Flic Button Switches Part Two

Flic button switches Troubles

Not so happy with the Flic button switches this morning. I moved the office Flic Switch to the Mac App (It was connected to the iPad) and it’s giving me problems. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The bluetooth connection seems to be flakey, or it could be some other problem. I just pressed one of the switches and it took half a second or a whole second before it operated. Long enough for me to think I needed to press it again or to think it wasn’t going to work at all. The light did operate eventually, perhaps it was just too early in the morning. This is with a new 2017 iMac. It’s not as if it’s an old machine I’m working with! There shouldn’t be a problem.

Next is the Hub

The company who makes the Flic switches are working on a hub. With this hub you can connect all the buttons to it and don’t have to have them connected to one of your computers. They are also making an extra infrared connection to plug-in. With that you can set it so it will work with infrared television remotes and infrared for air-conditioning et cetera. This hub will cost around about €80 and isn’t ready yet. It is still a Kick Starter product at the moment. So who knows when that’s going to be ready. So my next trick for today is to verify whether my Flic button switches are the old version all the new version. I’ll send an email to the manufacturers. It’ll be interesting to see how restponsive they are with customer queries.

On a Brighter Note

The Flic button I have connected to the iPhone has been working a treat today. I have the button in my pocket even though I added the included clip to the back of it so I could clip it onto my clothes. With a single click I have it set to turn off or turn on Playing Now sounds coming from the iPhone. This is good when I’m working and I want to listen to something without any background noise. Easy to turn it off quickly. I have the double click button set to do a jump forward by the specified amount in the podcast application. The podcast application I use is called Pocketcasts. I like to set the jump forward by 45 seconds which will easily take me past any annoying adverts in a podcast. The click and hold I have set so that it does a volume control in case I want to have the podcast still playing but at a lower volume. It’s also possible to have a second action to each of the click options, or more, and so I’ve also set this up to be a native camera trigger. For that to work I need to have the camera app open.

Sort of good – Sort of disappointing

When these Bluetooth Flic button switches work they are extremely useful. A few more days later and I’m still testing and trying out how the switches work. When the Bluetooth connection is up and running they work perfectly. Sometimes the Bluetooth connection gets lost and I’m not sure of the best way to reconnect. Now and then pressing the button will make the connection again. Other times I need to press and hold on the button. Or I have to disconnect the Bluetooth by telling it to forget the item, then do a reconnect. Which is tedious because I have to reset up the actions for the switch. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend these to other people as it stands. I do think all be okay once the hub is available, so long as you don’t mind spending the extra money. The button I use for roaming, as in I have it in my pocket to turn on and off the audio from my iPhone, is pretty useful. I just used the search tool within the application to look for Siri and it did the job. So I do have the later version of the switch. I’m pleased to be able to confirm that and I don’t need to make contact with manufacturers now. I have just upgraded the iPhone to iOS 11. I did get a message from Flic to say that it might not work well with the new operating system and perhaps I should wait. Fingers crossed there will be an update within the next few days.

Logitech Pop

I have just seen this Logitech Pop product on the Apple Store. It comes with a hub. The hub is connected through Wi-Fi and is HomeKit compatible. The kit rwith the hub and one button is an okay price. The price of the buttons by themselves is a little bit too expensive but if they work better than these Flic Switches then I’ll be happy to change. I’m thinking of getting one to try out. These Pop buttons also have the single click, double-click and A click and hold so you can program more than one automation into the button.