Flic
Flic is a lightweight but thread-safe Ruby implementation of the Fliclib. It interfaces with flicd, and allows Flic buttons to be used as an input for Ruby applications.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'flic'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install flic
Simple Usage
The easiest way to get up an running is to use Flic::SimpleClient. It is a thin wrapper around Flic::Client that provides a simplified, synchronous API for the most intuative uses of a Flic button.
Establishing a connection to flicd
By default, flicd binds to localhost on port 5551. These are also the defaults for Filc::SimpleClient. This means that if you are running flicd on your local machine, establishing a connection is as easy as creating a new instance of Flic::SimpleClient. For other configurations, you can initialize Flic::SimpleCient with host and port. For example, Flic::SimpleClient.new('192.168.1.200', 5553) will open a connection to flicd on 192.168.1.200 listening on port 5553.
Getting a list of buttons
To get a list of verified buttons (buttons associated and ready to be used with a given flicd), call Flic::SimpleClient#buttons. This will return a list of button's bluetooth addresses.
Connecting a new button
A button must be in public mode before it can be added. To put a button in public mode, press and hold it for at least 7 seconds. Flic::SimpleClient#connect_button will return the bluetooh address of the button that was added or nil if no button was added.
Disconnecting a button
Similarly, a button may be disconnected by passing Flic::SimpleClient#disconnect_button a button's bluetooth address.
Listening for button events
Flic::SimpleClient#listen accepts a latency mode (:low, :normal, or :high) as it's first argument and button bluetooth addresses as its other arguments. For each event that occurs to those buttons, it yields the bluetooth address of the button responsible for a given event, the type of click involved in the event (:button_down, :button_up, :button_single_click, :button_double_click, or :button_hold), the time in seconds since the event occured, and whether the event was queued. It will block until the connection is closed or the block raises some other exception.
Closing the connection to flicd
To gracefully cleanup all connection channels and close the socket connection, call Flic::SimpleClient#shutdown. Once a Flic::SimpleClient has been shutdown it will close the underlying socket and cannot be used anymore.
Example
This is the script that I wrote to allow some of my Flic buttons to control Wink-enabled smart devices in home.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'bundler/setup'
require 'flic'
require 'httparty'
# Obtained from https://winkbearertoken.appspot.com/
WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN = 'YOUR ACCESS TOKEN HERE'
# These bluetooth addresses were obtained from SimpleClient#connect_button
LIVING_ROOM_BUTTON = 'XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'
BEDROOM_BUTTON = 'XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'
NIGHTSTAND_BUTTON = 'XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'
begin
puts "[*] Opening a connection to flicd..."
client = Flic::SimpleClient.new
puts "[*] Entering main loop"
client.listen(:low, LIVING_ROOM_BUTTON, BEDROOM_BUTTON, NIGHTSTAND_BUTTON) do |, event, latency|
if latency > 10
puts "[*] [#{}] Ignoring #{event} because the latency is #{latency} seconds"
else
puts "[*] [#{}] Handling #{event}"
case
when LIVING_ROOM_BUTTON
case event
when :button_single_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_double_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_hold
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
end
when BEDROOM_BUTTON
case event
when :button_single_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_double_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_hold
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
end
when NIGHTSTAND_BUTTON
case event
when :button_single_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_double_click
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
when :button_hold
puts HTTParty.post('https://api.wink.com/scenes/SCENE_ID/activate', headers: { Authorization: "Bearer #{WINK_ACCESS_TOKEN}" }).inspect
end
end
end
end
rescue StandardError => error
puts "[!] Whoops! #{error.inspect} occured. Wait for a second and restart everything."
sleep 1
retry
rescue Interrupt
puts "[*] Shutting down gracefully because of an interrupt"
client.shutdown
end
puts "[*] Goodbye cruel world!"
Advanced Usage
The interface of Flic::Client closely mirrors the official Java implimentation. Unlike Flic::SimpleClient, none of it's methods are blocking except Flic::Client#handle_next_event which blocks until the next event is recevied and dispatches it to the approprate handlers and Flic::Client#enter_main_loop which blocks until the client is shutdown and dispatches events as they are received. Ideally, Flic::Client#enter_main_loop should be run in a dedicated networking / event dispatch thread.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/anarchocurious/flic.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.