New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button

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Yet another dash-button plugin. It is similar to pimatic-dash-button, but it uses a cross platform abstraction of libpcap and provides some additional features. It also works on Windows Systems which may be useful for some users like me.

The plugin is a pretty light-weight implementation which uses a ContactSensor device abstraction for the dash-button. Auto-discovery of dash-buttons is also supported. The plugin can coexist with pimatic-dash-button. However, it is not advised to install both plugins at the same time as they consume a fair amount of memory (memory usage depends on the system running).

Plugin Installation

This plugin requires libpcap to capture ARP and DHCP requests on the network. On Raspberry PI and comparable systems
libpcap must be installed, i.e. sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev. On Windows, WinPcap must be installed.

Dash-Button Installation

Follow the instructions given in the Amazon Mobile App, to pair the dash-button with your WiFi network. However, don’t
select a product as requested in the last configuration step. Now, when the dash-button is pressed, the indicator
LED of the dash-button should blink white for about three seconds. Following this, the LED will turn to solid red for
a few seconds and might blink red (depending on the type of dash-button you have, apparently there are different
makes). This indicates the device is not setup as there is no product setup, but this does not matter.

As an additional line of defense you may consider restricting internet access for the device as part
of your router configuration.

Contributions

If you like this plugin, please consider ★ starring the project on github. Contributions to the project are welcome. You can simply fork the project and create a pull request with your contribution to start with.

Stickers

Happy with pimatic and using it everyday? If you like to obtain one of these amazing dash-button stickers, please
consider a donation to support the pimatic development and the operation of the website and user forum.
Check here for a video tutorial on howto affix the sticker on the button.

Current Release

• 20161205, V0.9.11
  • Added support for DHCP-based detection of dash buttons, issue #6

Released version 0.9.4 which provides significant performance improvements. This version uses a PCAP capture filter for ARP requests where source MAC address matches one of the given vendor ids. This results in lesser context switches and reduces memory consumption.

If you like this plugin, please consider ★ starring the project on github.

Released version 0.9.5 which provides a more comprehensive documentation. I have also performed intensive testing. The plugin runs flawlessly as far as I can tell.

Good job! I built something similar with ESP-01 (the bottom chart even if PIR is so interesting) and modified your module for its MAC address. Works also auto discovery If the button is turned off, the consumption is 12 µA (without red LED).
But the reaction time is quite long. About 2 seconds.But definitely faster than the ping plugin.

What times achieves Amazon dash button with this plugin?

Not thinking about the universal module for detecting MAC addresses? I think that would be used.

@wutu said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

What times achieves Amazon dash button with this plugin?

It varies between 1 and 3 seconds. I think the delay is mainly arising from the time required for the dash-button to reconnect to the WFi network.

Has anyone tried to make multiple functions with one button?

1 press - dim light
2 press - turn off lights

@n3ro I don’t think thjis will work because it will always execute the one-press rule, too. And i don’t think you can say

when DashButton is closed two times then do something

@michbeck100 @n3ro It is also inpractical as two immediate button presses won’t be recognized. For the second butto press you have to wait until the status LED stops flashing red. In other words, you’ll have to wait for about 7-8 seconds until you can press the button again to trigger an “contact closed” event…

@mwittig hmmm

@n3ro you’ll probably have to order one button per action…

For clarification, the waiting time of 7-8 seconds is due to the design of the dash-button.

If you roll your own button using an ESP8266, for example, you may be able to build a decent smart button with lower waiting time (~ 3 secs) and the ability to count button presses. The following project looks interesting to me and seems to have the “count button presses” feature. https://www.hackster.io/iboboc/smartbutton-pro-06ce5d

Another interesting route to follow is the ongoing firmware hacking for dash-buttons. However, I think it is tricky to solder the wires needed for programming. http://hackaday.com/2015/08/12/amazon-dash-hack-it-to-run-your-own-code/

It’s working like a charm, thanks!

Hmm… I can’t get it to work - I stopped the setup before selecting a product but the dash button doesn’t flash white, only red and I can’t auto-discover it. Maybe Amazon changed the process in the app to make it mandatory to select a product before they update the button with the WiFi settings? That’s what I would do if I would want to prevent those kinds of hacks…

@GuybrushMR80 said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

Hmm… I can’t get it to work - I stopped the setup before selecting a product but the dash button doesn’t flash white, only red and I can’t auto-discover it. Maybe Amazon changed the process in the app to make it mandatory to select a product before they update the button with the WiFi settings? That’s what I would do if I would want to prevent those kinds of hacks…

I think something goes wrong with the prozedure. Have you look for an Update of the Amazon App? I have to update my Underground App (Download it from https://amazon.de/app )before I can get the Dash-Button to work. That is 2 days ago.

I think to Change the Prozess the have to Change the Firmware of the button.

I just realized that this might be more a problem with pimatic: I can’t seem to find the class “AmazingDashButton” when trying to add a new device manually via the webinterface.
EDIT: There was a Homduino update available - now that I did update, it works!

@GuybrushMR80 said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

There was a Homduino update available

You probably forgot to restart pimatic after the previous Plugin installation.

Maybe Amazon changed the process in the app to make it mandatory to select a product before they update the button with the WiFi settings? That’s what I would do if I would want to prevent those kinds of hacks…

I don’t think so. I think it is a bug not a feature. It is true here have been serveral App updates, recently. For this reason I also tried again to register my dash button again using the iPhone App which was an almost complete fail. To make it clear the failure occurs before one can select a product.

Basically, I got the same errors trying all three configuration modes provided on iPhone and none of them succeeded. However, eventhough the setup failed my dash still connects to the WiFi network. Maybe this is because it falls back to the previous configuration, I don’t know. When I press the putton it starts slowly blinking white which means it is connected. It will turn to blinking red after a few seconds. I’ll try to get hold of an Android device and try later with the Underground App.

I have two dash-buttons. The first has the autodiscover function good recognized but by the second it has get a wrong mac-address.
I have changed it manually and the second button works also.

@V1per said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

the second it has get a wrong mac-address

Can you please let me know the first three bytes (6 digits) of the MAC address?

Published V0.9.6
* Added missing MAC vendor id

If you like this plugin, please consider ★ starring the project on github.

@mwittig said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

@V1per said in New plugin pimatic-amazing-dash-button:

the second it has get a wrong mac-address

Can you please let me know the first three bytes (6 digits) of the MAC address?

It is

AC:63:BE: