Physical button for lights

Hardware
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1

Hey everyone, I am looking for assistance.

Current setup: Lifx lights, flic buttons, ipad as the hub

Issue: Flic buttons are very flaky in terms of pressing the button and the light actually turning on. Sometimes works relatively quickly other times I have to press it 2-3 times before anything happens.

Solutions?

  1. Flic forums state to get the dedicated hub and it should improve it but don’t know if it’s worth it (or trust what they are saying) and HA is so quick with turning it on vs flic at it’s best is slower
  2. Is it possible to get flic buttons to connect to HA via bluetooth? I have seen some way of doing it with flicSDK.exe but documentation is very sporadic and not sure if it is worth it
  3. Get ConBee II so my HA has zigbee and then get the Philips Dimmer Switch. I ready you don’t need a Philips Hub if you do HA with zigbee, is it true? Would it be a better solution then using flic?
  4. Anything anybody else can recommend? Not looking for anything crazy just a switch that is battery powered that works reliably (not looking to replace my current switches and looking for something simple.
2

I use the Aeotec Wallmotes and they work quite fast. The only thing you need is a Z-Wave dongle on your HA system and you are good to go. When talking wireless, you need to accept that some delay is unavoidable, but Z-Wave and Zigbee will respond faster than many other devices might.

But it’s not just that simple, while you don’t need a hub you do need a reliable network so having the Wallmote + Dongle is OK if they are close to each other, otherwise you will need to have mains powered repeaters between the two or you accomplish nothing.

3

Definitely understand there is a lag but when I 1st got flic it was pretty instantaneous but over time it got slower and worse which is why I created this post.

Aeotec Wallmotes (specifically the Wallmote 7) looks really interesting. Any specific z-wave usb do you recommend or do you have to use Aeotec’s specific one?

As for being close to each other I am in a studio so they are all relatively close and only thing is there is a wall between spots.

4

I do, coincidentally, use the Aeotec dongle, but any will do.

5

So after research from looking at Aeotec I found a brand called Zooz that had a switch and usb like Aeotec but MUCH cheaper. Got it, set it up and holy cow it’s so much better then flic. Very slight delay compared to a dumb switch but faster then flic ever was and the most important thing is that it has been reliable and have not had to double press ever. Still new tech so needs a couple of weeks/months of daily usage to really see if it stays consistent but very very promising.

Only complaint was having to setup z-wave overall which took me between 1-2 hours to setup but that’s because I am using a container version of HA so had to learn about making z-wave into a service to get it running properly but once done smooth as butter on all 5 switches.

Thanks so much for pointing me to a direction to help me set everything up!