On our most recent IoT Podcast episode, Brent called in with a question to make life a little easier in his smart home. He has a reading lamp in his bedroom that he can control with either a switch or a digital assistant. But he’s looking for a solution to quietly control it while he’s in bed. That means no voice controls and he’d prefer not to use an app either since his phone isn’t always within arm’s reach.
Brent, this sounds like the perfect solution for a smart button! With a button, he can simply press the button to control the reading lamp without using his phone or by waking up his partner by using a voice command.
Of course, the choice of the smart button will depend on Brent’s setup. Most buttons work over Zigbee, which requires some type of hub, while a few others use Bluetooth. Since we don’t know the details of Brent’s smart home and there are plenty of Zigbee smart button options, we’ll tackle the Bluetooth approach.
Since Brent can’t easily reach the manual switch on his lamp from the bed, a Bluetooth button such as this Flic two-pack for $30 will do the trick. Just be sure to check Flic’s integrations to ensure it will work with your connected lights.
You’ll need the Flic app on your phone to act as the hub or gateway unless you want to splurge for a Flic Bluetooth hub. The company sells a starter kit with the Bluetooth 5.0 Long Range hub and 3 Flic buttons for $160.
Another option is what Stacey uses: A $25 Philips Hue button since she uses Philips Hue bulbs for her lamps. So that’s an easy addition if you’re already in the Philips Hue ecosystem.
Provided you don’t mind swapping switches, you could install a $60 Lutron smart switch and use a $20 Lutron Pico Remote button to control the lamp. In this case, you’d have a non-connected bulb in the lamp and you’d pay a bit more than for a Bluetooth solution.
Smart buttons are often overlooked as viable device control options, but in cases like Brent’s, they will definitely do the trick. Note that most buttons support multiple actions based on single vs double presses and/or short/long presses. So you can gain some additional functionality in most cases as well.
To hear Brent’s question in full, as well as our discussion on the topic, tune in to the IoT Podcast below.
So instead of getting the Flic hub, could we utilize an old iphone laying in a drawer to connect flic buttons to homekit, alexa, and the rest? I never trade in my old phones so i have a 3,4,5,6,7 floating around on old ihome clocks or speakers. Just as Samsung lets us upcycle old galaxy phones, it would be awesome to use an old iphone for something beyond homekit remotes.
We’ve had the Flic buttons since they were first released, and now also have the hub. We really like them. I actually slightly preferred the form of the first generation, which was convex, because it was easier for my service dog to push with his nose than the current concave version. But both are nice. We also really like the fact that you can now use a flic button to trigger an Alexa routine. At the time of this writing, they were the only button that could do that except for the frequently out of stock echo button.
Some Flic integrations work only with iOS, some work only with android, and two specifically require the hub.
If you want to use them with HomeKit, you have to have the hub because of some security requirements on the part of HomeKit.
If you want to use an IR blaster to do things like turn on a television, then you also need the hub.
The following page shows you exactly which integration to work with which platforms. So it just comes down to the specifics of what you want to do.
https://flic.io/all-functions