Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for
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@Emil
Hope to see SDK for Twist soon. Right now I haven't even unpacked all of them. -
My priorities:
- Ramping up/down rotation/gearing speed. Ideally 0% to 100% with one 'twist!' on the wrist, not repeated twisting;
- Chromecast: volume via twist, trigger specific apps @ 1pm, 2pm etc
- Integration with Google Home to trigger routines etc
- Bug fixing: Actually this should be 1+2+3: Quite often it will mis-select, turn on when should be turning off, wrong set of lights etc. Not at all robust and not really something I can ask my family to use without it being thrown against the wall!
I really want this to be an excellent product.. it just feels somewhat Alpha right now...
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@Emil said in Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for:
When we released the Flic 1 button, the functionality was quite limited too.
But you (probably) didn't advertise that as being fully supported. At best it was fully supported with everything that was there then. The Twist currently just isn't fully supported yet. Your company grew and so did the expectations that people have. Being told truthfully what the limitations of a product are is pretty basic. Unless I missed something, there was no indication that current features would not be supported initially and that some features were excluded from being 'fully supported'.
That said, we are actively working on adding the features that our users request for the Twist
SDK functionality isn't just something that users are requesting, it's something that was promised (or expected) to be there. The Hub supports the SDK and 'fully supports' the Twist, what do you mean with 'fully supports' if it isn't supported in everything. At best, there is partial support now.
Matter support was promised at a later date, now it gets priority over basic functionality? I'd say that's backwards. Matter is cool additional functionality, SDK access is required to make it function at all for many people here.
I'm probably underestimating the difficulty, but how hard could it be to add the required events in the already existing sdk. Or even better, why aren't you building your functionality on your own sdk? That's imo the best way to ensure that the SDK is complete and useful.
My personal priority list:
- SDK support: This will allow me to use the device on any Smart Home system using MQTT.
- Native Home Assistant support: or SDK access on the Hub Mini, or native MQTT support.
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@Emil Although you could still open up for ALL connectivity regardless of provider, if you just exposed the twist action functionality in the SDK and documentation. To me, that seems like THE obvious thing to do, instead of adding support for yet another smart home proprietary protocol that isn't even available to the general market yet. Apart from money
, I don't see any good reasons for not documenting it just as extensively as the Flic 2, and making (all of) the functionality availble so people can use it for what they want. That was why I got a Flic button in the first place, 9 years ago. Because it inspired creative solutions and new areas of use. This inspires turning on and off the light. -
@bwulfe our current focus is to add Matter support. Given that Matter in general becomes a success, that will open up connectivity to a large range of different device manufacturers, so that we don't have to add support to one by one manually.
Regarding Lifx, we use their protocol at https://lan.developer.lifx.com/docs/communicating-with-device to discover devices. If they can't be found, something is either wrong with the network, buggy LIFX firmware (yes we have seen that their LAN interface hangs while their cloud interface continues to work, until the bulb is rebooted) or that your network topology is composed of several subnets, that don't allow broadcasts to pass boundaries between subnets.
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I just tried to setup the first of three twists that I backed on Kickstarter and to say that I am thoroughly disappointed would be an understatement. After waiting two years for these, I basically have a giant, overpriced Flic2. The twist operations are completely useless. While one of the few manufacturers that these are supposed to actually support at the time of release is Lifx, and I have close to 100 Lifx bulbs installed in my home, the Flic app will only support twist functions via Lifx Local network, yet it can only locate a handful of my installed bulbs. Posts in other ares of the forum place the blame on Lifx Firmware updates; but if the Lifx Local Network is still supported, it seems that the Flic development team should take some responsibility in ensuring that their software continues to communicate with the Lifx bulbs, as firmware is updated. This is analogous to application developers needing to update their software whenever an OS update release creates an incompatibility or conversely, when a hardware vendor must produce new drivers in order for their products to work with the updated OS. In this instance, Flic is the Hardware Product. Its key selling point is its ability to control third party devices. When its software can't even locate the devices of one of the only FOUR vendors for which it is providing initial "Twist" integration, that is a SERIOUS problem. I was already feeling a sense of trepidation, prior to receiving my twist units, having seen the YouTube review from Everything Smart Home, The only thing that gave me hope was that he mentioned Lifx as being one of the few vendors supported at the time of release. So much for that hope ....
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@Emil i read that a priority (suggestion) list can help:
- Support for Home Assistant, the possibilities (and number of youtube-makers) are endless!
- FlicTwist support in FlicHubLR SDK
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@Emil Wish list with priority for Twist:
- SDK - as it makes everything else possible
- Home Assistant support (wonder why this is already shown on the App page but not available in the Android app... strange)
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@Emil Update the SDK to expose the new Twist event handlers. This would allow the community to start building solutions. Seems like a lot of functionality for fairly low effort.
Native HomeAssistant integration would be my next priority. Focusing on the generalized API offered by HomeAssistant (i.e., device classes) would be a lot easier than trudging through the peculiarities of each manufacturer's platform. E.g. light brightness is just that, and the API exposed by HA abstracts away whether it's LIFX, IKEA, Nanoleaf, Hue, etc under the covers.
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@Emil said in Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for:
If you have a priority list (order of importance for you), that would be even more helpful to help us prioritise.
Priority list
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Spotify Connect Volume Control
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Chromecast volume control
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User customizable rotary encoder (like «internet request» only wiith a scalable/dimmable value/parameter)
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IKEA Trådfri dimmer
Thanks for clearing that up, @Emil !
Andreas
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The Twist has just been released and even though what we have right now might seem quite limited at the launch date, it does not mean we won't stop develop more features for it.
When we released the Flic 1 button, the functionality was quite limited too. Only connectable to the phone, no SDK, no developer documentation, limited integrations, no support for 3rd party apps. Now on the other hand, the Flic button is generally the most preferred smart button on the market due to everything we implemented that was missing before.
That said, we are actively working on adding the features that our users request for the Twist, including your list of missing features, so stay tuned. If you have a priority list (order of importance for you), that would be even more helpful to help us prioritise.
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@andreas-lorentsen - I've been using Flic since the very first release and they are great, go like 20 all over the place. I too, am disappointed.
The main feature I got these for was volume control of Chromecast but it doesn't do it, which means all I've got is dimming, which ok but not great. So I'm back to using buttons for up and down which is clunky.
I can press to turn up the volume on the tiwst, why can't we use the twist for volume.
If I'd known it was only going to work with Sonos, I probably would have waited for the next version.
@flic - When will it be updated to work with Chromecast?
