Where is HomeKit support for Flic Twist?
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@amir I just received the Flic Twist from the Dec 2021 Kickstarter campaign, and from what I see here in this thread is that now almost two years later what I received is not usable for anything I'd need it for. I have the whole house set up with Lutron Caseta dimmers with Lutron HomeKit bridge, some Nanoleafs that are HomeKit native, and an IKEA Trådfri gateway controlling couple of kitchen lights. My music is played on a dozen HomePod stereo pairs in different rooms. I can't control any of the lights directly or access any of the HomeKit lighting Scenes, with the possible exception of directly controlling the two IKEA lights, which is not practically useful in this scenario. Future Matter support, whenever that may or may not ship, is unlikely to help here as Lutron hasn't AFAIK announced any path for the Caseta system to interact with Matter.
@amir please let me know if I misunderstood something?
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@Emil there is no reason not to give HomeKit support to the other parts of the flic twist (like with the flic2) such as push and double push.
furthermore the twist part has something scene blender and advanced dimming - both of these have set points which can trigger devices or actions. Why can't these be exposed as individual HomeKit buttons?
It might not be what you intended but it's a simple workaround for something that has been promised for 2 years.As of now the flic twist is completely useless for me as I use nanoleaf bulbs (which are HomeKit only - your nanoleaf integration only works with the nanoleaf elements).
There's been 2 years to get this working and what I've been sent is a product there's literally nothing I can do with.I'd sooner you took a return and sent me the equivalently costing flic 2 buttons which at least I can use. I calculate 3 flic twists to be worth at least 8 flic 2 buttons.
Failing that a full return under the UK Distance Selling Regulations.
I have also emailed about this. -
@gregorysinclair Homekit can control dimmABLE lights but does not support dimmERS as input devices, i.e. you cannot pair a dimmer (such as a wireless rotational device) and configure it to dim some specific light.
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@amir I find this bizarre. I bought this pack on kickstarter almost 2 years ago. It has only just arrived and there has been ample time to get HomeKit certification.
Furthermore Homekit absolutely does do dimming.
I am able to dim lights through the Home App using my existing nano leaf bulbs and I could also do this previously in the home app with my Lifx bulbs.
Below (in the image) is a Homekit dimmer
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@amir Will this Matter Controller be a separate product customers will have to pay extra for in order to use their Flic Twists with an ecosystem? Or will it be a firmware update to existing Flic hubs?
All of this seems like critical information that you could have included in the "now shipping" announcement about the Flic Twist. A large part of my annoyance with the current state of the Flic Twist is your failure to properly set expectations prior to delivery. Own these limitations and disclose them up front rather than leaving each user to have to dig them up and pull them out of you in your forums. At the very least, this information should be included in a FAQ on the Flic Twist product page (or the feature comparison grid on that page).
I would have been content to be able to use my Flic Twists without the dimming feature until that feature is available. But currently my Twists are completely useless to me. I backed this product with the expectation that the Twist would at least have feature parity with the Flic 2 Smart Buttons that I have been quite happy with. At no point did you disclose that this was not the case.
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@seth_flic Our biggest development priority right now is building Matter support. Our initial plan was to build a Matter bridge so that the Flic devices can be added into any ecosystem such as HomeKit. However Matter still lacks Dimmer support and so does HomeKit.
We have instead decided to build a Matter Controller. For reference, other Matter Controllers on the market are Alexa devices, HomePod, Apple TV, Google Home and SmartThings Hubs. This is a bigger task than we initially expected but by being a Matter Controller we can offer the best user experience for our users and offer not only dimming but all of the smart features that Flic Twist provides like Smart Dimming, Advanced Dimming, Scene Blender and Selector to control any Matter enabled device.
Over 500 companies are already members of the Matter alliance, feel free to browse the list of companies here:
https://csa-iot.org/members/
