I'd like to write a custom app on my Flic Hub. When I first talked about this it seems as though it would run Linux and would allow custom software such as a Node.js server built on top of the Flic Hub SDK. Is this still something possible or is it limited to the Flic software itself?

Also, is it possible we could see the software configuration, what it would look like? Does it only work on the phone or is it accessible from a web browser?

I haven't received my Flic Hub yet, but from what I've seen in instructional and review videos, I'm finding the device unusable for my setup :/. I hate to say that because I've been extremely excited for the device. With its support for 64 buttons, it sounds like the solution I need.

I've got over 40 Flic buttons, and it's a pain to manage them through my own system since it requires a new Raspberry Pi for every 10 buttons, and I have no way of updating their firmware nor do I really know which Raspberry Pi each button's connected to. If I move a button, it's a lot of trouble to switch which Pi it's listening to. I was hoping the Flic Hub would provide a solution to the issues.

Different from the phone connection, the Flic Hub only solves the problem of phone Bluetooth, but I see it doing so much more. I know there's IR functionality, and I'm excited to see if that would work better than my Logitech Harmony setup, but that's none of my concern right now as I backed the device specifically for smart home control.

Here are some suggestions I'd like to see in the Flic Hub software:

• Add functionality to manage devices at scale such as making bulk edits or some easier interface of making configuration changes quickly. This way I wouldn't have to manually configure 120 button combinations (40 buttons x 3 press types) on a phone one-by-one. Yuck. I have better things to do with my time.
• The ability to have double-press-and-hold and triple-press. I use these extensively in my own buttons. My whole family's been trained to use them, and it's made triggering scenes super easy for everyone. Even triple-press-and-hold would be great. I understand my home-grown solution for this has some drawbacks specifically because it's based on Bluetooth lag and works strangely depending on the button's distance away from the Raspberry Pi.
• Add the ability to change the response time on the buttons (debounce time). This is especially important for making the buttons feel less laggy. When turning on lights, I need it as immediate as possible or family, guests, and I get frustrated. Light and fan switches are immediate so everyone expects Flic buttons to work the same. The best way to achieve this is lowering the debounce time. If I buy an expensive button, it should be more-convenient and snappy feeling than voice control.
• Alphabetize scenes in the LIFX connection and switches in the WeMo section. I have too many devices and scenes, so it's a major pain to find them all when they're scattered randomly. I've noticed a bunch of other home automation companies have this same issue and don't understand it. It's like no one producing these products actually uses them. It's not unreasonable to have hundreds of lights in your house or a bunch of AC-connected devices.
• Show names for all the Google Chromecast devices. For some reason, my list shows a Chromecast Bedroom (even though I don't have a device with that name) and a bunch of Google Home Minis and Chromecast Audios with really strange names. Looks like the device name plus a SHA hash.
• A web interface to manage devices. This way I could do it away from home or at my computer. I get that this isn't super high-priority when you've got a working product, but I do web software engineering for a living so it's probably more important to me.

I believe adding press types and a configurable debounce time require firmware updates. Is that true? Is it a problem to write changes like this to the buttons' NAND flash?

I hope these suggestions are doable. Since my Flic Hub's coming soon, and going to be non-functional for my use case and button count, if you are considering any of my suggestions, which ones and what's a possible timeline?

I understand Flic's a growing company, and I'm only one of many users so I understand if none of these are priority; although, I was really hoping the product I backed would really solve the problems I've come up against when using a bunch of Flic buttons in my home.

Even if all I get is the ability to upload a JSON configuration file for all my buttons with extra press types and debounce settings, that would be a significant improvement because I'd be able to actually use the device I backed for my specific setup.

I was thinking about how the newer Flic buttons allow for firmware updates. Since I'm assuming these would normally be done through the Android or iOS app, how would we handle these if we've got our buttons paired with a bunch of Raspberry Pis?

I'm betting most of you guys have completely different reasons for choosing Flic than I do, and I'm interested in hearing why and how you've chosen to implement your solutions!

I chose Flic as my IoT button of choice specifically because they have low-latency, great toolings via the SDK, and if you use the phone app, a lot of connections into various home automation products and phone apps.

My specific setup uses Flic buttons tied to various Raspberry Pis around the house (until the Flic Hub ships from Indiegogo in October) which send web requests to one of the Raspberry Pis running LIFX and WeMo controller apps.

You can read more about the setup and the specific problems I wanted to solve here:
Controlling IoT Devices with the Flic of a Button
https://medium.com/@Sawtaytoes/controlling-iot-devices-with-the-flic-of-a-button-1349c81bddef

@nadia That's exactly what I do with a couple of my buttons that I stick under countertops. They've fallen off a few times, but if I wash the sticky part, it gets sticky again, and they'll be fine for months.

I've been using Flic buttons for 2-3 months now and one thing that's irked me is the lack of other click types and not to mention the slow 1 second debounce timer on the press-and-hold action.

Instead of begging the Flic devs to change this just for me, I hooked into the Flic SDK's buttonUpOrDown event and used observables to add in an infinite amount of press types such as double-press-and-hold and triple-press. That plus the new configurable 300ms debounce on all actions completely changed the responsiveness of the buttons. No longer do I accidentally trigger a press action when I mean to press-and-hold because I didn't hold it down long enough. My wife's also pleased with the speediness. She doesn't accidentally turn the lights on then off because the button timeout took too long.

You can read more about the actual implementation here if you're curious:
RxJS and the Observable Flic Button:
https://medium.com/@Sawtaytoes/flic-buttons-and-the-observable-customization-using-rxjs-2214bc53d407

I'd forgotten about this post. I received my Flic Hub quite a while ago and was unable to use it for my whole-house solution of replacing light switches with Flic buttons. For me, it was a complete waste of money, and I'm upset it didn't fit my needs.

Have there been any updates to the Flic Hub software to allow scaling to the number of Flic buttons and all possible configurations? I actually do use every press state for each button and more.

Is it possible the range has been improved through a firmware update? My biggest problem from my very first use of the Flic Hub was its extremely limited range compared to various versions of my Raspberry Pis. I'm not sure how 64 devices would be even feasible considering just 1 device would quickly go out of range. It's not that I mean to carry my buttons around the house, just that I'd have to buy about 10 Flic Hubs to cover the area of 4 Raspberry Pis from my initial range testing.

@djfatal Do you have your buttons setup in Passive mode?

Someone from Flic noted they're working to get Flic working with the LIFX LAN API:
https://community.flic.io/topic/17293/flic-latency-with-lifx-but-likely-same-for-most-smart-lights

This is the project I made to hook into the Flic SDK. It's pretty old now, but it functions:
https://github.com/Sawtaytoes/Flic-Controller

The software revolves around the Flic SDK which you can find here: https://github.com/50ButtonsEach/fliclib-linux-hci. My software is customized for my own use case; but with the SDK, you can write your own software or use mine as a baseline.

If you use the SDK itself, you can use whatever supported language you want; doesn't have to be Node.js.

I think you're onto something @stuart. I could see where that'd be useful. You'd still have to have a centralized server for your configuration settings, but you'd manage that yourself and the Flic hub is literally just that, a dumb hub. No matter what happens to any button, it sends an HTTP request in a specific format to a certain address. That gives you all the power you need, and you can control everything from a Raspberry Pi or even an ESP8266.

In this way (provided I understood you), you lose the Flic app connections to 3rd party manufacturers and have to roll your own solutions. I have my own solutions too, but I'd prefer to do everything through the official app (provided I'm understanding you). I'm sure that's the intention on Flic's end as well. My friends and family wouldn't be able to use a Flic hub and do the same things as me if they have to flash a Raspberry Pi with my own custom software that they now have to maintain.

Because of the current limitation of mobile-only configuration; why not allow uploading a JSON config file? I can generate these in any programming language and maintain them on GitHub instead of having to put them all individually in the Flic Hub; otherwise, this is going to be completely unusable.

I've written about the scaling issue here:
https://medium.com/flicblog/controlling-iot-devices-with-the-flic-of-a-button-1349c81bddef

I think for this first iteration, scaling the number of buttons is something power users are going to be doing. In the future, that shouldn't be the case, but for now, it's something only affecting folks like me with whole house solutions and 40+ buttons. That's the intention right? Or am I using them in a strange way?

I'd like a way to actually use the hub, but I don't know if I'll be able to with its current software as I've detailed here:
https://community.flic.io/topic/17298/feature-request-flic-hub-and-app-enhancements-for-scale

I haven't received my Flic Hub yet, but from what I've seen in instructional and review videos, I'm finding the device unusable for my setup :/. I hate to say that because I've been extremely excited for the device. With its support for 64 buttons, it sounds like the solution I need.

I've got over 40 Flic buttons, and it's a pain to manage them through my own system since it requires a new Raspberry Pi for every 10 buttons, and I have no way of updating their firmware nor do I really know which Raspberry Pi each button's connected to. If I move a button, it's a lot of trouble to switch which Pi it's listening to. I was hoping the Flic Hub would provide a solution to the issues.

Different from the phone connection, the Flic Hub only solves the problem of phone Bluetooth, but I see it doing so much more. I know there's IR functionality, and I'm excited to see if that would work better than my Logitech Harmony setup, but that's none of my concern right now as I backed the device specifically for smart home control.

Here are some suggestions I'd like to see in the Flic Hub software:

• Add functionality to manage devices at scale such as making bulk edits or some easier interface of making configuration changes quickly. This way I wouldn't have to manually configure 120 button combinations (40 buttons x 3 press types) on a phone one-by-one. Yuck. I have better things to do with my time.
• The ability to have double-press-and-hold and triple-press. I use these extensively in my own buttons. My whole family's been trained to use them, and it's made triggering scenes super easy for everyone. Even triple-press-and-hold would be great. I understand my home-grown solution for this has some drawbacks specifically because it's based on Bluetooth lag and works strangely depending on the button's distance away from the Raspberry Pi.
• Add the ability to change the response time on the buttons (debounce time). This is especially important for making the buttons feel less laggy. When turning on lights, I need it as immediate as possible or family, guests, and I get frustrated. Light and fan switches are immediate so everyone expects Flic buttons to work the same. The best way to achieve this is lowering the debounce time. If I buy an expensive button, it should be more-convenient and snappy feeling than voice control.
• Alphabetize scenes in the LIFX connection and switches in the WeMo section. I have too many devices and scenes, so it's a major pain to find them all when they're scattered randomly. I've noticed a bunch of other home automation companies have this same issue and don't understand it. It's like no one producing these products actually uses them. It's not unreasonable to have hundreds of lights in your house or a bunch of AC-connected devices.
• Show names for all the Google Chromecast devices. For some reason, my list shows a Chromecast Bedroom (even though I don't have a device with that name) and a bunch of Google Home Minis and Chromecast Audios with really strange names. Looks like the device name plus a SHA hash.
• A web interface to manage devices. This way I could do it away from home or at my computer. I get that this isn't super high-priority when you've got a working product, but I do web software engineering for a living so it's probably more important to me.

I believe adding press types and a configurable debounce time require firmware updates. Is that true? Is it a problem to write changes like this to the buttons' NAND flash?

I hope these suggestions are doable. Since my Flic Hub's coming soon, and going to be non-functional for my use case and button count, if you are considering any of my suggestions, which ones and what's a possible timeline?

I understand Flic's a growing company, and I'm only one of many users so I understand if none of these are priority; although, I was really hoping the product I backed would really solve the problems I've come up against when using a bunch of Flic buttons in my home.

Even if all I get is the ability to upload a JSON configuration file for all my buttons with extra press types and debounce settings, that would be a significant improvement because I'd be able to actually use the device I backed for my specific setup.

@nadia That's exactly what I do with a couple of my buttons that I stick under countertops. They've fallen off a few times, but if I wash the sticky part, it gets sticky again, and they'll be fine for months.

The Flic buttons I have came with 2 bases. One of them I can attach to a wall by drilling a hole for screw mounting. The other is the sticky-back which can be stuck and re-stuck to walls and under granite counter-tops even after close to a year of use.

Is that what you're asking about?

I'd like to write a custom app on my Flic Hub. When I first talked about this it seems as though it would run Linux and would allow custom software such as a Node.js server built on top of the Flic Hub SDK. Is this still something possible or is it limited to the Flic software itself?

Also, is it possible we could see the software configuration, what it would look like? Does it only work on the phone or is it accessible from a web browser?

I've been using Flic buttons for 2-3 months now and one thing that's irked me is the lack of other click types and not to mention the slow 1 second debounce timer on the press-and-hold action.

Instead of begging the Flic devs to change this just for me, I hooked into the Flic SDK's buttonUpOrDown event and used observables to add in an infinite amount of press types such as double-press-and-hold and triple-press. That plus the new configurable 300ms debounce on all actions completely changed the responsiveness of the buttons. No longer do I accidentally trigger a press action when I mean to press-and-hold because I didn't hold it down long enough. My wife's also pleased with the speediness. She doesn't accidentally turn the lights on then off because the button timeout took too long.

You can read more about the actual implementation here if you're curious:
RxJS and the Observable Flic Button:
https://medium.com/@Sawtaytoes/flic-buttons-and-the-observable-customization-using-rxjs-2214bc53d407