Problems with Flic Buttons!

Configuration
1

Since I am using Home Assistant I have the flic button integration running. I have therefor a Pi Zero W central in my house which is running Raspberry Pi OS and the flicd-daemon. Home Assistant only has this configuration:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: flic
    host: 192.168.178.100

Nothing more is necessary. The buttons worked without any problem for months. But now it happens more and more often that I press a button and it is only blinking in red.
The connection between Home Assistant Pi 4 and the Pi Zero is still there:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo netstat -antp|grep "5551"
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:5551            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      28277/flicd         
tcp        0      0 192.168.178.100:5551    192.168.178.108:48678   CONNECTED   28277/flicd

The flid logfile is also correct:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ tail -f /var/log/flicd.log 
Available HCI devices found:
hci0

Trying hci0
Flic server is now up and running!
HCI socket busy, bringing down and then retrying
Successfully bound HCI socket
Initialization of Bluetooth controller done!
Accepted new client

The only thing that helps in this situation is to restart the flicd-daemon on the Pi Zero W:

sudo systemctl restart flicd

and then restart Home Assistant via the server control. Otherwise the buttons are only blinking red when pressed.

Does someone eventually has a solution or a fix for this behaviour?

2

@carsten_h

Did you ever manage to resolve the issue with Flic?

I’ve been long suffering very similar symptoms. Every few days my buttons will stop working, and I need to shutdown&restart both flicd and Home Assistant. I found I also have to dis&reconnect the Bluetooth adapter.

My Bluetooth adapter is plugged into a long extension cable, which is into a USB expander, to connect to my HA host. I’ve been step-wise eliminating each part of the chain (adapter, cable, expander) to determine if something is faulty, but so far nothing has resolved the loss of service.

Thanks.

3

No, i had the problems the whole time. But I sold the buttons long time ago.
Now I am using ZigBee Buttons (Ikea, Aqara) and they are working without any single problem together with ControllerX.

4

If you’re experiencing a problem with Flic that feels like this, have a read through this post.