Amazon Dash Button - Workaround or Alternative Devices?

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Hi community,

I was very disappointed last year, when I heard that consumer lawyers won against Amazon, making the use of their Dash Button illegal (at least in Germany). Damn, no more 5€-Wifi-Buttons. But I was happy I still got a stock of six Dash-Buttons.
Now I wanted to set up a Dash Button from my stock to work with @mwittig s really amazing “amazing-dash-plugin”, but the shock:
The Amazon app has removed the option to initialize new dash buttons and connect them to your wifi. They even removed the option to manage the registered dash buttons (lets hope no one looses its config and needs to be reset).

Has anyone found a workaround to setup dash buttons without the Amazon App?

Does anyone have a recomodation for an alternative device? Small and Wifi (RF is no option)?

@wolfpack said in Amazon Dash Button - Workaround or Alternative Devices?:

Has anyone found a workaround to setup dash buttons without the Amazon App?

I don’t think there is a work-around for all cases in place. For older firmware model there seems to be a working solution though. See https://blog.christophermullins.com/2019/12/20/rescue-your-amazon-dash-buttons/

For general discussion see https://hackaday.com/2019/08/05/orphaned-amazon-dash-buttons-ripe-for-hacking/

Does anyone have a recommendation for an alternative device? Small and Wifi (RF is no option)?

There are some alternatives, ranging from “roll-your-own” projects to “off-the-shelf” products. For the latter it depends on which RF-technologies your’re using as part of your setup and the price tag for the buttons. Some examples:

• https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2017/1/1483275603865699 (German)
• https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Dashbutton-for-the-Internet-of-Thin/
• https://notenoughtech.com/home-automation/goodbye-amazon-dash-buttons/ (ZigBee alternatives Ikea Tradfri and Xiaomi)
• https://flic.io/ (Flic Bluetooth Button, nice tech, but steep price)
• 433 Mhz Switches - cheap, but unsafe and potentially unreliable
• There are a few WiFi Switches, but price tag is usually around 20 Euros

@mwittig Thanks a lot for your input!

Lucky me seems to have gotten a pile of “old” dash buttons, which accept the audio hack! Woohoo!
So, I’m fine for now. But I’m also looking into the future.

I’m not so good at soldering and programming devices and my “leisure time” for playing with home automation is very limited, so I have to look at an out-of-the-box solution. And on top: all self-made solutions lack the possibilies of industrial sizing - most of them are very big and chunky.

So, I’m posting the results of my search for buyable solutions as well:

• 1BTN: https://www.crowdsupply.com/knewron/1btn seems to be “well-priced” (1 Button for 55$) in 2016 and they don’t seem to be available anymore for buying
• GoButton: https://www.gobutton.io/ was my biggest hope, as they licensed the original dash-button hardware from Amazon. But the site also seems to be decrepated, the shop is offline - anyone knows anything about them?
• MyStrom-Button: https://mystrom.com/de/wifi-button/ and https://mystrom.com/de/wifi-button-plus/ got a reasonable price (22€ and 28€) and are available. This would have been my choice-to-try, if my dash-buttons wouldnt have been hackable.

Can you recommend any other out-of-the-box devices?

@wolfpack said in Amazon Dash Button - Workaround or Alternative Devices?:

• MyStrom-Button: https://mystrom.com/de/wifi-button/ and https://mystrom.com/de/wifi-button-plus/ got a reasonable price (22€ and 28€) and are available. This would have been my choice-to-try, if my dash-buttons wouldnt have been hackable.

This looks really great, becaiuse it’s ESP8266 and also free sources on github.
Looking since long time for some smart buttons with housing fits to german standard switches, to replace existing contacts, but this is even harder to find.