Flic : Wireless Smart Button

This requires that your cell phone is within (bluetooth) range of your flic, right? Or will flic communicate with the smartThings hub?

Yes - but you can pair a flic with multiple phones and it will work through whichever is closer - the tough part is that you have to set up the same actions on both phones individually. Or if you set up different actions - you may not get the action you desired if both phones are in range (it will re connect to the one it used most recently)

ST hasnā€™t turned on BT yet

We use a wallmount tablet as a home automation control center. We paired the Flics to that. :sunglasses:

I like that ideaā€¦ just use an old tablet. I guess that means i need to remove the app on my cell phone otherwise all actions need to be kept in sync. Are you seeing decent range where you can just use a tablet to cover your entire house?

We already had two tablets, one on each side of the house, so it seemed to be fine with that. Itā€™s just Bluetooth, so you should be able to figure out your likely range with any Bluetooth device you currently have.

Just came across the flic buttonsā€¦so, for now, the only way to get these set up is to have a bluetooth device that can pair to them, and then when the button is pushed, the command goes through the paired devices (phone, tablet, etc) and gets sent to ST that way?

I know I have an old tablet or phone sitting around somewhere I can use to do thisā€¦would be nice if it worked natively with ST.

Just asking for confirmation.

Yes

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Broke down, bought a flic, itā€™s pretty cool, just trying to find good uses for it in every day life (in car, in pocket, at home, etc).

I broke out my old Skytex Imagine 7 tablet I got for free with a purchase a year or two ago, but it unfortunately doesnā€™t support the flic app, so Iā€™m thinking of either buying an Amazon Fire tablet and flashing it with the latest version of android and using that as the flic controller. I also am considering getting a RasberryPi since they apparently released support for it based on their feature request responsesā€¦and Iā€™ve been looking for an excuse to get one.

Iā€™ve also considered setting up an android VM on my computer and pass through bluetooth to it and maybe just use an old laptop with a nice bluetooth adapter on it.

Thereā€™s lots of articles on how to install an Android virtual machine in VirtualBox. Might give that a try since itā€™s free. I really want to get a rasberry pi though hehe.

Any significant delay with the Flic->BT/smartphone->ST pattern?

Iā€™d like to use one on my bicycle as a garage door opener. Even with a ā€˜garage doorā€™ routine that I can get to from the front page of my phone, itā€™s kind of a pain to get the phone out and open it up while riding. Iā€™ve been doing the same thing with my Apple Watch but the delay just really isnā€™t great.

Iā€™m using an Iris smart button right now, but I just got it set up and havenā€™t worked out the ā€˜wake it upā€™ issue yet. Seems like the form is nice, but the function just seems really sloppy. It goes through periods (at least in my testing) where it just wonā€™t wake up. Iā€™ve tried shimming the battery, which seems to help initially, but then, after a while, it evidently goes to sleep and doesnā€™t want to wake back up. After waking up, it works great with Rule Machine though.

Iā€™m looking for something a little more stable I guessā€¦is Flic it?

The times where I notice a delay are the first time I push a flic after it was disconnected due to range and/or I used a different flic last. The delay is only 1-2 seconds and then subsequent pushes without disconnecting are practically instant.

One thing that has been annoying me but I havenā€™t gotten around to trying to fix is if your phone is muted but you push a flic, the phone beeps (differently for 1, 2 pushes or hold). Kind of annoying if you expected your phone to be silenced.

Thereā€™s a setting to disable the beeping, and change it to vibrate only. Thatā€™s what I have.

Also, I ended up not using my Flic for smart home stuff. I carry it with me as a personal accessory and I just use it whenever needed, however needed. I have profiles for when Iā€™m in meetings at work, profile for when Iā€™m riding my motorcycle to control music/read text messages, etc.

I havenā€™t yet created a profile to try and control things with ST/IFTTT.

Here is how I control my ST SmartPower Outlet using a Flic button.
I wish it was more straightforward but it works ok for me. There is a significant delay in the response, sometimes it can take up to 30 seconds to react, but the average is between 5 and 10 seconds.

Fabrizio

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Hello, I am trying to use my flic for music control. However I need 4 functions to make it effective and flic can only do three button combinations. I need to be able to:

Play or Pause
Control Volume up
Control Volume down
Skip to next track

Does anyone know a way to do this with the flick or use the flick for this purpose? Also, can the single use music flick do these things or is it also limited?

The regular button is just three options, click, double-click and long hold. Depending on exactly what youā€™re using it with, you might be able to have play/pause act like a toggle, so if it stopped, it starts playing, and if itā€™s playing, it stops. Itā€™s just going to depend on the enabling code on the other side.

The flic single for music is supposed to be able to do exactly the functions youā€™re requesting, but only with some specific music control apps. Like Sonos.

You should get in touch with flic support and ask them. :sunglasses:

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Hello, thanks for the answers. I made a new topic because I would be curious if other hardware solution exist besides the Flic. I am using Samsung Multiroom and a Samsung R1 speaker to play music. Flic does have native support for the Samsung app on Android or I could use Core. The problem I have is that I cannot get a button for both volume up and volume down. I have a button that can do Play/Pause, another button that can skip to next track, then I have one more button that can only do volume up or volume down, not both. Trying to work in a way to get the full functionality. I will contact Flic support or look into other hardware solutions. Thanks

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This is a really good idea! Iā€™ve been thinking about getting a new tablet but couldnā€™t justify it since mines still in excellent condition. This just justified the tablet bc mine will be used as a control center :wink: absolutely genius!

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Smart!

Will ST support BLE devices directly?

Not at the present time. There is a Bluetooth radio inside the hub models, but for whatever reason, it has never been activated. :disappointed_relieved: Much discussion of this in the forums since 2015 when the V2 hub was released, but it is what it is.

In March 2018 the new ā€œSmartThings (Samsung Connect)ā€ app was released for the Samsung Galaxy 9 phone, and it includes mention of Bluetooth devices, but it turns out this option connects those devices to the phone, not the hub, and is of limited utility.

In particular, since that app doesnā€™t allow the use of any custom device type handlers, the Bluetooth devices you can use have to be ones with official integrations. And so far there are zero that can be used with the home automation functions. :slightly_frowning_face: Right now it appears to be mostly intended for CarPlay functions.

Note: Bluetooth and LAN devices cannot be included in automations because they communicate directly to your mobile device (not the cloud) and cannot be controlled remotely.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002056183-How-to-add-new-devices-in-the-SmartThings-app

Flic will be releasing their own standalone Bridge device, probably for around $99, later this year, but Iā€™m unclear yet as to why you just wouldnā€™t use a cheap WiFi phone instead unless you have literally dozens of flic buttons. (Prerelease materials say one bridge can handle up to 64 buttons.) But weā€™ll have to wait until it starts shipping to see what features it actually has. :sunglasses:

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Expert! Thank you.

More and more BLE home automation products are coming and I have some BLE hubs but not good enough. The wink hub is not that standard. Some devices compatible with wink previously are not supported anymore :disappointed_relieved: . The switchbot, sesame and august hubs work perfectly with their own products but do not support any third party one. If ST can add the BLE gateway function it would be a killer :smirk:. Regarding the flic one, an old Android tablet or iPad is better for me :laughing:

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Flic has submitted hub integration with smartthings a while back but no one from smartthings has responded back to them. Iā€™ve suggested that flic release the smartapp via github so we can integrate ourselves.

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