Nyx — Hidden-Camera / IR-Emitter Sweep for Flipper Zero

The instrument

An eye that watches back

The ring fills clockwise with the live level and the pupil dilates as you close in. A single tick marks your best reading so far, so the game is to push the ring past the tick.

The arrow is the part you actually hunt with — it says whether you are getting warmer.
When it locks on, glare spikes spin around the iris, the strip inverts, and the geiger clicks speed up as the reading climbs — so you can sweep with the screen at your side.
Sensitivity is on ← →, live, because you work out that you need it while standing in a dark room, not while sitting in a menu.

Nyx running on a Flipper Zero: the intro, the sweep locking onto an emitter, the probe pages and settings — Recorded live over the device framebuffer

Read this first

What Nyx can and cannot see

This is the part most “hidden camera detector” apps quietly skip, and it is the whole reason to trust or distrust a reading.

Nyx finds IR emitters, not cameras. A camera only shows up while it is actively lighting the room with infrared — which is exactly what a night-vision camera does in the dark. So Nyx is at its best doing a lights-off sweep, which is also when a covert camera is most likely emitting.

There is a second catch, and it comes from the Flipper’s own hardware.

	Onboard (no extra hardware)	Probe (+ ~$1 phototransistor)
Sensor	Built-in TSOP-75338 receiver	IR phototransistor on a GPIO ADC pin
Sees steady DC illuminators	No	Yes
Sees pulsed / modulated IR	Yes	Yes
Finds a typical night-vision camera	Only if it pulses its LEDs	Yes
Setup	Just run it	Wire a probe, about two minutes

Why onboard is deaf to steady light

The Flipper’s IR receiver is a demodulating part: a band-pass filter centred on 38 kHz plus automatic gain control, built to pull TV-remote codes out of a sunlit room. That filter throws away steady light. A camera whose illuminator runs at constant DC current — very common — is invisible to it no matter how bright it is.

A clean 0 in onboard mode does not mean the room is clean. Nyx says so on the screen while it runs, not only here.

What Probe mode changes

A bare IR phototransistor has no filter and no AGC, so it responds to steady light. It reads true DC level, nulls out the room’s ambient infrared when you arm it, and can tell a steady illuminator apart from a mains-flickering lamp by looking at ripple.

It costs about a dollar and two minutes. If you are serious about a sweep, wire the probe.

A worked example

Against a real camera

A dome camera with its illuminator plainly running — the LEDs glow through a phone camera. Flipper held directly in front of it, onboard mode, sensitivity High. Logged straight off the device over 15 seconds.

143/155

windows reading exactly zero

4/155

windows with a brief blip, 10–15% of full scale

0

detections reported — the correct answer

Nyx reports nothing, and that is right. That illuminator runs at steady DC, and the onboard receiver is built to reject exactly that. A detector that lit up here would be inventing a result out of noise.

Point the same screen at a TV remote — a genuinely pulsed source — and it locks on solidly at 98%, PULSED, STRONG. Quieter where it should be quiet, not deafer.

Earlier versions did light up here, briefly, on each of those four blips — and then dropped out again. v1.2 requires activity to persist before it will claim a detection.

Every screen

Captured from the device

Not mockups. Each of these is a real framebuffer read off a Flipper Zero over its RPC session, rendered in the amber of the actual panel.

Boot intro: a Nyx eye opening through IR wave-rings — Boot intro

Sweep closing in on a source — Sweep — closing in

Sweep locked onto an emitter, alarm strip inverted — Sweep — locked on

Probe setup wiring schematic — Probe Setup — wiring

Probe live check — Probe Setup — live check

About and honesty notes on the device — About

Reading the source label

`STEADY`	Flat DC light. The night-vision illuminator signature. Probe mode only.
`FLICKER`	About 100/120 Hz ripple. Riding the mains, so almost always a lamp, a heater or a screen — not a camera.
`PULSED`	Faster modulation. A remote, a beacon, or a PWM-driven illuminator.

Keys

Key	Where	Action
`OK`	Sweep	Zero the peak-hold and hit count
`Hold OK`	Sweep	Re-null the ambient baseline (probe mode) — do this after walking into a new room
`←` `→`	Sweep	Sensitivity down / up, live. The current setting is named in the header
`←` `→`	Probe Setup	Flip between the wiring diagram and the live check
`OK`	Probe Setup	Clear the peak reading
`Back`	anywhere	Leave the screen / the app

Changing sensitivity mid-sweep also zeroes the peak and hit count. Readings taken against a different noise floor are not the same measurement, and mixing them would quietly lie to you.

Optional, but it is the real tool

Building the probe

One IR phototransistor — the dark-epoxy kind with a daylight filter, sold for pairing with 940 nm IR LEDs — and one 10 kΩ resistor. It wires as an emitter follower: more IR in, more volts out.

        3V3  (pin 9)
         │
        ┌┴┐   IR phototransistor
    IR →│ │   (collector to 3V3)
        └┬┘
         ├──────►  ADC pin — PA7 (pin 2)
        ┌┴┐
        │ │  10 kΩ
        └┬┘
         │
        GND  (pin 18)

Lead	Wire to	Pin
Collector	3V3	9
Emitter	ADC in + one end of 10 kΩ	PA7, pin 2
10 kΩ other end	GND	18

Any ADC-capable pin works — in the order the picker offers them, PA7 (2), PA6 (3), PA4 (4), PC3 (7), PC1 (15), PC0 (16). The list is built from the SDK’s own GPIO table rather than hardcoded, and the Probe Setup screen always shows the pin it currently expects by its silkscreened number — trust the screen over this table.

Then open Probe Setup → → and press a key on any TV remote pointed at the phototransistor. If the reading jumps, you are good. That page exists because a probe wired wrong reads a flat zero, which is indistinguishable from a clean room.

Install

Which build do I download?

A .fap bakes in the API version of the SDK it was compiled against, and the loader refuses to run one that is ahead of your firmware. There is no single build that serves both firmware lines, so every release ships two.

Your firmware	Download	Built against
Official / stock	`nyx.fap`	release channel, API 87
Unleashed · RogueMaster · Momentum	`nyx-fw-dev.fap`	dev channel, API 88

If the loader says API version mismatch, you have the other one — grab its counterpart. Drop the file in apps/Infrared/ on the SD card (qFlipper or the mobile app). It appears under Apps → Infrared → Nyx.

From source

python3 -m pip install --upgrade ufbt
git clone https://github.com/at0m-b0mb/Nyx-FlipperZero.git
cd Nyx-FlipperZero
ufbt update --channel=release   # or --channel=dev
ufbt                            # builds dist/nyx.fap
ufbt launch                     # build + install to a connected Flipper

Please read

Limits

Nyx finds emitters, not cameras. A camera sitting in a lit room, or switched off, emits nothing and Nyx will not see it. Do a lights-off sweep.
IR reflects. A strong reading can be a bounce off a wall or a mirror rather than the source. Move around and triangulate on the peak.
The world is full of IR. Sunlight, incandescent and halogen bulbs, remote controls and PIR sensors all emit it. Treat a hit as a reason to look closely, not as proof — most phone cameras see 850 nm as a faint purple glow, so cross-check with your phone.
It is a triage tool to point you at things worth inspecting. It is not a guarantee, and no RF or IR gadget is.

Use Nyx to protect your own privacy, and only in spaces you are entitled to sweep. You are responsible for complying with local law.