Tutorial WALKTHROUGH
(^140) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
AN AMAZON
DASH BUTTON
Rescue Amazon’s £5 smart button from the monotony
of ordering loo roll, and use it to do anything you like.
he Internet of Things has two flaws: the name,
and the need to get your phone out of your
pocket, unlock it, swipe to the appropriate app,
and wait for the app to load before you can do perform
a basic task, such as turning on a light. Buttons are
handy for a reason: they’re exactly where they need to
be, and you can just press them. So if we’re going to
have smart things, we need smart buttons.
Typically these cost £40, but Amazon’s Dash Button
costs a fiver. With a little tinkering and subversion, it
can power anything from smart bulbs to alerts on your
family’s smartphones to logging your billable hours.
Head over to Amazon to buy some Dash Buttons
(you’ll need to be a Prime subscriber) and you’ll be
baffled by the options: you can emergency-order raw
virgin coconut oil (only £16.62 for 1.2kg), 20-sheet
binding machines, or Nerf Darts with a Dash Button.
Dash Buttons T
magpi.cc/
2mUKaqT
A smart thing
Some patience
You’ll
Need
CLIVE WEBSTER
A professional tinkerer since 2004,
Clive just keeps seeing more uses
for Raspberry Pi boards around the
house. How many is too many?
@clivewriting
£5 for a WiFi
smart button?
Yeah, we'll
have seven
HACK
The catch with these Dash Buttons is that you can
only order certain products from certain firms. This
matters, as Amazon will discount the price of a Dash
Button from the first purchase made with it. Make
sure you buy a button that lets you order something
you’d buy anyway; that way, your Button is free.
Once the Dash Button arrives, use the Amazon
app (Android and iOS only) to set it up and order
that first item. There are decent instructions at
amzn.to/2mNhAqt. Once you’ve ordered your
product, go back into the Dash Devices and disable
it. Then – bear with us – enable the Button again, but
this time don’t select a product. Instead, just quit the
app (don’t quit the process, close the whole app). This
will have copied your WiFi credentials to the button
without re-establishing the link to Amazon. It is now
an unshackled smart button ready to be repurposed.
Buy different
buttons so you
can identify
which is
which later
You'll need a
low-power,
always-on
computer
with wireless
- that's the
definition of
a Pi Zero W