@stevehooper yeah we should really try to add a direct Home Assistant integration from the Flic hub someday, since it is so popular...

In the meantime, can you use the Internet Request action in our app to send a simple http request to your device running Home Assistant maybe?

We are today announcing a Beta release of some new features in the Hub SDK that can be used together with Flic Twist.

In order to seamlessly continue to work with the rest of your smart home devices that you might have assigned to other triggers on the Flic Twist, we introduce the concept of Virtual Devices. A Virtual Device is handled by the Flic Hub firmware just like any other supported real device, but its functionality is implemented by the user in the Hub SDK, typically by writing some kind of bridge software that sends commands and receives update events over the LAN to/from the real device. If for example the brightness of a (real) light is changed by some external means, it is possible to tell the Flic Hub firmware from javascript about the new brightness level, which the hub then forwards to the Flic Twist, so that the LED status can update accordingly. That way when you twist it, it will start from the correct position.

We are also adding a "message" action that can be used to send arbitrary strings to your scripts whenever the action is triggered. The intended use case is to be able to trigger custom code also for Push/Double Push in the Selector feature or perform some action when a specific point is reached in Advanced Dimming or Scene Blender.

The virtual devices can be created in the Flic App and be set to be controlled by a Flic Twist as follows:

Using this piece of code, updates are received in your javascript code after configuring a virtual device to be triggered in the Flic App for a specific Flic Twist:

const flicapp = require("flicapp");

flicapp.on("virtualDeviceUpdate", (metaData, values) => {
    // The values object can contain hue, saturation, brightness, colorTemperature, volume, position (for blinds)
    console.log(`Twist ${metaData.buttonId} updated virtual device ${metaData.virtualDeviceId} of type ${metaData.dimmableType} with these values: ${JSON.stringify(values)}`);
});

When a device is modified externally, we use this function to inform the system of the change:

flicapp.virtualDeviceUpdateState(dimmableType, virtualDeviceId, values);

The dimmableType can be either "Light", "Speaker" or "Blind". The values is an object containing at least one of the fields mentioned above that is appropriate for the corresponding dimmableType. For example:

flicapp.virtualDeviceUpdateState("Light", "my_ceiling_light", {hue: 0.6, saturation: 0.7, brightness: 0.8});

The values themselves are always floating point numbers between 0 and 1.

Configure an action message to be triggered by assigning the following action in the Flic app:

The action messages are easy to receive, just register a listener as follows:

flicapp.on("actionMessage", message => console.log(`Got a message: ${message}`));

We'd love to hear your feedback!

We are slowly rolling this out in different regions. Stay tuned.

@bulk Yes we have made the submission.

@abboberg All our firmwarers are auto-updated. In some cases we have assigned a specific firmware to specific people on request. Please reach out to us if you want to go back to the public release track.

The current hub fw version is 4.2.11.

Usually when we update the hub firmware we also update the apps. In the apps you can see a Change log in the settings menu.

@steveff Our Matter integration is just around the corner. For the Twist this is probably most relevant for lights, as no speakers I know yet support Matter.

What we also have in the pipeline for Twist is e.g. more configurable steps (4 -> 12) for Advanced Dimming/Scene Blender so that you can trigger an action (e.g. Alexa) with higher resolution and before as well as Hub SDK features for the Twist so that you can build custom integrations.

Spotify has an API (over cloud) that we could potentially use for controlling the volume, but we are not sure if the latency will be low enough to make this action have a good user experience. We also don't like that they don't provide any means to "push out" the volume status when it is changed so that the LEDs on the Twist could update accordingly (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-for-Developers/Access-to-websockets/td-p/4955299).

@hello_marley the ball is moving according to plan. Please stay tuned

@giannis-yt I would guess at the moment the Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless is one of the cheapest options.

@mx5_94 Seems like a very powerful option. We'll definitely implement that!

What you should do is to first call bind, followed by setBroadcast(true) on the socket. Then you can send messages using send.
FYI, the API is made to be compatible with Node.js API https://nodejs.org/api/dgram.html.

@buckyswider You can remove a non-responding Matter device, but in that case the Flic hub pairing will not be removed from the Matter device in question.

@andreas-lorentsen The reason we don't have any cloud-based integrations for the Twist is that we think the latency could be too high and thus not a good customer experience. That said, how do you perceive the latency for updating the volume by rotating the Twist in this case?

@wpjvanderven this is fixed in version 4.0.13 which should now be available on Google Play. If not, please wait for Google to roll out the new version.

@jayst84 That's a different issue; however we found the cause for this and a fix has now been submitted to Google Play for review. ETA new app out tomorrow.

@buckyswider Unfortunately a new Matter device counts as a new device, regardless if you happen to give it the same name, and we have unfortunately no way currently to streamline the process of instantly replacing all references to an old device to a new one. You must thus assign it to the actions in which you want to use it.

@alexgooz92fs Nice to hear that!

It seems the issue doesn't affect all users. I my self can for example use the Alexa actions I set up previously, before their outage, successfully today without the need to re-enable the skill or re-setup anything.

Note that the http request containing the button press event that is sent to Alexa's server when a Flic button is pressed, sent from us, looks the same both before and after their outage, so if it suddenly doesn't work after their outage, it seems at least to me something has been broken on their end for you it doesn't work for. However, if you added an additional Alexa action during the time they had an outage, that action might not have been synced correctly so in that case you might need to remove the Alexa action and add it back in the Flic app.

@tomtec Flic uses Bluetooth Low Energy. BLE uses frequency hopping and may thus jump between different channels in the whole allocated spectrum.

@andy-henderson We have seen a lot of error responses in our requests to Alexa's servers today and yesterday like "service unavailable" and "INTERNAL_SERVICE_EXCEPTION". I suggest you wait until tomorrow and see if they have fixed the issue. If it doesn't work by tomorrow, in case some kind of state or similar has got broken on their end, I suggest you to first remove the Alexa action from all your buttons in the Flic app, then delete the Flic skill in the Alexa app. Then re-enable the skill and add back the Alexa actions in the Flic app to your triggers. What I just mentioned should be done in that exact order.

Hi and thanks for your report. We must have missed this when we upgraded the UI of our app. A new app version with a fix for this is now sent in to review to Google Play (4.0.11). Hopefully it is released within 24 hours.

@mx5_94 Hi, if you mean the "predefined set of products that can quickly be selected by name" that you can find under Settings -> Groups, then I can't find any such thing in their API. The thing called "groups" in the API is the live grouping of devices, which is a totally different thing.

Would you like to be able to change the current grouping of devices so that you can e.g. start a playlist/favourite on a particular set of speakers (by using checkboxes in our app), i.e. immediately make them a group if they are not already constituting a group?