Getting physical aka physical buttons

Got the sad news just now that Droplet buttons are not going to ship. :frowning:

Dear Droplet KS backer- Itā€™s been close to one year since we launched Droplet on Kickstarter. Unfortunately, [ā€¦]
full refund for the amount you contributed to our campaign. [ā€¦]
working tirelessly for the last 2 years to bring Droplet to the world [ā€¦]
havenā€™t been successful in getting large scale enterprise customers to adopt our technology (pharmacy chains, drug companies, insurance companies, etc). Being able to manufacturer hardware devices at a low cost is all about getting to sufficient volumes and scale for mass production, which we have unfortunately not achieved. [ā€¦]

Hardware startups sound really hard!

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It seems like Amazonā€™s Dash buttons are hackable if you skip a configuration step and donā€™t register them to a specific product.

Seems like itā€™d be really easy to use any of the Beeminder API wrappers in conjunction with a script on a home server or your desktop to log data for anything from flossing your teeth to punishing yourself for eating an oreo from the pantry to logging a workout in a home gym or cooking dinner.

$5 for a wi-fi enabled button that you can program to do just about anything apian you can think of.

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Amazon Dash hacked to poke a computer which is configured to poke IFTTT:

Then IFTTT to beeminder!

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Today i was thinking of an ā€œconnected glassā€. Stick a internet-connected button on a glass, track down glass of water per day on Beeminder :smiley:

Amazon announced the AWS IoT button
https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/

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Wow, this is exciting! $20 apiece now with bulk pricing available. Eventually I bet we could send these directly to users with your goalname printed on the physical button. Thatā€™d be quite the premium perk.

Itā€™ll sure be nice when we humans get our act together and have completely ubiquitous open wifi. Looks like the setup here is that the button broadcasts its own wifi which you connect to and enter the password for your home wifi. Not too bad.

Predictable negativity on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687463
It does sound frustrating that they soldered in the battery and it only lasts for 1000 clicks. Thatā€™s years though, for many applications.

Hey, could we buy one (some?) of these for someone in exchange for taking pictures and doing a detailed guest post about it? Maybe it can be an auction: how many buttons would we need to buy you to make that sound like a good deal? Lowest number wins!

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Only available to customers in the USA. regionalismandnationalismsigh

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Frustrating! Well my offer stands for internationally shipping them if thatā€™s not (idiotically) illegal!

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The DIY electronics group of channels at IFTTT has quite a few I hadnā€™t heard about. Pricing on comparable stuff seems to not be lower(caveat emptor, I didnā€™t check all), but the very aptly named, wait for it ā€¦ Pebblebee!!! is $20 a piece if you buy 6. It seems to have ā€œclickā€ and ā€œholdā€ as variations, and also a few sensors. Battery seems good too. Requires BTLE somewhere.

FEATURES:
Motion sensor
Temperature gauge
Range finder
Replaceable battery
Water resistant
Crowd GPS
BATTERY:
Replaceable
Up to 4 months in tracking mode
1 year in button mode

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I would definitely do a guest post on the button with pictures and such. Iā€™d love to get 2 or 3, but Iā€™d do it for one, just because Iā€™d like to play with it anyhow. I probably couldnā€™t get the post to you any earlier than mid June though.

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I just ordered my Amazon IoT button. Exciting about messing with it. I will try to get myself to some of a trip report once I have some time to work with it.

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Hey, How about the Pebble Core for Hackers?

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Another kickstarted bluetooth button:

Puck.js - the ground-breaking bluetooth beacon.

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So during Prime Day a bit ago, Dash Buttons were on sale for $0.99 apiece, still with the $5 credit on first press. So of course I picked up 10 to play with.

Iā€™m an electrical engineer, so Iā€™ll probably tear one apart and see if I can reprogram it at some point, but in the meantime, I got a network-sniffing version working thatā€™s been helping my beeminding quite nicely as of late.

I finally got the code together and with a nice readme so I could post it here - check it out over on my GitHub. The only catch is you have to have a computer on the same network as the button running the program to pick up the press - I have an old Raspberry Pi (the original!) doing the job, but literally any computer will do.

Check it out, and give it a whirl if you have a dash button lying around - let me know if you have any questions. Iā€™m glad to clarify or give better examples if need be :slight_smile:

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Another possibility that Iā€™ll link here so we have all these in one thread:

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For those who have too much cash, hereā€™s a wood & mother-of-pearl button boxā€¦

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Just learned about this:

http://qblinks.com/

Cheaper via this promotion from IFTTT:

https://ifttt.com/m/gifttt-guide-2016-week-2/qmote-s?utm_source=wk2_roundup

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Now available in the UK to Prime members (or triallers), for Ā£5.

Comes with a Ā£5 credit on your first purchase, though the linked hack suggests never making a purchaseā€¦

The hack relies upon the buttonā€™s MAC address, so donā€™t worry about the visibly available variety of buttons. Even for their intended purpose, you could link multiple ā€˜identicalā€™ buttons to different products.

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So right now, the options are

  • hacking at the Dash for $5 (for US&UK Amazon Prime subscribers)
  • pebblebee.com is 30$ (bundles of several are out of stock)
  • qblinks.com is 35$
  • DIY costs dimes and time
  • flic.io at 35$ (23 per for 8)
  • 1btn is 45$ and open-source.

And all of them hopefully should talk to a bluetooth/wifi device and make their way via IFTTT to Beeminder.
Does that sound right ? Is anyone around actively using any of these options besides drtall, cincodemaya, patimen and adamwolf ?

I have personally got the same 1$ ā€œbluetooth buttonā€ as @insti. It is really a bluetooth ā€œkeyboardā€ with 2 keys, a big VolumeUp key labelled iOS and a small Enter key labelled android (which are used on respective platforms to take pictures in camera mode, which is the device stated purpose). So it takes a little bit of tinkering to distinguish its Enter key from your normal keyboardā€™s Enter key if you want to use both buttons. I got the VolumeUp one to record timestamps to a log file, and it works well (across walls and 10m).

The bluetooth connection isnā€™t entirely reliable over moving the laptop out of range and back, or the shutter button waking up from sleep, so itā€™s not quite ā€œpress it without checkingā€-reliable just yet. I just now set it up to push through IFTTT to Beeminder, thereā€™s only a ~7s latency, including manually refreshing the goal webpage. It also gets consecutive keypresses right (e.g. pressing it thrice pushes 3 datapoints), from some gentle testing.

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