Flic Buttons Work With Amazon Alexa, Get Things Done Without Yelling

Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Voice Assistant are extremely helpful tools when it comes to looking for something online, ordering items or controlling smart devices. Instead of having to fiddle with your smartphone, tasks can be accomplished by calling out certain commands with just your voice.

But, as good as these smart assistants have become, their ability to understand various accents, nuances and complex sentences isn’t quite up to par. I often find myself repeating commands to Google’s Assistant, because it simply can’t understand what I want. This can be infuriating at times, which defeats the purpose of having a smart assistant in the first place.

That is why there’s Flic Buttons. These are wireless controllers that are now compatible with Amazon’s Alexa. It can be used to trigger preset routines. There are three functions: press once, double press as well as press and hold. Completing one of these methods, tells a configured Amazon Alexa to complete a predefined command.

There’s no need to repeat a voice command or yell frantically at the assistant because it keeps looking up your command online instead of turning off the lights. Flic also works with Apple Homekit, Ikea Tradfri, Philips HUE, SONOS, IFTTT, Zapier, Slack as well as a dozen of other products and services.

However, Alexa has over 70,000 skills and 28,000 enabled home devices, which makes it far more capable than most smart systems and assistants. Having several Flic buttons around the home can lessen the need to keep barking commands at the nearest smart device. Both the original Flic and new Flic 2 are fully compatible with Amazon Alexa, you just need to update the app.

They can be used with or without the Flic Hub. But it’s recommended that you do use the Hub to allow the Flic button to play nice with your smart home appliances. Flic buttons use Low Energy Bluetooth with long range capabilities. It can be used to communicate with a whole host of devices including phones and computers.