Not reliable for home automation, giving up

mat

I have tried using this for home automation and I had to give up for a simple reason: It's not reliable.

I have an android phone that sits side by side with the flic button and I configured it for Philips Hue. 70% of the time it doesn't work. It's not out of range. It just doesn't work. You try to use the app to execute the philips hue setting and half of the time the command does nothing. I then switch to the Hue app and that one is working fine so it's a problem with the Flic app. If you want to use this as a home light switch, it has to work 100% of the time or else it becomes a very frustrating, useless experience. So I ask you please to look at that.

By the way, your facebook login button on this site doesn't work because you have a misconfigured redirect URI on the Oauth settings.

Step up the game, guys.

nadia

@michal-svatos Hi! Thanks for reaching out. Check out this recent topic on LIFX lights: https://community.flic.io/topic/17293/flic-latency-with-lifx-but-likely-same-for-most-smart-lights
We'll keep you updated!

michal.svatos

I know this is quite old topic, but I have to say that I have the same experience. I bought FLIC because it seemed like a good way to solve my problem - absence of physical switch button to control LIFX light bulbs and the resulting frustration of my wife... Well it didn't. It works like 70% of the time I don't think it's the phone. I tried two different phones and one computer. Sometimes I press the button and nothing. And sometimes after 10, 20s suddenly do something. It's really frustrating especially if you consider the price and "the brand". I wouldn't be surprise if it's from Aliexpress for 2$, but it's not. My original idea was to wait for FLIC HUB, but it seemed to me be a little bit pricey. To be completely honest now I'm thinking to sell the buttons and (as it in the title) give up. It's a pitty because the idea is great.

It's 100% a flic problem. The app goes into a background state on iOS and needs to be refreshed so the flic can connect to the device. The app needs to be updated. All of my other home automation apps do not require me to refresh them when I come home.

Having said that, I'm going to guess it's a limitation of bte. Smart things and Hue have hubs that are always present and use a different protocol, so no problems there.

I guess the solution is to have a home device that the flic connects to? A home iOS device seems like a pretty expensive hub to me...

Anshur

On iOS I'm experiencing issues with unresponsiveness necessitating to relaunch the flic app at regular intervals. The app's backgrounding seems to time out. Do you experience similar things ?

I'm really hoping that they fix those issues, or at least release an app for linux so that I can turn a Rpi into a hub. If not, I might switch to the new logitech buttons.

dezral

don't think it's flic...

I use it with a Iphone 6s and iPad "New"(3) don't have any problem.. try a newer phone og other device... the range for me is about 8-10m from the device..