Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for
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Hi,
From the Flic Twist promo text:
"Unlock the full potential of your smart home devices, from lights to music and blinds, with Flic Twist versatile functionality."
How can it be versatile, when there are
- no options to control it or make customizations for it in the Hub SDK
- it supports only 4 different providers total (at the moment) for the twist functionality
- Only 1 way to use it as a volume control(ler): Buying a (relatively) - new Sonos system (hub + speaker(s))
. - no developer documentation specifically for the Twist anywhere AND
- the button can only be connected to a hub, which makes it a real nightmare to reverse engineer if you REALLY wanted to do something specific with it, not related to LIFX, Sonos, IKEA or Philips Hue. So even if I was capable of it, I wouldn't even be able to hack more versatility into the thing….without using A LOT of time and effort.
The main functionality for other media players/music systems etc. (Spotify Connect, Bose, OSC, Chromecast/Android TV, VLC ++) is already there (!)
Anyway... I don't have a Sonos system (and I can't afford a new one), so at the moment my Flic Twist already has a fine layer of dust on it, and unfortunately it's a major disappointment. It has so much wasted potential though.
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It's been... what, a year now since they came out (and the multiple years it was in development)? It's pretty obvious they have no intention of delivering on their promises.
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Is there any news about Twist SDK support?
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Button hold action is a must. I’m surprised this was omitted. Hope this can be added using firmware update.
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I have pretty much given up hope for this, considering they refuse to say anything, or give any updates since it's release.
I was reading about the Philips Hue Tap Dial. I thought since it was Hue, it was going to also be useless, like the twist, but upon further investigation, turns out it is a Zigbee Dial (with 4 buttons), that works with Home Assistant and Zigbee2Mqtt out of the box (as any smart home device worth anything should). I just ordered a few of them and will be here Saturday.
If it works, I will probably just toss all this flic equipment I was conned into buying.
--- Update: The Hue Tap Dial works great, so I bought 3 more. Was able to get it up and running with Zigbee2Mqtt straight away. Used NodeRed to translate the rotation +speed to dim %, and made 1 of the buttons be a simple light toggle. There are 3 other buttons that can be used, which report press, release, hold, hold release.
The rotation reports whether it was a step, slow turn, or fast turn.
Best of all, it works exactly as advertised, and I was able to use my existing hardware (doesn't require a proprietary hub, not even the hue hub. Connected straight to my Zigbee Coordinator). Sure, it doesn't have a fancy incremental light on it, but a lot of good that was doing me with the Twist...
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No one expects, or probably even really cares about Matter support right now, considering there is basically nothing to use it with yet. Eventually? Yes, as it was listed as something that would be supported in the future.
What we do care about is the functionality we were promised of the product we bought. Whoever decided and approved it was a good idea to push Matter's priority ahead of a product you literally just launched, that everyone has in hand and cannot use as promised, needs to have their position re-evaluated at the company. I bought this based on the promised functionality and open access for development, which was not delivered. Yet, of course, the money came out of my bank account.
We want what we were promised. The functionality that was listed when the product was showcased on Kickstarter. That is the priority list. You have had multiple years to prepare for this. The functionality obviously exists, you have other items in the app using it. So please, stop with the empty and vague statements, and just deliver what we paid for. This is getting more and more frustrating each day that goes by without any updates, road map, timeline, etc, as I have all this stuff sitting on my desk that is useless.
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@Emil
Prioritized list:- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
- twist event in sdk
…
99999999998. twist event in sdk
99999999999. literally anything else -
@mark-arce For your second paragraph, doesn't Selector mode solve this? Then you push-twist to a desired setting and then twist (without pushing) to control it.
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@Emil The most important thing for me is getting Twist functionality for LIFX Cloud working, since LIFX LAN only shows 2 out of my 7+ lights and does not seem to work (and may or may not work with groups / scenes).
Another interesting feature (not a priority) would be the option to allow one button to manage several controls by toggling through them, perhaps setting different color LEDs for each function. IE if I double tap my button, first the twist does LIFX brightness, then I double tap again and the twist changes to control color, double tap again and maybe it controls that room's Sonos volume, etc etc.
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Referenced by
Emil
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@Emil I want to add one more thing to my wishlist, while we're at it.
The thing is: I didn't notice until now that the Flic Twist doesn't have a "Hold" action like the other buttons. I kind of took that for granted, based on the press release text and your Twist product page, so I just assumed it was there.- Spotify Connect Volume Control
- Chromecast volume control
- A fully customizable user rotary encoder action (like «internet request» only wiith scalable/dimmable values/parameters)
- IKEA Trådfri
- Button "Hold" action & response (like Flic 1 & 2)
- Hub SDK integration
- Calibration options (my button is either not responding or hyper-responsive (picking up vibrations from the dishwasher and sending values all over the place).
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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.
