Show HN: Send a slack msg with AWS IoT button | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Send a slack msg with AWS IoT button

github.com

30 pointskatsuyan13 comments

I'm using an IoT button as an Amazon Now Dash Button. With the Dash button, I've realized there's more times I need my Tide detergent or a pack of condoms sooner than later and luckily I'm a programmer so the IoT button made this possible it's been quite handy.

Is the code for that open sourced? Perhaps my biggest frustration with Dash buttons was that they were only for specific products from specific brands and it would be great to hook an IoT button to ANY product of my choosing.

That's what Amazon's IoT button is. A more expensive Dash button that you can control.

https://aws.amazon.com/iotbutton/

"Control", though, doesn't mean source code for the device, but rather, programmatic control over the endpoint (Lambda, etc). "You can code the button's logic in the cloud "

The first gen STM32 based Dash buttons were hackable[1], but Amazon changed to a different platform (ATMEL[2]) and locked them down.

[1]https://learn.adafruit.com/dash-hacking-bare-metal-stm32-pro...

[2]https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown...

Supposedly, though, you can associate your existing, regular Dash button to a different product: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/help/id=201730790

You could use https://metacpan.org/pod/Amazon::Dash::Button, and write your own handler in Perl using an ordinary Dash button.

But why would you ever use such an awkward language to do this task?

Perl is actually not a bad choice for matching a Mac address, and invoking some external event. Why would it be awkward?

Well it's more about the language being needlessly complicated and having 10x different ways to do the same thing, not to mention the language (Perl 5 that is - 6 is a different story) lacks essential concepts like object orientation and exceptions (you have to get "shims" like Moose or Try::Tiny from CPAN to fill those gaps). Why would you choose something like this instead of Python or Ruby?

>lacks essential concepts like object orientation and exceptions

Perl does OO without Moose. There is a tiny bit of boilerplate, but it's essentially bless() and 1 or 2 lines in the constructor.

Try/catch blocks are indeed an add on. The traditional pattern is more golang like, returning an error code, then using Carp or similar for stack traces.

>Why would you choose something like this instead of Python or Ruby?

That might be an interesting discussion for a large codebase, but for something limited in scope like this, I just don't see the problem.

Does anyone know of a similar product with replaceable battery that's not bound to a 3rd party?

I can come up with something myself using an Arduino and an arcade-button but I know me. I will never get around to doing it and it will never look as slick.

$12.37 shipped to the US for an ESP8266 with AA battery holder and button style case. Not much feedback though, and the words in the url don't match the product...so it's a bit of a dice roll.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/30-energy-saving-CC2541-ibea...

The quality and consistency of firmware/functionality/hidden stuff on the various 8266's I have leads me to avoid them. I had a pair that phoned home to some Chinese domain and registered all via HTTP, and a quick Wireshark yielded it phoned home for commands. Not on my network... You can pick them up cheaper on ebay, as well.

Hmm. Something that survives a firmware overwrite?

It depends :-) Some seem to have a fall-back or fail-safe that isn't overwritten. Even with flashing known firmware, the reliability of the little guys was questionable. Random lockups and very touchy to power source.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com