This is pretty frustrating. Background - deep Homekit user who bought a HA Green last fall. While I don’t code I can follow directions and copy/paste just fine. I have 3 Flic buttons and the Hub LR giving me a strong BT connection. A friend set up a MQTT broker for me but I have to admit I have no idea what to do with it. (He was adding some of my WLED installations). I researched these forums for Flic assistance and there is very little new info. Most of the posts are several years old. I’ve tried the Pschmitt integration for Flic but it looks like some yaml coding is needed. I don’t know what compiling even means. I’ve been on Grok for several hours chasing rabbit holes trying to get these buttons working. I tried the webhook method only to hit a brick wall there too. I’m a smart guy - so why is this so hard? No one said HA was supposed to be easy but I can’t believe such a common little device is so difficult to add to my smarthome. Why isn’t this something that can be setup with a graphic UI? I’ve updated all firmware and rebooted all devices but getting nowhere. Any ideas?
I’ll first start off by saying I don’t have cany Flic buttons, I don’t run HAOS, I don’t use add-ons.
I’m assuming you are running HA OS?
I’m assuming you installed the pschmitt Add-on (it’s not an integration - there is a difference) follwing the instructions on the github repo?
I assume the machine you are running HA OS and the add-on has bluetooth hardware (dongle, built-in etc)?
I don’t see anything there that requires any yaml. it looks like you install the add-on and when you start it up and keep pushing the buttons they should be autro-discovered.
And nothing at all about compiling anything?
Why do you think you need MQTT?
It does look like there is a very minimal amount of yaml to run the integration in HA.
it’s literally 2 lines (unless you need some other optional configuration items). I wouldn’t consider that “so hard”.
not everything is available thru the UI. So if that’s the expectation for HA then you need to modify those expectations.
at what point in the steps above is it failing?
Yes I’m running HAOS on HA Green. I just tried to install the flic2hass which uses MQTT because I see it’s local and more controllable vs. the webhook method. I found a youtube video by Jeffrey Stone at Slacker Labs and I thought it would solve my problems with step by step directions. Buy alas, still failed. It took me to the hubsdk to create a new module but it wouldn’t run without errors. I entered my code into Grok and it attempted to fix the code at least 4 times before changing it to a webhook attempt and even that wouldn’t work.
All of this required simple copy paste with small yaml edit’s which seem pretty simple. Yet it’s still not working.
So…I’m not sure what you are referring to that only requires 2 lines? I’d love to try a new route towards just simply getting these buttons to be heard by HA.
Did you go to the HA documentation and search for the Flic integration there?
it has instructions for how to get t all set up.
Thanks for the link but I’m not sure what to do when I go there. In the “Action Setup” section at the top of the page there are 2 links that I have to choose from: pschmitt and Windows. If I click on pschmitt’s repository and I go to his readme it first has a link to HA addons. Do I follow that link? It doesn’t seem to be what I need. Instead of the read me file I scan the available files to download but there about 10 of them with titles that are French to me. Which would I use?
However, if I skip past pschmitt link and go on to the option of OS choices also within the Action Setup section and I click on Window’s it takes me to a page that doesn’t seem to be what I’m looking for either.
All of this is to say that I don’t know what I’m doing in Github most of the time (not a coder). Sometimes there is an obvious link to use but this one has a lot of choices and I can’t understand which choice is the one I need.
Neither am I. I have installed a lot of custom entities over the years, may from a GitHub page, but this one is about as non-standard as I have ever seen.
Why does your first custom integration have to be this challenging?
Here’s my best guess. It probably won’t work, but since the integration writer hasn’t bothered putting the integration into HACS, you have to install it the (very) hard way.
Go to the GitHub page (the Repository) and click on Code, then Download Zip. This will put the file “home-assistant-addons-main.zip” in your downloads folder. Move this to a temporary folder and extract all.
Here is where it gets weird. Unzip it
You now have a folder named “home-assistant-addons-main”. Open that folder and you have another folder named “home-assistant-addons-main”. (Whoever said that GitHub made any sense?)
That second folder contains the integration files. Rename that folder to “flic” then copy that folder into the “custom_components” folder of your Home Assistant installation. It will be in the same folder as your configuration.yaml file. (The name of the folder should match the name of the integration),
Next, edit your configuration.yaml file and insert this: (This is from the github instructions, not me).
binary_sensor:
- platform: flic
It can go anywhere in the configuration.yaml fie, AS LONG AS there is no other “binary_sensor:” component. Make sure “binary_sensor” starts in the left column and - platform is indented exactly two spaces.
Restart Home Assistant. This should load the integration.
Let’s back up a bit… If you haven’t already, go into the add-ons page and install Samba Share. When you install Samba Share, you can open the config folder of your Home Assistant in the Windows File Manager.
If you get errors during the restart, post your configuration.yaml file here.
Hope this helps.
That’s because it’s an Add-on and not an integration.
Add-ons aren’t in HACS. Never have, never will be
None of the instructions you provided will help the user install the add-on because you are trying to tell them how to install an integration.
the integration needs a Flic server to run. And that server is provided by the add-on at that repo.
If you haven’t you should go to the Flic integration docs for HA. It’s explained there.
No offense meant against @stevemann but their instructions won’t work. at least until you get to the part that says “Next, edit your configuration.yaml file and insert this:…”. At that point I think it should help but I haven’t really read it all, TBH.
no.
Again I will say that I don’t use HA OS so I can’t use add-ons.
but the first line at the repo says:
Add to Home Assistant using the repository url: GitHub - pschmitt/home-assistant-addons: Home Assistant addons by pschmitt
That link is what HA needs to provide the add-on in the add-on store of your HA instance.
I’m assuming there is a way to add that add-on to HA by adding it as a custom add-on repository using the provided link.
I will assume that HA provides a means to do that found in the add-ons section of HA. If it were me I think I would go there and click on the three-dot menu in the upper right of that page to see if there is something about “custom repositories” or some such.
If it exists I would follow the instructions there to add the custom add-on repository.
It should then show up as an available add-on in the add-on store listing.
Get the add-on configured and running.
After that add-on is running then the integration can be added by following the steps at the Flic integration documentation page.
@stevemann thanks but no thanks???
@finity You’ve got me even more confused now. I see your teaching me the diff between an add-on and an integration - thanks I keep learning more about HA. However where are you suggesting I go to solve this? You mention looking in the add-on section of HA. When I go there all I see is the handfull of add-on’s I have like MQTT. There isn’t any obvious next step on this page. Then you mention the 3 dots but I don’t see that on any of the pages we have all referenced in this post. What am I missing?
First of all @finity is correct- I mixed add-on with integration. Ignore everything I said.
Go to settings, Add-ons. Then click on ADD-ON-STORE on the bottom right.
Now click on the three-dot menu in the upper right.
Click on Repositories, then add.
This is where you enter the URL of the add-on repository:
https://github.com/pschmitt/home-assistant-addons
Now when you go back to the add-on page, you should see the Flic add-on.
Sorry but I’m not the one that has you more confused.
I’ve given you more than enough info that you should be able to at a minimum start working towards getting this going.
I don’t know what more I can tell you.
Hopefully you can follow the explicitly written out instructions that steve provided for you.
OK thanks guys now we seem to be getting somewhere. I followed Steve’s steps and was informed that pschmitt’s repository is already in the Add-on Store. Not sure what the “store” is? It would seem to be where I go to get more Add-on’s for my own HAOS but then why would I be adding one and how did it already show up? Was this somehow added in my prior attempts without me realizing it? Anyways, now that I see it in the store there are what look to be 8 files of which 1 is Flicd. Progress!
So now I can open Flicd in my AddOn store and I have 2 config options and I’ve read the Flicd config instructions. Not sure what to do next. I don’t see the device and there are 2 entities Flic related but they don’t seem to be the buttons. I see something about holding down a button for 7 seconds to pair it but that yielded no obvious success. In the Add-On I can see the logs and it says “hci0 does not exist”. Where do I go from here?
The integration documentation says: " The integration does not directly interact with the buttons, but communicates with a flic service that manages the buttons".
I’ve never heard of Flic before now let alone seen one.
Do you have the Flic button working on the phone app?
During the Flic button setup were you ever prompted for WiFi credentials?
The product was not designed to be used outside of its own ecosystem.
My experience and knowledge with Bluetooth is very limited. I have over 100 devices in and around my home. Mostly WiFi, but only two are Bluetooth. You might try to see if a BlueTooth Proxy can see the button. A BT Proxy is not something you can buy off-the-shelf. You have to make it yourself.
Yes I have the Flic app in my phone working with the buttons but nothing in HA yet. I have a BT adapter plugged into my HA Green and the Flic LR Hub is hooked up to my network.
I’m still trying to understand the add-on process we went through. Is the Flicd file within the pschmitt repo an official inegration from Flic? Or did pschmitt create this and he would be our point of contact for help?
If it were an official option from Flic it would be better written, and likely as an integration. Itis an add-on written by pschmitt, so he would be the best place to go for help.
What do you see when you click on the add-on?
Which BlueTooth controller do you have?
I have a Ziquigoa Long Range BT 5.4 USB Adapter.
Clicking on the add-on at the top I see an orange tag saying Rating 3, a blue tag saying Host. Followed by a note saying click on Flicd for details but when I click on it it takes me back to my add-ons page of which Flicd is 1 of 5 add-ons. Below that are 3 toggles for Start on Boot, Watchdog and Auto Update which I turned on for all 3. Then there is the Config link of which there are only 2 options and a Log link which displays the message I posted above that hci0 does not exist.
I think the problem is the config. Since I don’t know yaml and I can’t find anything to copy/paste where would I go to get the cheat code?
An add-on itself does not always require any YAML configuration, but you will need some YAML to use any entities exposed by the add-on.
Does the bottom line look similar to this (probably without the “Open Web UI”).
When you open the add-on, is there a green arrow at the top right? 
Go to Developers Tools → states and see if “flic” is there.
If it is, then we’re almost done.
If not, go to the Github page and click on issues. Here you can describe what you have done and ask for help to see any button activity. The GitHub is active (as opposed to many that haven’t had any updates for years), plus the issues list is remarkably small. So I would be encouraged that the author is supporting the add-on.
There is a UI editor but it seems incomplete. The readme says to update in yaml.
Yes, the bottom of my Dev Tools page looks as you described and there is a green play button at the top. I got 2 hits for the flic search but not what we need I think. There is: automation flic_1 and flic flicd_update
Thanks for all of your efforts. I’ll see if the author can help from his github page. I’m still amazed that a common and simple little button can’t be integrated after several hours of attempts.
The green arrow indicates that the add-on is installed and running.
Is there a “Configure” tab at the top?
Also, post a screenshot of the developer tools → states with flic in the search bar.
