I run Home Assistant in a Docker container on a Synology NAS. I’ve been experimenting with the Flic buttons, but can’t get them to work reliably.
I’m running the flicd image in a separate Docker container and have configured that container to use the same network. It sees the Bluetooth fob fine. Then I set HA to connect to flic per documentation. Install/setup seems all fine.
But the usability is not. Best case, response is maybe 5 seconds. But frequently I’m getting LONG delays and occasionally just dropped responses. I could maybe see the dropped responses as a Bluetooth issue, but this delay?
Queued ClickType.ButtonSingleClick dropped for 80:e4:da:74:1b:75. Time in queue was 324 seconds
Is there a reason for this, or any way to improve it? As it is, the Flic seems unusable.
That means the button was clicked while it was disconnected. It connected 5.4 minutes later and delivered the event. You could run “sudo btmon” to print all raw Bluetooth hci packets, where you should be able to see what’s going on exactly (like connection established/timeout). How many Flic buttons do you have? Is it same with everyone?
I have several buttons, and I’m still kind of experimenting. I’ve initially paired them to old phones I’ve mounted for use as kiosks and use Tasker to relay clicks to Home Assistant. That works OK but on the older phone the buttons disconnect about once a day, and I have a hard time getting them to reconnect. Long story short, I thought using flicd would take out a few steps and work better. So far, it has not.
Anyway, so it’s just the one button connected through flicd. But sounds like maybe it is something with bluetooth. The fob is in the closet so it has to go through a wall and maybe that’s just too much.
So far I like the buttons, but not having them be reliable is worse than not having them at all.
I’m using this one, which I bought new, for what that’s worth:
But I had an old Pi 3 laying around, so I tried that one. Got as far as getting docker running flicd and configured in home assistant, but I never get the initial button pairing message in home assistant. Flic button just flashed red 3 times. I tried a fresh battery too. Had no problems initially using the fob and NAS. Does it need to “unpair” somehow? I did stop the flicd container on the NAS.
Oh. Never use that kind of tiny usb dongles since their range is only a few meters (they are designed for using a keyboard or mouse with your computer, which is usually within a meter). Use a built-in antenna such the one built into the RPi 3 or a computer. If you need a dongle you should buy something like http://www.senanetworks.com/ud100-g03.html.
And please test flicd directly instead of in a docker container. I haven’t analyzed how good it works within a container.
