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.

@Emil said in Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for:

If you have a priority list (order of importance for you), that would be even more helpful to help us prioritise.

Priority list

• Spotify Connect Volume Control

• Chromecast volume control

• User customizable rotary encoder (like «internet request» only wiith a scalable/dimmable value/parameter)

• IKEA Trådfri dimmer

Thanks for clearing that up, @Emil !

Andreas

@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.

@andreas-lorentsen

That didn't age very well….
🫣

@andreas-lorentsen

That didn't age very well….
🫣

Here's a quick and dirty script I created to test volume control. Might be errors (even dragons) here, use at own risk. Maybe it's useful for someone sometime…I don't know.

const buttonManager = require("buttons");
const flicapp = require('flicapp');
const net = require("net");
const http = require("http");
const client = 'INSERT IP ADRESS HERE'
const port = 4710;

let client = new net.Socket();
var muteCommand = Buffer.from('set /devices/0/outputs/20/Mute/value/true \0', 'utf-8');
var volumeCommand = Buffer.from('set /devices/0/outputs/20/CRMonitorLevelTapered/value/ ');

flicapp.on("actionMessage", function(message) {
		if(message == 'mute') {
			sendToSocket(muteCommand);
		} 
		// handle more (else) cases here 
});

function sendToSocket(msg) {
		client.connect(port, client, function() => {
                client.write(msg);
		})
};

flicapp.on("virtualDeviceUpdate", function(metaData, values) {
	let virtualID = metaData.virtualDeviceId;
        if(values.volume && values.volume != "") {
	     sendToSocket(volumeCommand + values.volume + ' \0');
        }
	// console.log(metaData.virtualDeviceId);
	// console.log(values.volume);
});

Nice. I already got it up and running with a couple of custom volume controls. I use it in my home studio (remote controlling input/output volume on Universal Audio gear, controlling playback and recording when tracking vocals and drums etc), and one for my home surround system as well.

Although…

Can you PLEASE update the existing Spotify Connect "provider"/service to also include the volume (up, down, mute) endpoints as well as the existing ones?

It would require next to no time and effort for you to configure, but it would probably make a world of difference for a lot of the "average" end users of your products.

Think about it…the access token/authentication mechanisms are already there, the Spotify volume endpoints have been up and ready to serve since long before the dinosaurs, and it wouldn't require anything out of the ordinary to add it to your already working Spotify service provider.

Don't get me wrong. The Hub SDK is really great now with the latest updates. I enjoy and love that level of flexibility and all the customization goodies, but it's clearly not for everyone - as the learning curve can be somewhat steep and in my opinion it's a total overkill if you have no prior programming skills or interest, but still want to make use of your Flic hub, Twist, Flic 2 button, Duo or whatever. Yay or nay? Oh and btw, great work. I don't just say that

(And please fix the Flic 2 Universal MIDI functionality, as it's useless at this point).

🤍

Andreas

@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).

@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.

@Emil said in Flic Twist - not what I was hoping for:

If you have a priority list (order of importance for you), that would be even more helpful to help us prioritise.

Priority list

• Spotify Connect Volume Control

• Chromecast volume control

• User customizable rotary encoder (like «internet request» only wiith a scalable/dimmable value/parameter)

• IKEA Trådfri dimmer

Thanks for clearing that up, @Emil !

Andreas

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.

This is awesome!
In lack of better Javascript skills, I actually configured a Flic 2 button (through the "front door" main app interface ), just to be able to trigger the record action without a phone. Even though it worked, it felt kind of "offensive" to the code (like using a MacBook Pro as a bookend ). I guess I'll hack around with the example code just to get everything in one place

️

@emil It works! I don't know if it was significant or not, but I logged out of the Flic App on all devices, and logged into another user account. Then I reset the Flic hub, first by pushing the reset button for about 13 seconds. The orange light went out completely. Then I power cycled it, and held the reset button for another 4-5 seconds until it started blinking. Added Flic 2 and enabled Homekit support. I don't know what made it work this time, but I suspect that the new user account forced the app to ask for new network permissions. At least that's my qualified guess

Andreas

@emil Thank you for the suggestions. However, I have no extra router or firewall in between, and multicast DNS (Bonjour) is not blocked. I can see the "hap" service running on the Flic hub, but the Home app somehow doesn't. When I enable Homekit for a button, there is no notification regarding access to the local network, access to Homekit data, or anything else for that matter. It just switches to the Homekit button interface momentarily (clearly not working as intended, in other words)

Andras