FlicTeam

@mosthated The Android app with this functionality has now been released!

@pianosimon Hi! Are you using Flic Universal or the Flic app for macOS?

@buckyswider Yeah you shouldn't really trust all the generated nonsense text AI bots spit out, especially if there are no cited sources that can validate the stated facts. In this case, you can ignore everything it says as everything it says is just misleading.

During the commissioning phase, the device does not advertise _matter._tcp but _matterc._udp.

The _matter._tcp service is advertised in the operational state, i.e. after it has joined a fabric. If it has joined multiple fabrics, it will advertise one service per fabric. It will continue to advertise this service (forever) as long as it wants to accept Matter commands and stays on the network.

When I say "advertise", I use the same terminology as in RFC 6762 (the mDNS standard specification), i.e. when a service is "advertised", it means the service is registered on the local network according to the rules in the mDNS standard. On a low level, according to the mDNS specification, this means that unsolicited udp packets containing the dns record can be sent from the device, e.g. when it boots up so that clients performing service browsing can quickly be notified about its presence, as well as that it will respond to explicit queries requesting that service. It seems ChatGPT means "send a udp packet" when it says advertise, which is not really the same thing. It is of course true that a device does not blast mDNS packets all the time as long as it is "advertising" a service.

DNS-SD with mDNS is more or less standard nowadays for devices on the local network that need to be able to be discovered by other devices. Chromecast, Spotify Connect, Airplay, printers etc. all use this protocol.

@pico We currently use QuickJS and it seems like that js engine does not support that Intl feature.

We might add the feature to set time zone, it can be useful for a few other purposes as well, e.g. in timestamp header for our Internet Request action. But right now I suggest to use the workaround I suggested.

@pico As you can see on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleString, the parameters supplied are only used if the Intl.DateTimeFormat API is supported. We don't support that API and hence you can't get any time zone support, unfortunately.

I would suggest you to manually extract the components using getUTCHours, getUTCMinutes, getUTCSeconds etc. and then apply your time zone offset and DST formula manually, which should be doable if you know you will only be using a fixed time zone.

@buckyswider _matterc._udp is for commissioning, so that one is only present while the device is "pairable", typically 15 minutes after boot when the device is factory reset (i.e. no Matter pairings yet).

_matter._tcp shall be advertised after the device has been commissioned (paired), one service per "fabric" (i.e. per "hub" it has been commissioned to), as long as it is powered on and connected to the network. If it does not advertise this service, it will not be possible to reach it by Matter controllers. If you don't see this service when you expect to, it seems like a bug in that device.

Maybe you have devices from other Matter brands you can test with?

@buckyswider yes, assuming your phone/tablet you run the app on is connected to the same network as the flic hub and the Matter device, all Matter devices that are currently paired shall advertise that service, regardless of if it's connected or not.

@buckyswider We have planned to add network packing logging to the hub in order to be able to debug situations like this, but have not yet had time to do that. The Flic Hub runs a DNS-SD listener in the background, waiting for its paired Matter devices to come available, and then connects to these. So the first step you can do is to use any DNS-SD app (like this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.druk.servicebrowser) and verify that your device is there. Matter devices advertise themselves under the _matter._tcp service.

@djadin14 maybe you got a defect unit. You should contact support at https://flic.io/support and see if you are eligible for a replacement.

@kerry-thacher Hi!

Unfortunately, no. At least not from what we have found.

You can use the "alternative keymap" in the Universal Keyboard action to prevent the on-screen keyboard from hiding while the Flic is connected, however, this also limits what we can do with keyboard commands.

(Note that you need to "Forget" the Flic from iOS Bluetooth device list if you change the keymap for it to have effect).

So Apple requires the device to identify as a keyboard to be able to do certain things, like trigger system wide keyboard commands (which is what this video suggests as a trigger for Shortcuts), and this enforces the behaviour that the on screen keyboard disappears.

Sorry about this, it would certainly be a neat feature to be able to trigger iOS Shortcuts without affecting the on screen keyboard.