Flic buttons. Local or cloud based?

Questions & Help
1

I use Flic buttons around the house for different things. I noticed that the ones that trigger Homey Flows are not working when the internet is down.

I thourght they were connected locally. Do they use cloud connection to trigger Homey Flows?

I have a Flic Hub and a Homey Pro 2023.

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2

The app uses webhooks:

1000046621
10000466211080×1170 103 KB

Now, I suspect the dev uses internet webhooks instead of local webhooks, that’s why it doesn’t work when inet is down.

Discuss this with the app developer please, support links are present at the app store app page

3

FWIW, Flic buttons can make web requests. I’ve installed the ‘Micro web server’ app which makes it easy to start Homey flows via a local web request. So, all my Flic buttons communicate with Homey locally - and reliably.

Andy

4

Hi

Thanks for the input.

Sorry for not clarifying. I’m not using the Flic app for Homey, but the build in feature in Flic that can trigger Flows in Homey from the Flic Hub.

5

Hi

So you installed that web server in order to have the Flic’s communicate locally?

How do you set that up? It sounds a little cumbersome, but perhaps its because I dont see how it would work :slight_smile:

6

I use the web server to provide a simple dashboard so I got used to using it for web hooks. It helps that you can invoke advanced flows directly - something you can’t do presently with the native Flic integration.

You can achieve the same result using Homey web hooks but this approach is a little simpler, in my view.

Just install the ‘Micro web server’ app to have it create a web server running on port 5080 (you can change that if you want) using the same address as your Homey.

The setup instructions talk about FTP, but you don’t need to do that unless you want to host pages in the server.

To start a flow, simply add the ‘Web Trigger’ when card provided by the app. It can sit alongside other triggers in advanced flows - you don’t have to make copies of existing ones.

In the Flic app, remove the Homey trigger and replace it with an ‘Internet Request’. Select ‘GET’ and enter a URL like:

http://xxx:5080/webTrigger?name=yyy

Where xxx is the address of your Homey (name or IP address) and yyy is the trigger name you assigned to the web trigger card in your flow.

That’s it.

Note there’s no security on the web server. However:

  • People can connect only through your local network which should be protected
  • People can execute only those flows that use the web trigger card
  • And to do that, they need to know the trigger name

I attach a flow I use to control our bedroom fan. The Flic turns it on for a couple of hours or, if it’s already on, turns it off. Note that the flow can also be started manually.

FanControl
FanControl1049×522 148 KB

Andy

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7

Wow, thanks for the explanation! :slight_smile:

I saw that there is a logic card for a Webhook event.

Would that work without having to install the Micro web server app?

8

Homey has a built in local webhook implementation as well, but it’s not advertised:
(It is limited to send 1 tag (or argument) aling, whilst Micro Web Server can send max 4 of those).

Pro 2023:
http://my_homey_ip/webhook?event=my_event_name&tag=my_tag_goes_here

Pro 2016-2019:
http://my_homey_ip/api/manager/logic/webhook/my_event_name?tag=my_tag_goes_here

Replace my_homey_ip with Homey’s local IP (like 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x etc.)

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9

This post helped me a lot, thnx!

I wanted to try how the flic buttons work and was looking trough some older and newer posts to find out how to connect to Homey.

It was unclear for me if I needed to add the flic button as devicde to Homey or not by using the flic Homey app ( Flic | Homey ). I couldn’t get this to work. What does work is using the webhook implementation. For this you do not need to use the Homey flic app.

For anyone else searching for how to connect:

  1. You need the flic button and either the flic hub or the flic app on your phone or tablet. I would prefer the flix hub, otherwise the button only works when it is connected to your phone or tablet.
  2. In the flic hub you need to add the button(s) and can assign the webhook as described by @Peter_Kawa for each button press (one/double/long press)
  3. In Homey you can start flows by using the received webhook event card you can find under logic