Thanks for the PSA Lewis. It's never fun to disparage someone else's hard work when you keep in mind that real people worked on this. But you are right to call it out for being what it is (or rather what it is NOT). Keep up the great work.
It's possible however to have HA integration with Google Home and use Google Home as a middleware for the integration with HA. Definitely not ideal, but should be possible.
I was thinking exactly the same ... We already have a device that most of us have available wherever they go. Add HA to it and set up a good dashboard and you're ready to go. Only thing really missing is tactile feedback and maybe not having to unlock your phone.
up until the moment you announced that this is cloud only, I was a bit interested, as if it had potential with future upgrades etc. No local control means just trash to me and to anyone serious about home automation.
Another company trying to find a problem that fits their very specific solution. I have an old IKEA round remote that is used for a couple of basic tasks similar to this device. Works fine with HA, meets simple requirements, local, lives on my fridge 99% of the time.
With a product like this, I'm left wondering how much testing they did with potential end-users. The only "multi-mode" devices I use every day are Stream Decks that are tethered to PCs. If I need portability I use voice control, not some fiddly dial-switch-thingy that will get lost between the couch cushions.
I’ve seen this time and again with startups unfortunately. They concentrate all their efforts on the hardware and the software/UI becomes an afterthought. And then they don’t have the time or the money to develop the UI properly before launch but think they can fix it afterwards via software updates. Problem is, what the end user sees, IS the UI, and they never get the chance to do the software updates because the product fails because everyone has already decided it’s crap. You get one chance to make a good impression . Imagine instead if they’d decided to target a smaller market like Home Assistant first, and given it a really solid LOCAL API. They shipped beta units to HA developers so it could have reasonable plugin support at launch. HA community is more forgiving of quirks at launch and gives you a solid base to build further integrations from. Result … success 🎉
Good video and respect for being nice in the way you pointed out the flaws. Would be good to hear an updated view of the twist as I've seen others starting to rave about it
Thanks for taking the time to try then review this smart home controller. I do think the dial controller concept is viable, but companies seem to be having difficulties delivering.
When you said that they market the device to be carried with you, I immediately thought “what about my phone?…“ I’m not familiar with the Flic twist, but I feel like these little button remotes are more useful with a home room, that you can move around that room as a “portable wall switch“ nothing more.
So then take it one step further and have one puck you can take into any room you like, which are zoned so the functions perform different actions depending on which room you're in
@@OllieHamon You’re not wrong, but respectfully, that is literally what my phone is 🙃 I understand the appeal, but until a device does this easily and reliably, I’ll wait patiently so my ADHD doesn’t lose yet another small device 🤣
I been looking for just this, a button with a display so i csn see what im controling BUT why do companies ruin hardware by bad software. More buttons should have an eink display.
Great video and very informative (and thanks for your candor. It’s not easy giving poor reviews). You mentioned that their mission is to create a single controller that controls everything (aka a universal smart-home remote) I don’t think that will ever work. We know those offer a poor user experience but at the same time having 1 remote for one device is just as bad. One way I think a universal remote would work REALLY well is if the device is aware of the room or is in and the devices for that room automatically presented itself. Of course this alone wouldn’t make it perfect and achieving that level of awareness would take “Apple level” of research and development but this would be a solid jump in the right direction.
So tired of buying stuff that half works or less! Been playing HA since X10 and LinuxMCE and things have gotten worse in a lot of ways! If LinuxMCE could have kept up with today's hardware and with a Pi as media director in each room, it could have been amazing! meanwhile, the Original flick button? Useless, so many things are, they are made to sell, not to actually use! And hubs, how many useless hubs have we had? I have a draw full! Finally moved to Home Assistant this year it's complicated and time consuming, but rewarding and genuinely useful! I was one of those people that saved up for a honey pro, and got one not long before they decided to discontinue it in favour of something new. Rambling? Yes I am a bit! But anything that saves me filling a draw with useless HA is fantastic! Thank you
Considering how often I buy something only because it's hackable it's kind of weird how rare it is for companies to simply release products with the promise of hackability. Like, this product would probably become useful really quickly if it would ship with only some kind of placeholder software, and a leaflet explaining how to install esphome on it! I bet there would be dozens of really useful things to install on this thing within months! One of them might even be a "killer app" that gets these things flying off the shelves.
As one who has been infected with these blood products and now with severe health problems, I do not expect to see compensation and justice before I die based on the numerous engineered delays being instituted by Mr Sunak. 180 children died of AIDS, and thousands died, effectively murdered. Tragically I know infected people who have campaigned for decades dying as a result of infected blood. The infected continue to drop like flies. Mr. Sunak's plan is obviously to delay long enough so that there is noone left to compensate. Well done Rishi Sunak.
Is there any sort of smart switch that just acts as a simple wall switch for Alexa, so a button triggers routines? This seems overly complex. I have to wire up Tuya-based light switches, then rely on the SmartLife app to connect them to other devices, which isn't a great way of doing things. I'd prefer a simple button to talk to Alexa (the buttons they made are really more intended as game controllers) then Alexa talks to everything else. I used Lightwave RF for a while but i feel its time has passed. Any ideas?
I'd like to see a hardware teardown, to assess whether the open source community could write/port over new firmware for this hardware. Seems like this was put on sale before it reached even alpha quality (not functionally complete, known issues with no work-around). That usually means that the company has found itself in a 'release or die' position, e.g. they're running out of cash, lost key staff members, etc. If so, I fear that it's highly likely that they will go out of business before this matures enough to recommend. As you've described, the basic premise of the product is more than a little naive, they wildly undershot what would be a 'minimum viable product' for their target market, the user experience has huge holes in it (which they must be aware of, unless they don't use it themselves, and haven't gotten any customer feedback to validate it) and the quality of the software - both on-device and in the cloud - is sub-par. Any one of these things can kill a product, and if it's your only product, the company along with it. If I were running their company, I'd immediately reposition it as a 'development kit' and make the source code for the device firmware available to hack on. Personally, I wouldn't be purchasing something that was this unfinished at that price-point unless the open source community was given the ability to finish it. I don't hold out much hope of the company being able to turn this into a success by themselves.
I'm going with the accent again because you are not going to get rich with honesty.🖖🖖🖖❤❤❤ Recently I started to listen to old IOT podcasts and there is so much to learn from them. What was thought to be innovative, 6-7 years ago, became creepy and intrusive, even completely useless. There was so little focus on intuitive behaviour and so much focus on tech capabilities. This product belongs in the past. There is already a push back with systems that require the user to have their smart phone present at all times so having another device to carry around is a deflating prospect. Don't even get me started on compatibility and expiring usage agreements. I wonder who made the call on this one. Was it the accounting, sales, product researchers or the design and development? They would have saved money and reputation by just consulting with Lewis Barclay.
11:34 What about 1 room with multiple lights, having 3 individual buttons is not practical at all in that case. Anything you recommend for 3 lights with brightness for each?
I question the basic premise. What's the advantage of putting my entire home behind a series of menus and hidden "double click" actions? That's not making anybody's life easier. This seems to be a common fault with home "automation" devices. At some point they forget the purpose of automation and you wind up having to actually practice turning your own lights on and off.
A shame, cos I rather like the eInk display idea. I totally get the lag comments, cos even a couple seconds on one of the plugs I have before it turns off (when you've clicked the button on the device itself i.e. no cloud/network comms ought to be necessary) is slightly disconcerting.
Lewis, I think you should look into developing your own smart dial. It's such a nice way of controlling devices that require more incremental control. Like audio volume, thermostat, dimmers, etc. I've been looking for a decent smart dial for ages, but the current market is both scarce and disappointing.
You only think the flic twist is bad because it doesn't work with home assistant. It works with Alexa perfectly fine. So just because you can't use it doesn't mean its bad.
argh. why is every home assistant youtuber emphasizing numbers by holding up the respective number of fingers? also in the teaser pics? pls stop doing this!!! we are no babies...
Would love to see a local homeassistant integration for this. If that integration offered the ability to control the Linxura's current page (with a selector maybe), then you could have the device always be on the right page based on where it is using Bluetooth trackers or something like that. So much wasted potential
Saw the video start with the Flic Twist and got (nerd) PTSD. That thing still sits unused in a closet as (AFAIK) it still won't connect to Home Assistant
this sounds like a treeabad device no matter how you go about it but can i play a little devil's advocate and say could some of the non functionality be caused by some kind of confusion about gdpr or any of the other really awesome data protection laws you have over there? I am American and wish we could get something like that passed with out some congress critter hacking it to bits or making it a nothing burger. 😀
I long for the day Home Assistant has the critical mass where hardware developers focus on supporting local integration with it first, not as an afterthought, or in this case, not at all. I'd hoped the user base was big enough, and there are some manufacturers who seem to take a bit of an HA-first approach but I guess we're not the yet. I do think the time will come...
I wonder how this would work with google scripts automation engine, TBH i don't know if that's available in the uk. Seems like a nice idea but they really need to reach out and partner with home assistant to bring the software side up to scratch, without other clunky eco systems getting in the way.
Hmm I think this could be a lot better when at least there would be Home Assistant integration. But I think that their idea of carrying it with you, is better served by a Galaxy Watch 6 Classic and the Home Assistant app on it.
Thanks Lewis If you don't have to give it back after the review, would it be worth a tear down to see what the hardware looks like? With a screen and several control inputs, it could have the makings of a nice piece of hackable tech
imho wifi in general isnt the best platform for these kind of controlling devices. it should be zigbee for control. wifi is too much lag just joining the network. yes it can be done, but here you have the cloud adding lag as well. not good. very sad as this device would be very interesting otherwise.
What buttons do i use for a smart home. I'm thinking right now I want matter/thread switches so I can directly use home assistant to link them to output devices without a system in between. But I also want those switches to be wired, I also want them to be compatible with future switches. I don't want to replace wires if there will be a better switch out there. I also want like half of my switches to have 4 buttons or more. I want a few to have a dimming option. I also don't want them to use wifi so I dont overload my router. Where the hell do I start. What do you recommend?
If only its display was bigger. And maybe it was slimmer. Ooh and a touch screen and color... And there were buttons and charts you could put on it ! if only there was a device like that...
Although I have a largish number of devices (40) using various hubs (no Home Assistant yet) any products that help with integration must be good. But bad products just muddies the water for good products. How do good products rise above the dross?
Glad I'm not alone! I've also had the Linxura for a few months and totally gave up on it after just two weeks. When I received it, there were less than the six integrations there are now. After setting up two devices through Alexa - creating various routines and actions - I completely stopped using it. The setup alone is a huge barrier for the return and usefulness. Even using Home Assistant and having what I need routed through Alexa or Google Home, this device is such a letdown. Great video!
Thanks for your honesty. The recognition that these are real people, trying hard, is appreciated, but if the product isn't ready, it's not ready! A fair review imho
i do like that remote.. but you are right.. it needs more time to just get it right.. i have a 4 button remote switch that has 12 functions available.. and a 6 button that has 18 functions.. much more usable considering some of those buttons are toggles.. keep up the good work..
I've never been convinced with one of these spiny buttons, for them to work right you would need a very stable lag free connection to the device or you will always be moving it and waiting to see if you have moved enough or having to roll back to correct. I like the idea of using e-ink as a display though, perhaps something about the size of a Stream Deck with a programmable interface would work well as a remote with a touch screen. In theory you could then create buttons and pages like you would a HA Dashboard.
Really appreciate the advice on this as I know I would be the type to buy it and when it wasn't working assume it was down to user error and lack of smart home knowledge. Have learned so much from your channel and looking forward to when everything presence sensors back in stock. I was too slow the last time as after I watched the video announcing back in stock (only 50 minutes after publishing) they were already sold out. Speaks volumes to how you have captured a gap in the market!
Who is this for ? all home assistance users hg hate products without local api.. casual users have enough app[s on their smart home.. no one will buy this to add to that list
Thanks Louis! I really appreciate your honest review and willingness to offer the manufacturer some advice and solutions such as the API key. I don't often think about some of these products in the sense of a new smart home user experience, but it is important to make sure that they have a positive experience and want to continue down the smart home path that we're all on. Well done sir!
![NOSFERATU - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters December 25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nulvWqYUM8k/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for the PSA Lewis. It's never fun to disparage someone else's hard work when you keep in mind that real people worked on this. But you are right to call it out for being what it is (or rather what it is NOT). Keep up the great work.
Appreciate the support 🙏🏻
Where's the HomeAssistant integration :(
In the non existent pile with almost every other integration 😭
What’s the chip it uses ???
@@EverythingSmartHomethat's sad, especially for the price and the "you won't need a hub" aim...
It's possible however to have HA integration with Google Home and use Google Home as a middleware for the integration with HA. Definitely not ideal, but should be possible.
@@ahdncordeiro The lag would be terrrrrribbbblllllleeeeeeeeee
Hmm, control everything with a small device you can carry with you…… and you can have your email on, browse the Internet, and make phone calls 😂😂😂
I was thinking exactly the same ...
We already have a device that most of us have available wherever they go.
Add HA to it and set up a good dashboard and you're ready to go.
Only thing really missing is tactile feedback and maybe not having to unlock your phone.
up until the moment you announced that this is cloud only, I was a bit interested, as if it had potential with future upgrades etc. No local control means just trash to me and to anyone serious about home automation.
Local = 👑
Thanks for being honest! Rare to see when companies offer free stuff and money to RUclipsrs
Lewis: "The Flic Twist was a huge disappointment."
Paul: "The Flic Twist is the greatest thing ever invented."
Another company trying to find a problem that fits their very specific solution. I have an old IKEA round remote that is used for a couple of basic tasks similar to this device. Works fine with HA, meets simple requirements, local, lives on my fridge 99% of the time.
Is that the one they designed to work with Sonos speakers? If so, how's battery life and connection reliability for you?
@@alex_ob1 This is just the original Tradfri, nothing fancy but meets my needs. Battery life is fine after updating firmware.
With a product like this, I'm left wondering how much testing they did with potential end-users. The only "multi-mode" devices I use every day are Stream Decks that are tethered to PCs. If I need portability I use voice control, not some fiddly dial-switch-thingy that will get lost between the couch cushions.
Funnily enough, I was just thinking about a standalone Stream Deck sized device with an e-ink display as a programmable remote control.
@@gordon861 trying to reinvent a Harmony remote? :)
Hey companies... This is 2024... If you're going to require the cloud, expect to lose the crowd! 🚫☁️
I’ve seen this time and again with startups unfortunately. They concentrate all their efforts on the hardware and the software/UI becomes an afterthought. And then they don’t have the time or the money to develop the UI properly before launch but think they can fix it afterwards via software updates.
Problem is, what the end user sees, IS the UI, and they never get the chance to do the software updates because the product fails because everyone has already decided it’s crap. You get one chance to make a good impression .
Imagine instead if they’d decided to target a smaller market like Home Assistant first, and given it a really solid LOCAL API. They shipped beta units to HA developers so it could have reasonable plugin support at launch. HA community is more forgiving of quirks at launch and gives you a solid base to build further integrations from. Result … success 🎉
Good video and respect for being nice in the way you pointed out the flaws.
Would be good to hear an updated view of the twist as I've seen others starting to rave about it
Thank you for the honest advice - what more can one ask !!??
🙏🏻
That looks about 20 years too late.
Sometimes honesty can be brutal, but it’s still the truth and you probably have saved people money with this video, so I’m glad you made it
Thanks for taking the time to try then review this smart home controller. I do think the dial controller concept is viable, but companies seem to be having difficulties delivering.
It feels like these companies are starting to copy the mentality of the gaming industry of releasing a bad / buggy product and fixing it later
For sure, it's a very bad trend
When you said that they market the device to be carried with you, I immediately thought “what about my phone?…“
I’m not familiar with the Flic twist, but I feel like these little button remotes are more useful with a home room, that you can move around that room as a “portable wall switch“ nothing more.
So then take it one step further and have one puck you can take into any room you like, which are zoned so the functions perform different actions depending on which room you're in
@@OllieHamon You’re not wrong, but respectfully, that is literally what my phone is 🙃
I understand the appeal, but until a device does this easily and reliably, I’ll wait patiently so my ADHD doesn’t lose yet another small device 🤣
@@EvoSteveIX having a phone with an IR blaster was the best thing I ever did. No need to worry about misplacing the TV remote ever again
I been looking for just this, a button with a display so i csn see what im controling BUT why do companies ruin hardware by bad software. More buttons should have an eink display.
Welcome to the new norm: Companies releasing hardware with half-baked software that they'll 'fix' in a future release (maybe).
I Hope the company is watching & improves the software even if they just add Home assistant that would solve most problems.
Lewis, Everything Smart Dial when?
I kinda like that name actually 🤔
They could just allow you to configure mqtt signals to/from it then let the people who fiddle, do their thing 🤔
Great video and very informative (and thanks for your candor. It’s not easy giving poor reviews). You mentioned that their mission is to create a single controller that controls everything (aka a universal smart-home remote) I don’t think that will ever work. We know those offer a poor user experience but at the same time having 1 remote for one device is just as bad. One way I think a universal remote would work REALLY well is if the device is aware of the room or is in and the devices for that room automatically presented itself. Of course this alone wouldn’t make it perfect and achieving that level of awareness would take “Apple level” of research and development but this would be a solid jump in the right direction.
So tired of buying stuff that half works or less! Been playing HA since X10 and LinuxMCE and things have gotten worse in a lot of ways!
If LinuxMCE could have kept up with today's hardware and with a Pi as media director in each room, it could have been amazing! meanwhile, the Original flick button? Useless, so many things are, they are made to sell, not to actually use! And hubs, how many useless hubs have we had? I have a draw full! Finally moved to Home Assistant this year it's complicated and time consuming, but rewarding and genuinely useful! I was one of those people that saved up for a honey pro, and got one not long before they decided to discontinue it in favour of something new. Rambling? Yes I am a bit! But anything that saves me filling a draw with useless HA is fantastic! Thank you
Ooch. Burned. Hope they can recover from that though. They should not sell anything but can they respond with a good product. Fingers crossed.
Considering how often I buy something only because it's hackable it's kind of weird how rare it is for companies to simply release products with the promise of hackability. Like, this product would probably become useful really quickly if it would ship with only some kind of placeholder software, and a leaflet explaining how to install esphome on it! I bet there would be dozens of really useful things to install on this thing within months! One of them might even be a "killer app" that gets these things flying off the shelves.
As one who has been infected with these blood products and now with severe health problems, I do not expect to see compensation and justice before I die based on the numerous engineered delays being instituted by Mr Sunak. 180 children died of AIDS, and thousands died, effectively murdered. Tragically I know infected people who have campaigned for decades dying as a result of infected blood. The infected continue to drop like flies. Mr. Sunak's plan is obviously to delay long enough so that there is noone left to compensate. Well done Rishi Sunak.
Is there any sort of smart switch that just acts as a simple wall switch for Alexa, so a button triggers routines? This seems overly complex.
I have to wire up Tuya-based light switches, then rely on the SmartLife app to connect them to other devices, which isn't a great way of doing things. I'd prefer a simple button to talk to Alexa (the buttons they made are really more intended as game controllers) then Alexa talks to everything else.
I used Lightwave RF for a while but i feel its time has passed.
Any ideas?
I'd like to see a hardware teardown, to assess whether the open source community could write/port over new firmware for this hardware.
Seems like this was put on sale before it reached even alpha quality (not functionally complete, known issues with no work-around). That usually means that the company has found itself in a 'release or die' position, e.g. they're running out of cash, lost key staff members, etc. If so, I fear that it's highly likely that they will go out of business before this matures enough to recommend.
As you've described, the basic premise of the product is more than a little naive, they wildly undershot what would be a 'minimum viable product' for their target market, the user experience has huge holes in it (which they must be aware of, unless they don't use it themselves, and haven't gotten any customer feedback to validate it) and the quality of the software - both on-device and in the cloud - is sub-par. Any one of these things can kill a product, and if it's your only product, the company along with it.
If I were running their company, I'd immediately reposition it as a 'development kit' and make the source code for the device firmware available to hack on. Personally, I wouldn't be purchasing something that was this unfinished at that price-point unless the open source community was given the ability to finish it. I don't hold out much hope of the company being able to turn this into a success by themselves.
I'm going with the accent again because you are not going to get rich with honesty.🖖🖖🖖❤❤❤ Recently I started to listen to old IOT podcasts and there is so much to learn from them. What was thought to be innovative, 6-7 years ago, became creepy and intrusive, even completely useless. There was so little focus on intuitive behaviour and so much focus on tech capabilities. This product belongs in the past. There is already a push back with systems that require the user to have their smart phone present at all times so having another device to carry around is a deflating prospect. Don't even get me started on compatibility and expiring usage agreements. I wonder who made the call on this one. Was it the accounting, sales, product researchers or the design and development? They would have saved money and reputation by just consulting with Lewis Barclay.
Thanks for the brutally honest review, Lewis. Hope this company can pull the product back and really deliver with a strong 2.0 software.
11:34
What about 1 room with multiple lights, having 3 individual buttons is not practical at all in that case.
Anything you recommend for 3 lights with brightness for each?
I question the basic premise. What's the advantage of putting my entire home behind a series of menus and hidden "double click" actions?
That's not making anybody's life easier.
This seems to be a common fault with home "automation" devices. At some point they forget the purpose of automation and you wind up having to actually practice turning your own lights on and off.
A shame, cos I rather like the eInk display idea. I totally get the lag comments, cos even a couple seconds on one of the plugs I have before it turns off (when you've clicked the button on the device itself i.e. no cloud/network comms ought to be necessary) is slightly disconcerting.
Lewis, I think you should look into developing your own smart dial. It's such a nice way of controlling devices that require more incremental control. Like audio volume, thermostat, dimmers, etc. I've been looking for a decent smart dial for ages, but the current market is both scarce and disappointing.
You only think the flic twist is bad because it doesn't work with home assistant. It works with Alexa perfectly fine. So just because you can't use it doesn't mean its bad.
argh. why is every home assistant youtuber emphasizing numbers by holding up the respective number of fingers? also in the teaser pics? pls stop doing this!!! we are no babies...
Would love to see a local homeassistant integration for this. If that integration offered the ability to control the Linxura's current page (with a selector maybe), then you could have the device always be on the right page based on where it is using Bluetooth trackers or something like that. So much wasted potential
Saw the video start with the Flic Twist and got (nerd) PTSD.
That thing still sits unused in a closet as (AFAIK) it still won't connect to Home Assistant
this sounds like a treeabad device no matter how you go about it but can i play a little devil's advocate and say could some of the non functionality be caused by some kind of confusion about gdpr or any of the other really awesome data protection laws you have over there? I am American and wish we could get something like that passed with out some congress critter hacking it to bits or making it a nothing burger. 😀
I long for the day Home Assistant has the critical mass where hardware developers focus on supporting local integration with it first, not as an afterthought, or in this case, not at all. I'd hoped the user base was big enough, and there are some manufacturers who seem to take a bit of an HA-first approach but I guess we're not the yet. I do think the time will come...
I wonder how this would work with google scripts automation engine, TBH i don't know if that's available in the uk.
Seems like a nice idea but they really need to reach out and partner with home assistant to bring the software side up to scratch, without other clunky eco systems getting in the way.
Hmm I think this could be a lot better when at least there would be Home Assistant integration.
But I think that their idea of carrying it with you, is better served by a Galaxy Watch 6 Classic and the Home Assistant app on it.
Thanks Lewis
If you don't have to give it back after the review, would it be worth a tear down to see what the hardware looks like?
With a screen and several control inputs, it could have the makings of a nice piece of hackable tech
imho wifi in general isnt the best platform for these kind of controlling devices. it should be zigbee for control. wifi is too much lag just joining the network. yes it can be done, but here you have the cloud adding lag as well. not good. very sad as this device would be very interesting otherwise.
What buttons do i use for a smart home. I'm thinking right now I want matter/thread switches so I can directly use home assistant to link them to output devices without a system in between. But I also want those switches to be wired, I also want them to be compatible with future switches. I don't want to replace wires if there will be a better switch out there. I also want like half of my switches to have 4 buttons or more. I want a few to have a dimming option. I also don't want them to use wifi so I dont overload my router. Where the hell do I start. What do you recommend?
Nothing you can buy, that's as incomplete as this?
The Aqara FP 2 says hi.
I always look forward to your videos, good product or bad I like your honest opinion. Keep it up Lewis.
All they need to do was give it a local mqtt connection, then they don't even have to provide a direct API. At least that would work for HA.
If it would be flashable with esphome, that would be a good first step though
What a piece of junk! Why, I bet it couldn't even make .5 past light speed!
Thanks. That looked like it had potential but I wouldn't have considered it at that price.
man, your content is good, but your video titles keep getting more click-baity 😔
This review could have been short: „No local control -> don‘t buy.“
A wireless remote that's good?
Do you simply mean an old android phone with HA dashboard on it in a kiosk mode? Done.
I guess Lewis can forget about getting a sponsorship from Linxura!
Thanks for saving me money. So is the flic twist ready now with updated software? Thought i saw someone else say it was
They want to eliminate hubs but you still pretty much need a hub (ie Google or Alexa) to use it??!???
If you’re looking to buy something as unfinished as this is, you should look into star citizen
why they don't at least give us MQTT so we can simply integrate it into anything is beyond me
is this perhaps a product you could make? genuine question
Regardless of if it worked good or not, this would never get past the wife factor for having to learn how to use it.
Ayyy, LTT northern lights gang represent! :D
"With this one neat box of tricks..."
Maybe not.
And that is why we watch your channel, honest reviews!
Thanks for the review. Keep up the good work.
Much appreciated for your thorough review!
Commenting as requested. Gotta feed the algo!
Lewis, thanks for watching out for us.
Well another device off my Xmas list.
I am still holding out hope for the Flic to get better.
So much potential waisted...
can't believe they wouldn't put wireless charging in a product like this.
Considering how unfinished it seems otherwise, perhaps that is a blessing.
I must have been too annoyed to even think about that 😂 it's a good idea!
Where is the everything presence pro?
Thanks for the review!
Thanks for watching 🙏🏻
If only its display was bigger. And maybe it was slimmer. Ooh and a touch screen and color... And there were buttons and charts you could put on it ! if only there was a device like that...
😂
Although I have a largish number of devices (40) using various hubs (no Home Assistant yet) any products that help with integration must be good. But bad products just muddies the water for good products. How do good products rise above the dross?
Thanks for the good work.
Glad I'm not alone! I've also had the Linxura for a few months and totally gave up on it after just two weeks. When I received it, there were less than the six integrations there are now. After setting up two devices through Alexa - creating various routines and actions - I completely stopped using it. The setup alone is a huge barrier for the return and usefulness. Even using Home Assistant and having what I need routed through Alexa or Google Home, this device is such a letdown. Great video!
Thanks for the warning; great and concise review! Would love to know if it uses a ESP32. 🤔
Thanks for your honesty. The recognition that these are real people, trying hard, is appreciated, but if the product isn't ready, it's not ready! A fair review imho
The biggest issue with smart homes is half baked products aiming for a quick buck.
That’s the ‘tech’ world in general.
i do like that remote.. but you are right.. it needs more time to just get it right.. i have a 4 button remote switch that has 12 functions available.. and a 6 button that has 18 functions.. much more usable considering some of those buttons are toggles.. keep up the good work..
I've never been convinced with one of these spiny buttons, for them to work right you would need a very stable lag free connection to the device or you will always be moving it and waiting to see if you have moved enough or having to roll back to correct.
I like the idea of using e-ink as a display though, perhaps something about the size of a Stream Deck with a programmable interface would work well as a remote with a touch screen. In theory you could then create buttons and pages like you would a HA Dashboard.
Things for the warning
Really appreciate the advice on this as I know I would be the type to buy it and when it wasn't working assume it was down to user error and lack of smart home knowledge. Have learned so much from your channel and looking forward to when everything presence sensors back in stock. I was too slow the last time as after I watched the video announcing back in stock (only 50 minutes after publishing) they were already sold out. Speaks volumes to how you have captured a gap in the market!
Your reviews are always thorough and detailed yet presented in such a way to help all levels of HA DIY'ers learn. Keep up the great work!
Sounds like a product that really wasn't tested with real users before shipping to anyone
Who is this for ? all home assistance users hg hate products without local api.. casual users have enough app[s on their smart home.. no one will buy this to add to that list
Thanks for the honesty!! It shows that you put your content quality and truthiness over ad money!
Thanks Louis! I really appreciate your honest review and willingness to offer the manufacturer some advice and solutions such as the API key. I don't often think about some of these products in the sense of a new smart home user experience, but it is important to make sure that they have a positive experience and want to continue down the smart home path that we're all on. Well done sir!
Cheers Lewis, I think they didn’t think about this too much.
There is certainly a place for a product like this. I don't know why it seems to be so hard to do.
Google Home is still DUMB 80% of the time.
"I'm sorry i did not understand this"
--Google Home
Thank you for review. I was looking on that. Now I will hold.
There's only one obvious solution to this, you just have to release your own twist button 🙂
Thanks for the PSA mate! Keep up the awesome work.
Thank you for the warning! Keep up the great work!
first
P r o m o S M 😄