There have been many threads around the forums, but I haven’t seen my own setup mentioned. Here’s the physical buttons that are working really well for me.
I build a few physical triggers based on AWS IoT buttons. They are relatively cheap ($15-$20), though do require an active AWS account.
- I started with an Amazon IoT button. I had first generation buttons already sitting in a drawer of projects I hadn’t started. I expect the second generation buttons to work as well, but I haven’t deployed them quite yet.
- You’ll need an AWS account, and usually you can set one up with your Amazon credentials. As far as I know, this whole setup is costing under $0.50 a month. You likely will also qualify for the Free Tier.
- The IoT button app allows you to create a IFTTT Lambda function to use. It creates all the code for you except it needs an IFTTT webhook URL. This can be found/setup at https://ifttt.com/services/maker_webhooks/settings
- Then it’s just IFTTT from there, typically send a datapoint to Beeminder. The button will send the serial and whether you did a single, double, or long click. So theoretically the button can be used to trigger three different things.
- Future buttons can just use the same setup triggering different IFTTT webhook rules.
Anyway, perhaps some other options mentioned in the Forums (Flic) may have been easier - but for those who already use AWS (or want to learn), this is a nice/quick/cheap way to go.
As for the Dash buttons, they are certainly cheaper, but they do require watching for network packets. It’s a little hacky for my taste. The IoT button is more expensive, but it is also fit for purpose.
Disclosure: I do work for AWS, though my work isn’t related to any of this. And of course, any comments here are my own.