You can reprogram the STM32 microcontroller in them[0]. It's a fairly decent Cortex-M3 processor and it additionally has WiFi and a few other features. Some people went an easier route and just watched for the ARP request the dash button would send[1]. $5 isn't bad but when you could buy them from Amazon, you'd get a $5 credit when you used it the first time, essentially making it "free" if you needed the purchased item anyway.

[0]: https://learn.adafruit.com/dash-hacking-bare-metal-stm32-pro... [1]: https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash-button

I think so.

Ex: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/with-push-of-butto...

> Airnoise is the brainchild of California resident Chris McCann, who repurposed the same plastic Dash Button that Amazon customers use to order toilet paper and detergent.

You can listen to the DHCP traffic caused by the button press (the button is sleeping until pressed, so every press causes DHCP traffic) and use that to trigger any action you'd like. I wrote a simple utility[0] to do just that.

The longer term issue, since these are being discontinued, is getting your wifi credentials into the dash button. At the moment I use the amazon app to do that, but I'd guess they'll be removing that functionality. I recall reading someone reverse engineering that process, but I'm not sure what came of it.

[0]: https://github.com/joshmcguigan/dashr

I've tried, it's been difficult so far. So i bought the aws button that can do anything using their serverless stuff.