9. Flic button
A Flic is a small Bluetooth button. Stuck to the wheel, the dash or the roll cage, it lets you start, mark and restart without reaching for the phone, which is the difference between a clean crossing and a fumbled one.
9.1 What each press does
| Press | Action |
|---|---|
| Click & Hold | Start or stop the counters |
| Click | Mark the crossing, the same as next. On a one-part roadbook, zero the trip (6.15) |
| Double-Click | Quick restart where it is available, or reset the independent average when you have that switched on in a roadbook |
A Flic stop always saves the run. It cannot do anything else: with auto-save off the on-screen Stop? dialog asks you, offering Stop & Save Track as a second button (4), and a Flic press has no dialog to ask in. Keeping the run is the only safe reading of a question nobody can answer, so that is what it does.
While a Flic is connected, the dashboard shows small Flic badges beside the buttons your Flic can operate, so you can see which on-screen button your thumb is mapped to: one dot for a click, a dash for a hold, two dots for a double-click. With no Flic connected there are no badges.
A hold does not cost you time. The press is timed the moment the button goes down, so the second or so you hold it is not added to your time or distance.
⚠️ At the finish of a roadbook, the click is refused and the finish fires on a HOLD. The badge changes to say so. Ending a run must never be one accidental press away. See 6.8. The exception is a roadbook with no control before the finish: there the click has no crossing to mark, so it zeros your trip instead and you finish with stop.
9.2 Which generation you have, and why it matters
This is the single most likely thing to go wrong, so be deliberate about it. When you tap Connect, the app asks which hardware you have:
- Flic 2 or Duo is what flic.io sells today, and what the app's own buy link points at. If you have just bought a button, this is almost certainly yours. Pairing happens inside 3pRally: a panel appears and you press and hold the button until it is found. You do not need to remove it from the Flic app first, since a Flic 2 can be paired with both at once.
- Flic 1 (legacy) is the original 2014 button, discontinued in 2019. Choosing it hands the button off to the Flic app, which is the only correct way to pair that generation, and the only reason the option still exists.
⚠️ Picking Flic 1 while holding a Flic 2 produces "button not compatible", and that message comes from the Flic app, not from us. The button then cannot be selected at all. It looks like a fault in 3pRally and is not. If you land there, come back and choose Flic 2 / Duo.
9.3 Setting one up
Settings ▸ GPS & devices ▸ Flic button. The row shows the status: no button connected, the button's name, or that several are connected.
If Bluetooth is off or not permitted, a banner appears above everything else, because nothing below it can succeed until that is fixed.
The sheet walks four steps:
- Buy a Flic button, linking to flic.io.
- Download the Flic app. This step ticks itself once the app is installed.
- Configure your button in the Flic app. Your button must be known to that app before 3pRally can use it.
- Connect it to 3pRally, which asks the generation question above.
Then, for a Flic 2:
- Click and hold the button. Tap to cancel.
- A Flic was discovered. You can now release the button.
- Connected to [name]
Once connected the screen switches to the connected state: a status banner, the gesture legend, and a Disconnect action.
9.4 When pairing fails
The app names the fix rather than showing a bare error where it can. The most common cause by far is simply that the button was never put into pairing mode: the instruction says click and hold, and it is easy to read that as a tap. Hold it for about seven seconds, until it appears on screen.
Backing out is not a failure. Tapping the panel to stop the scan, or cancelling the iOS Bluetooth dialog, is treated as a cancel rather than an error.
Other things worth checking:
- Firmware. Keep it up to date in the Flic app.
- Several buttons. If more than one is connected the app says so, and they all drive the same three presses. Disconnect removes one button at a time; tap it again for each.
- Bluetooth must be on and permitted for 3pRally.
9.5 Where to put it
- Wheel spoke, for a driver running alone: hold to start at the control, click at each crossing.
- Navigator's armrest, the usual rally arrangement: the navigator marks each control while reading the roadbook.
⚠️ Pair and test it before the event. The first connection needs the Flic app, an App Store download and a Bluetooth handshake, none of which you want at a start line.