Flic buttons and a new Bluetooth adapter

Hardware
1

I’m currently running a number of Flic buttons integrated with Home Assistant via a Bluetooth USB adapter and the flicd service. Some of the more distant buttons often fail to work, and I’m looking to get a more capable Bluetooth adapter.

What is involved in changing adapters? Can I expect that as long as flicd binds to the new adapter the transition will be transparent? Or might each button need to be repaired with the new adapter/flicd…and perhaps even rediscovered by Home Assistant?

Thanks.

2

I would expect everything should just work if you change the adaptor in the flicd config. Assuming the new adaptor is recognised automatically.
Curious - are you running homeassistant OS? Any issues with the bluetooth release in 2022.08?

3

Thanks for reminding me Matt, I should have done a follow-up post back then: I did try out three replacement Bluetooth adapters, but for one reason or another each failed to bind the buttons. Thus I’ve kept the original adapter and simply moved the problematic button closer.

To revert to the original Bluetooth adapter I found I had to delete the flicd sqlite database file, restart the flicd service and rebind the buttons in Home Assistant as if new.

To answer your questions:

  • I’m running HAOS inside a VirtualBox vm on a Linux host; the flicd service runs outside of the vm, so the Flic integration is as if the service runs on another host
  • since the service runs externally, I had no need to pass the Bluetooth adapter into the vm, and Home Assistant is unaware of it; updating to 2022.8 had no effect on the integration

Why do you ask, did 2022.8 make the integration better or worse for you?

4

Yep, 2022.08 is where homeassistant added “first class bluetooth support” which seems to have conflicted with flicd’s usage of the raspberry pi bluetooth adaptor. None of my buttons work :frowning:

5

So Home Assistant now binds the adapter and locks out the flicd service?
Can you disable the Home Assistant Bluetooth integration?

6

Supposedly (anecdotally) the flicd dominates over the bluetooth integration, but not for me. I’ve disabled the bluetooth integration, yep, and the flicd service looks to be up and running, but it can’t hear any flic_click events.
Not much info out there yet. Still working on it. Restoring to backup for now.

7

Hi!
I have a RPi4 and already have the internal bluetooth adapter in use for my Switchbot curtain. So I can’t use flicd because it wants the adapter for himself. Would it be a solution to simply buy a new USB bluetooth adapter? They are quite cheap so I wouldn’t mind to make this work.

8

Hi kapabel,

Yes, a USB Bluetooth adapter would work, especially if you can get one with an antenna (depending on how far your buttons are located from your Pi – mine are a couple floors apart in our house). Or instead maybe try using the Pi Bluetooth for flicd and the USB adapter for the Switchbot curtain.

My buttons are several years old now; I wasn’t able to get them to work with Bluetooth 5 adapters. If you have newer buttons perhaps they support Bluetooth 5; be sure you know for certain to help decide what to purchase.
A bit more detail is available in this post.

Gotta say, I love my Flic buttons, have them doing all sorts of things, am years in with them and I still think they’re so cool.

Good luck!