't know, ask! Most of the people making boards, myself included are more than willing to answer questions or explain how something works :) Make sure to ask things like: "How are you going from 5v to 3.3v." "Did you design this with polarity protection?" "Is this hot-swap safe or will it corrupt my SD Card? Should I power down the flipper before removing the module?" Etc. Never be afraid to ask questions!

This said, there are safe 5v modules and "mini-boards" that will NOT cause damage to your module and/or flipper. You just need to make sure the module you are buying, falls into this category and not the first one :)

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3.) many people do go the extra mile but they choose to use the cheapest available components to try to save on cost. I've seen boards being sold for $50-100, that cheap out and use the absolute cheapest parts just to maximize profits. This includes using "cheap" knockoff modules, non-name brand components, etc. For instance, the boards I sell, I use "Samsung" or "Uni-Royal" or "Kyocera" or "LG Components" etc. I don't use components from "Guangdong Fenghua Advanced Tech". The price difference between the Chinese cheap resistor vs Uni-Royal or samsung? $0.01 . I'm not saying that resistor is bad either! it might be just as good as the Uni-Royal. But why Take the risk in my opinion. This said, If you are building boards, you should know better than to throw crap components onto them just to save a buck. That said, there are unscrupulous people who don't stand behind their product, and well, See #1 above.

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4.) Always be wary of posts that seem "too good to be true" or items being listed with over-exaggerated descriptions. I have seen some posts of boards people have made that advertise "This 5v module will give your flipper 10x the SubGhz Range!". the people behind these listings, are the same ones behind the listings in Item #1 above.

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5.) Beware of people offering to sell you flippers outside of official channels. Yes, there are a LOT of scams going on, a lot of fake "flipper reseller" stores, run by scalpers, or worse, fraudsters that will take your money and run. I come across these often.

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Sorry for the long post. Just some things I figured needed to be shared / said. Y'all a great group and I'm thankful to all the support I've received over the past few months. Feel free to message me here, on discord, etc. even if it's about a board you've stumbled upon and want to know if it's a good investment.

TL;DR - Be careful buying modules. Do your homework / research. Look for signs of Quality. and never be afraid to reach out and ask questions! Also, if it's too good to be true, it likely is.