Some basic smartphone-free controls for the Eight Sleep using Flic buttons and Alexa

December 30, 2024

Problem

I love my Eight Sleep Pod 3 cover, but I really hate that the only way to control it is through the smartphone app. Why do I need to use a sleep-disrupting device to control the device that’s supposed to help me sleep?

I’m not the only one who has expressed this frustration:

Solution

I think I finally found a complicated but functional way to get some basic control of the Eight Sleep without a smartphone.

In short, I’m using a set of Amazon Alexa routines, triggered by manual inputs to a pair of Flic 2 buttons, to send text commands to Alexa, which controls the Eight Sleep pod via the Eight Sleep Alexa skill.

I’ll expand a bit below.

Alexa to Eight Sleep Integration

I installed the Eight Sleep Alexa skill. The skill supports some basic voice controls:

“Alexa, ask Eight to set the right side of my bed to one” (or negative one, zero, etc.)
“Alexa, ask Eight to turn off the right side of my bed”

Unfortunately, the voice control is very fragile. For example, you can’t tell it “increase the temperature by one”. I tried a dozen different ways, and it just doesn’t know what to do. And if you mess up the commands even just slightly, Alexa doesn’t know what to do. This fragility is reflected in the terrible Alexa skill reviews.

But, if you know the right incantation, it executes the limited functionality reliably.

Telling Alexa to set the temperature to two:

Telling Alexa to increase the temperature by one, which it clearly does not understand:

Flic Button to Alexa Integration

I don’t want to talk to Alexa at night. Even if I did, I probably couldn’t remember the exact command. I also don’t want an Alexa in my bedroom. So I need some way to control this manually.

So I bought some Flic 2 buttons. I actually bought them for another project, but ended up only needing one for that project. Each button has three possible inputs: a “push”, a “double push”, and a “hold” (basically push and hold for like three seconds).

I installed the Alexa Flic Skill, which adds each input for each button as a distinct smart home device:

Flic to Alexa to Eight Sleep Routine

With the two Flic buttons and the Eight Sleep skill working, I can setup some routines.

The general form of the routine is: when one of the buttons is pushed/double-pushed/held, send a specific text command to Alexa. The text command tells Alexa to tell Eight sleep to do something.

This is the action that needs to be selected to tell Alexa to do something via text:

I’ve mounted the two buttons on my bed-side stand using some double-sided tape, and I’ve configured the following routines:

When button 1 is held, turn off the Eight Sleep.
When button 1 is double-pushed, set the temperature to negative one.
When button 1 is pushed, set the temperature to zero.
When button 2 is pushed, set the temperature to one.
When button 2 is double-pushed, set the temperature to two.
When button 2 is held, set the temperature to three.

Notice that I’ve set “Hear Alexa From” to be an Echo Dot device. The other option is “This mobile device”, but when I use that, the integration doesn’t seem to work reliably. Luckily I had a spare Alexa lying around. This is the only thing I use it for. It sits in a cabinet with the microphone muted, quietly whispering what it told the Eight Sleep to do when I press a button.

Reflecting

This solution lets me set the Eight Sleep temperature and turn the pod off via manual controls. I still use my phone to set and disable the vibrating alarm. That’s actually a good limitation, as it forces me to get up and walk to my phone in another room instead of opening my phone and pointlessly scrolling in bed.

Still, the fact that Eight Sleep provides zero smartphone-free controls is very disappointing. If we can agree that Eight Sleep’s mission is to promote good sleep, and we can agree that staring at a screen in the bedroom is not good for sleep, it seems clearly on-mission to provide a way to control the $3000 sleep device without a smartphone. If someone has already paid $3000+ for the pod and cover, Eight Sleep could probably ship a glorified TV remote for $250 and people would happily buy it.

Appendix

Cheaper buttons

If you don’t already have some Flic buttons, and you also find ~$100 for three buttons and a hub surprisingly pricey, I think this could all work with some cheaper Sonoff buttons from Aliexpress. These are more like $8/button instead of $30/button. I’ve purchased a handful of these but they haven’t arrived yet.