So I bought the original flic with a hub on indiegogo probably about a year ago. The idea was cool, but it was a bit limited and all of the setup had to be done on a smart phone (setting up REST was possible, but a huge pain)
Now they came out with a V2 which looks pretty cool. (it has a 2 color LED for feedback!) Loads more features and ways to get at it. But at $25+ a button, may be hard to scale up to something really useful?? What do you guys think? What would be a good use of something as simple as a button, where you get āclickā ādouble clickā and ālong pressā. Other than KanBan bins, I havenāt been able to think of anything truly useful.
Do you have any better ideas other than light, doorbells, or Kanban bins? Specifically business related? I think setting this up would be awesome, but I need enough value to get buy in.
Iām sorry but Iām too lazy to look for and lift my finger to press a buttonā¦just tell me it can be implanted in my brain and that my thoughts can trigger it to do anything that I want just by thinking about the things I want done in a certain order and then by saying a key phrase like āThundercats Ho!ā
LMBO!
This is one thing I can think of that it might be useful for on the floor:
Or maybe for this which has been in the news a lot lately:
But seriously, you could maybe indicate the start and end of an operation on a job? Maybe have a queue of jobs that you are working on and as long as you follow the order of those jobs in the queue you could click once to start the activity on a job and click twice to stop it and remove it from the queue and track the time it took to complete.
Maybe eventually you could use Eva for something like this too. Eva clock into Job#, Operation, etcā¦ Eva, clock out of Job#. Iām sure Iām WAAAY over-generalizing this but just thinking out loud.
Thatās always the hard part about any super automated stuff like a button or a voice control. So much has to be assumed that you have to follow the plan exactly or it breaks. PITA.
And that why it is soooo hard to automate processes that will involve the users, or customers, because they are never 100% the same every time.
@ERPSysAdmin has some good ideas for sure - I like the āauto-clockingā function at each machine center, but it could also extend to sending notifications to Inventory to move raw materials or WIP to the work center - sort of like a notification that says āIām almost done, make sure the stuff I need is here in the next 15 minutes.ā Or something similar to what @jgiese.wci is doing with PLC interfaces - the button could be a multifunction ācall for helpā - it could call a supervisor, a āsetupā person, or a maintenance person, or a product engineer, or anything along those lines.
In my many years Iāve found that true one-button automation really only works in the data center or for very simple tasks. Pretty much it comes down to this - if you wrote a script for it, you automated it and the button would work for that - or on a a sequence of those scripts. Iām thinking that month end reporting, or mass data imports, or end-of-day processing for AR/Shipping, or resynching data āon demandā may all be candidates, but I havenāt thought of anything that we all havenāt already done via scripting and Task Schedulingā¦
Iām curious to see what the possibilities are, I hope this brainstorming thread keeps going.
How about using it like an Amazon Dash?
Button Push next to the Printer (creates a PO for more Paper when you are out)ā¦
Or next to the coffee maker when you are running out of coffee.
Obviously you build in some logic to see if thereās an already open PO then nothing happens. But i could see the usefulness specially if you work in an environment that depletes generic inventory items quickly.
I guess thatās really Kan Banā¦ sortaā¦ but for purchasing
You could also put one on every-ones desk for clock in / clock out for the day assuming you use a time clock.
And if you did have one next to every printer/copier (or any other machine) and there was a problem with the machine someone could press the button for assistance and it would immediately alert the responsible party to an issue with the machine and it would make it easy to locate the machine on the plant floor.
As long as someone doesnāt turn the Philips Hue bulbs red above ITās office until the issue is solved automatically now if we could do a REST call to create a bat signalā¦
I guess it doesnāt matter if thatās followed by a Restart of the Serverā¦ LOL 
Iām sure Iām WAAAY over-generalizing this but just thinking out loud.
and since they have HandHelds send them an Alert.
