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Why I stopped hacking the Amazon Dash button and learned to solder

253 points by ecaron 10y ago

mrbill 10y ago
For the Dash, surely it can't be that hard to replace the soldered-in battery with a couple of spring terminals so it can be easily replaced in the future..
- homero 10y ago
  Rev 2 is already out and mine has spring terminals and a Duracell battery. But the case must be cracked open
  - ecaron 10y ago
    Did you do a successful swap of the battery? Are there any markings on the case that designate it being a Rev1 or Rev2 battery?
    - homero 10y ago
      Yes and yes https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown-jk29lp/ https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown... New one also uses 4x less power, cheaper battery lasts twice as long
- yardie 10y ago
  The outer case is fused together and the battery inside is smothered in cement. From the photo, it looks like trying to remove it also destroys a bit of the plastic cradle. And at $4.99 a piece there are better, cheaper ways to do things.
quickben 10y ago
I didn't get the part about the color change for wake up? Can somebody please shed some light on that sentence?:)
- ecaron 10y ago
  We've taught our son that when the light turns red, it is time for bed. When the light is blue, it is time to get up. It has been amazingly beneficial for times of the year like Daylight Saving ending/starting because he's not yet able to read a clock and know "Oh, its 4am - I should try and go back to sleep".
  - quickben 10y ago
    Ah thanks. We will try this when ours is a bit older. Sounds like a great idea.
- DanBC 10y ago
  Some children wake early. A light that changes colour lets them know that it's still too early, or that it's now okay to get up. Commercial lights with timers are available, but they often use blue for night time and I'm not sure if that interferes with sleep or not. It's a gentle way to sleep train.
netsharc 10y ago
When turning the lights on require you to go through the 7-layer ISO/OSI stack. The future is dumb.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  Wait, I can have a 7-layer ISO/OSI stack on a $5 computer!? The future is awesome.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  Give it time, soon enough it will require GFLOPs, hadoop, and deep learning.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    Which will all be fine when you realise that this will cost less in real, inflation adjusted dollars than a light switch at a hardware store in 1968.
  - technofiend 10y ago
    The end result is an AI telling your child 'Shhhh, it's ok. Go back to sleep' and humming a lullaby. I'm OK with this too as long as we ignore the dystopian possibilities.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      I have good news for you: The dystopian possibilities are already here, so we'll at least get the usability for free!
  - flashman 10y ago
    Computing power trends towards infinity, while computing price trends towards zero ;)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
noonespecial 10y ago
If he really wanted to "learn to solder", one of the esp8266 devkits from the likes of sparkfun or adafruit would have served him better and been cheaper and less power hungry as well. Running an entire Linux server nonstop just to watch for a button press seems excessive. Otoh, we've reached the point where you can reasonably run an entire Linux server just to watch a button! Awesome.
- ecaron 10y ago
  That's really where I burnt the first 4 weeks of this exercise. I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options. Probably a personal character fault. You're right that it is overkill. And I'll probably be tossing some more money towards SparkFun soon too - but the just from being a pure-software guy to buying/assembling the raw parts just shut me down :-(
  - DanBC 10y ago
    It's a shame that you have to defend "buying something to learn how to use it", even if it's a bit overkill for the current use. At some point you'll want to use the Pi Zero for something else, and at that point you'll be able to use some other IoT package.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    You know what? That's totally ok. When I first heard of the raspi platform that was what I found most exciting. It was going to take a whole world of people with common web dev skills and kick the door open for them to get into hardware. I'm glad to see that's it's completely living up to that promise.
  - bsder 10y ago
    > I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options. Welcome to engineering. Pick one and finish the project. Then look back. Yes, running an RPi Zero to watch a button press is overkill. So what? It optimizes delivery time over efficiency. You can optimize for cost or power later if you feel like it. Anyhow, nice job.
revelation 10y ago
— the program effectively is saying “Once every .2 seconds, send some power over this one pin on the board, and let me know if the circuit is complete.” No, that's not how this works at all. You're just querying some bit in memory. Nobody is "sending power".
- noonespecial 10y ago
  Well, someone is sending power and the bit does flip when the circuit completes. Its just not happening quite on the schedule he imagines. BUT, notice how even this slightly incorrect theory of how its working still gives him 100% predictive power on how his system is going to work in this case... so meh? Plenty of time to be less wrong later.
awqrre 10y ago
The new Dash button is very different from the old one: https://hackaday.com/2016/07/26/bending-the-new-amazon-dash-button-to-your-will/.. https://hackaday.com/2016/07/26/bending-the-new-amazon-dash-.... and now, Amazon also has the over-priced Amazon IoT button: https://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited-Programmable/dp/B01C7WE5WM/ https://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited-Programmable/d...
- ecaron 10y ago
  Previous HN conversation on it is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687463. TNW article about it is also pretty decent - http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/16/dash-elsewhere/ http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/16/dash-elsewhere/ I suppose in the article I should have mentioned that I expected the button to be able to fire whatever HTTP payload that I wanted. Probably an odd expectation of mine, but that's the price I pay for my day job seeping into my night life.
  - i2shar 10y ago
    (Reposting my comment from your other thread): FWIW, if you don't need hardware, you can turn your phone into such a "button". Apps allow you to add a widget to your home screen and can be configured to make arbitrary HTTP requests. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android.http_shortcuts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android...
Fuzzwah 10y ago
I went through a similar experience when rigging up my own little "child sleep improver" project. We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids go to bed. I wanted to be able to trigger playback remotely, so if I heard my child stirring I could play the lullabies again and help them settle again. I'm also a R-Pi fan, so I rigged one up which allows me to have mplayer start playing the album via a simple webpage which I access from my mobile phone. That is excellent for the middle of the night times, but when we put the child into bed at night I wanted a simple button to press to do the same thing. I hunted around and just could not bring myself to pay $50 to $100 for a damn button! Especially if I had to rely on some web service... It just seemed ridiculous. In the end I realised that I could just use a cheap wireless mouse. It is stuck onto the change table; we left click to trigger playback, right click to stop, mouse wheel to volume up or down.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- foobarian 10y ago
  Along that vein I stuck an R-Pi into a radio and rigged it to autoplay all MP3s on an inserted USB stick. Then I gave my small kids (2 and 3) small cheap colored USB sticks with different albums on them (Frozen, dancing, kid songs, etc.). It kind of replicates the "insert disc" experience for them and they love it.
  - Fuzzwah 10y ago
    I have something similar to that too! Mine is based on an R-Pi that I've got an RFID card reader hanging off, which triggers playback of music in Kodi (aka XBMC) Here's a video demo I made ages ago of a very early version (before I learned how to capture the RFID reader prior to Kodi/XBMC grabbing it, which allowed me to eliminate the MK802 device): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 My toddler loves it and thinks that the standard interface for playing music is to select a card from the magnetic board and swipe it against the reader. As a special bit of fun, I've also cut open some cards and bit the RFID loop into a few of her toys. When she swipes them the appropriate theme tune plays. I worked on the system recently to add a web interface to manage the playlists and cards, but I haven't made the code available on github yet. Though I do have a repo with the old version here: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music
braymailloux 10y ago
You don't need a computer to turn on a light in the same room. you don't even need digital electronics.
- cxseven 10y ago
  It's pretty odd to see all of these energy-saving LED bulbs being made "smart", totally killing the energy savings. (Not to mention the Rube Goldberginess of needlessly using wifi when you could use a few million fewer transistors on existing wiring.)
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    A 5W LED bulb that's equivalent to a 100W incandescent bulb is not having its savings killed by a 1W computer.
    - honkhonkpants 10y ago
      Depends on the duty cycle ... if it uses 1W all the time and is only on 5% of the time, then yes it is having its savings erased.
      - samjohnson 10y ago
        There's still significant savings at 5% usage: 100W * 5% * 24 Hours = 120Wh 1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 5% * 24 Hours = 30Wh So it does depend on the duty cycle - As long as the 5W lightbulb with a 1W computer is used less than ~19 hours a day (80%) you'd still have savings: 1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 80% * 24 Hours = 120Wh
- eddieroger 10y ago
  There are a lot of things we don't need. That's not a good reason not to try something. The author learned a new skill and built something with his hands, which is the reward, forgetting that his kid also had a stable light switch now. Seems pretty fine to me.
curioussavage 10y ago
I also am constantly looking for better easier solutions for things like this. right now I think the wemos d1 mini is the sweet spot for ease of use/versatility.
mratzloff 10y ago
Learning something new is great, but if you just want to turn the light on or off with a remote, you don't need a computer or the Internet: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087EIDRS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087EIDRS
- ecaron 10y ago
  This is more than that, though. This attaches to a web site where I can see when the button was pushed, control the color based on time of day, and turn it on/off remotely (plus define the length of time for the auto off).
dvcrn 10y ago
Very cool! I too am a "pure software" guy. A few years ago I was really into hardware but started to go with buying finished solutions instead of building things on my own to save time and concentrate on the software. I had no idea it's this simple to solder something together and speak to it. Now I'd love to know how to do the same with a arduino or similar "less heavy" build. Does anyone have links to resources in how to do that and how to get started?
- StavrosK 10y ago
  I keep meaning to write a post about how to get started, but I don't remember what "getting started" means any more. If you want, email me with a few questions and I'll try to incorporate them in my post.
- tmuir 10y ago
  Both sparkfun and adafruit have tons of tutorials for both arduino and traditional microcontroller development. Both companies also sell all kinds of development boards, breakout boards, and prototyping tools and supplies.
- exDM69 10y ago
  > Does anyone have links to resources in how to do that and how to get started? If you don't mind spending a little money (less than $100), get one of those "starter kits" for electronics that come with an Arduino (or similar) and a bunch of leds, resistors, caps and chips to tinker with. From there on, it's really easy. There should be tutorials that work with the kit you get or find a set of tutorials and get a kit to match. If you want to build things that talk to the Internet, a Raspberry might be a better starting point than an Arduino (for which you need an Ethernet or Wifi shield, but they should be easy to use too). I can wield a soldering iron but I've only dealed with analog audio electronics before, but I was able to whip up a custom gaming controller for flight simulator use using shift registers, multiplexers and LEDs (and 64 buttons) in just a few nights of tinkering.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > I can wield a soldering iron but I've only dealed with analog audio electronics before, but I was able to whip up a custom gaming controller for flight simulator use using shift registers, multiplexers and LEDs (and 64 buttons) in just a few nights of tinkering. I would love to read about that!
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
man, I love the RPI. I will love the CHIP, especially the CHIP Pocket, if it's any good, because it's a mobile device with PHYSICAL BUTTONS. That I can kinda TYPE ON. And it RUNS LINUX, so I can code on it. This is truly a brave new world. >If you think tech that was in the PPC in '05 was revolutionary, that is... SHUT UP! goes to sob in corner
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  pulls out Sony Clie PEG-UX50 with wifi, Bluetooth, IR, color screen from 13 years ago whistles pulls out Palm Tungsten C from the same year, also with wifi, SD slot, and VPN support removes 1988 Cambridge Z88 from backpack, begins calculating in the spreadsheet app how far we've come
- KnightHawk3 10y ago
  Are you familar with the Nokia n900, I have a feeling you might like it.
mrb 10y ago
Note that Amazon rolled out a second revision of the Dash button that is 4x more energy efficient: "I measured the new Dash Button’s energy usage to be 4.3±2.2 J per activation and the original Button’s energy usage to be 16.4±0.1 J per activation." Source: https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown-jk29lp/ https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown... Although the Dash is still much over-engineered: for every activation it has to establish (I believe) an HTTPS session and exchange a few requests with Amazon servers. A much dumber wifi button sending a single packet should be able to use 1/10th of this energy.
iofj 10y ago
A radio control LED light seems like it'd be a far, far simpler solution: http://www.milight.com/milight-rgbw-remote/ http://www.milight.com/milight-rgbw-remote/ and http://shop.easybulb.com/easybulb-plus-round-rgbw-6w-light-bulb-colour-changing-energy-saving/ http://shop.easybulb.com/easybulb-plus-round-rgbw-6w-light-b... Or buy on ebay. It's much cheaper than this solution.
gwbas1c 10y ago
Interesting! My house is full of multi-way switches that I want to replace with "on" and "off" buttons. Whenever I look at fancy electronic switches, they are expensive and the reviews indicate that they are very unreliable. Perhaps I should just find some time to make my own on and off buttons?
- jon-wood 10y ago
  (Disclaimer, I work for a sister company of Fibaro's UK reseller) Depending on your definition of expensive you might like to look at Fibaro's z-wave switches. They're small wireless modules that go inside the switch box, sitting between the switch itself and the light circuit, allowing wireless control and monitoring of the switch. They effectively decouple the physical switch from the act of turning a light on and off. You'll need a z-wave controller as well, and a bit of time to learn how it all fits together, but the flexibility it gives you is pretty impressive.
  - tmzt 10y ago
    Can they be returned to manual operation, such as for inspection or turning off a socket to change a bulb?
    - jon-wood 10y ago
      From what I've seen of them, no - they effectively turn the single loop between switch and powered device into two distinct things, the switch(es), and a relay that can turn the device on and off. Even if they could be it would involve opening up the switch/socket box and removing it to get at the actual device, which you'd presumably want to kill the entire circuit for anyway.
IgorPartola 10y ago
In case you decide to go with a Dash button anyways, I made it easier: https://github.com/ipartola/amadash https://github.com/ipartola/amadash I like the dash buttons because for the price you actually get decent value. Compared to an ESP8266 board, you also get the button, the case, and the battery. The interface for it is not th best, but this actually lets you monitor for many button presses from a single Linux node, so I think this is the cheapest solution. That is not to discourage anyone from learning how to solder, or make their own electronics, but in case you have a bunch of these Dash buttons around already.
roel_v 10y ago
Jebus, running a raspberry pi off a battery to turn a light on and off, and it's dependent on an internet connection to function as well? Get a zwave remote control and lights and have something that won't need rebuilding every three months... Yes it'll be more expensive than 15$ or whatever, but he claims he 'just wanted someone to take my money' in the post.
- abricot 10y ago
  This story wouldn't be very interresting if it wasn't a bit overengineered.
artpi 10y ago
I was also tempted to use new IOT amazon buttons with the IOT AWS offering ( https://aws.amazon.com/iot/ https://aws.amazon.com/iot/ ), but after looking a bit deeper, the free limit is not that high. Instead, I bought ESP8266 Wemos D1 mini for $4 each. Instead of AWS IOT I used Google Firebase and I have to admit, it works pretty sweet for me. IFTTT, Siri integration and all. https://piszek.com/2015/06/24/smartpi/ https://piszek.com/2015/06/24/smartpi/
SunboX 10y ago
The Raspberry Pi Zero is nice, but he should decider using a Arduino device instead. Both are very different devices. Using a Raspberry Pi for this kind of task is like using a big truck to get a sixpack beer.
- snarfy 10y ago
  In this case the big truck costs as much to both purchase and drive as an economy car. As much as I love my Arduinos I think this argument is flawed. For a one-off project like this you should use whatever works for you. Also, you could argue arduino is the big truck if you consider the software side Nodejs vs C.

253 points by ecaron 10y ago

For the Dash, surely it can't be that hard to replace the soldered-in battery with a couple of spring terminals so it can be easily replaced in the future..

homero 10y ago
Rev 2 is already out and mine has spring terminals and a Duracell battery. But the case must be cracked open
- ecaron 10y ago
  Did you do a successful swap of the battery? Are there any markings on the case that designate it being a Rev1 or Rev2 battery?
  - homero 10y ago
    Yes and yes https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown-jk29lp/ https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown... New one also uses 4x less power, cheaper battery lasts twice as long
yardie 10y ago
The outer case is fused together and the battery inside is smothered in cement. From the photo, it looks like trying to remove it also destroys a bit of the plastic cradle. And at $4.99 a piece there are better, cheaper ways to do things.

quickben 10y ago

I didn't get the part about the color change for wake up? Can somebody please shed some light on that sentence?:)

ecaron 10y ago
We've taught our son that when the light turns red, it is time for bed. When the light is blue, it is time to get up. It has been amazingly beneficial for times of the year like Daylight Saving ending/starting because he's not yet able to read a clock and know "Oh, its 4am - I should try and go back to sleep".
- quickben 10y ago
  Ah thanks. We will try this when ours is a bit older. Sounds like a great idea.
DanBC 10y ago
Some children wake early. A light that changes colour lets them know that it's still too early, or that it's now okay to get up. Commercial lights with timers are available, but they often use blue for night time and I'm not sure if that interferes with sleep or not. It's a gentle way to sleep train.

netsharc 10y ago

When turning the lights on require you to go through the 7-layer ISO/OSI stack. The future is dumb.

noonespecial 10y ago
Wait, I can have a 7-layer ISO/OSI stack on a $5 computer!? The future is awesome.
sliverstorm 10y ago
Give it time, soon enough it will require GFLOPs, hadoop, and deep learning.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  Which will all be fine when you realise that this will cost less in real, inflation adjusted dollars than a light switch at a hardware store in 1968.
- technofiend 10y ago
  The end result is an AI telling your child 'Shhhh, it's ok. Go back to sleep' and humming a lullaby. I'm OK with this too as long as we ignore the dystopian possibilities.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    I have good news for you: The dystopian possibilities are already here, so we'll at least get the usability for free!
- flashman 10y ago
  Computing power trends towards infinity, while computing price trends towards zero ;)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

noonespecial 10y ago

If he really wanted to "learn to solder", one of the esp8266 devkits from the likes of sparkfun or adafruit would have served him better and been cheaper and less power hungry as well. Running an entire Linux server nonstop just to watch for a button press seems excessive. Otoh, we've reached the point where you can reasonably run an entire Linux server just to watch a button! Awesome.

ecaron 10y ago
That's really where I burnt the first 4 weeks of this exercise. I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options. Probably a personal character fault. You're right that it is overkill. And I'll probably be tossing some more money towards SparkFun soon too - but the just from being a pure-software guy to buying/assembling the raw parts just shut me down :-(
- DanBC 10y ago
  It's a shame that you have to defend "buying something to learn how to use it", even if it's a bit overkill for the current use. At some point you'll want to use the Pi Zero for something else, and at that point you'll be able to use some other IoT package.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  You know what? That's totally ok. When I first heard of the raspi platform that was what I found most exciting. It was going to take a whole world of people with common web dev skills and kick the door open for them to get into hardware. I'm glad to see that's it's completely living up to that promise.
- bsder 10y ago
  > I would go on those sites, read blogs/posts/product pages over and over, and get overwhelmed and just shut down based on the number of options. Welcome to engineering. Pick one and finish the project. Then look back. Yes, running an RPi Zero to watch a button press is overkill. So what? It optimizes delivery time over efficiency. You can optimize for cost or power later if you feel like it. Anyhow, nice job.

revelation 10y ago

— the program effectively is saying “Once every .2 seconds, send some power over this one pin on the board, and let me know if the circuit is complete.” No, that's not how this works at all. You're just querying some bit in memory. Nobody is "sending power".

noonespecial 10y ago
Well, someone is sending power and the bit does flip when the circuit completes. Its just not happening quite on the schedule he imagines. BUT, notice how even this slightly incorrect theory of how its working still gives him 100% predictive power on how his system is going to work in this case... so meh? Plenty of time to be less wrong later.

awqrre 10y ago

The new Dash button is very different from the old one: https://hackaday.com/2016/07/26/bending-the-new-amazon-dash-button-to-your-will/.. https://hackaday.com/2016/07/26/bending-the-new-amazon-dash-.... and now, Amazon also has the over-priced Amazon IoT button: https://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited-Programmable/dp/B01C7WE5WM/ https://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited-Programmable/d...

ecaron 10y ago
Previous HN conversation on it is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11687463. TNW article about it is also pretty decent - http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/16/dash-elsewhere/ http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/05/16/dash-elsewhere/ I suppose in the article I should have mentioned that I expected the button to be able to fire whatever HTTP payload that I wanted. Probably an odd expectation of mine, but that's the price I pay for my day job seeping into my night life.
- i2shar 10y ago
  (Reposting my comment from your other thread): FWIW, if you don't need hardware, you can turn your phone into such a "button". Apps allow you to add a widget to your home screen and can be configured to make arbitrary HTTP requests. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android.http_shortcuts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android...

Fuzzwah 10y ago

I went through a similar experience when rigging up my own little "child sleep improver" project. We play the same album of world music lullabies when our kids go to bed. I wanted to be able to trigger playback remotely, so if I heard my child stirring I could play the lullabies again and help them settle again. I'm also a R-Pi fan, so I rigged one up which allows me to have mplayer start playing the album via a simple webpage which I access from my mobile phone. That is excellent for the middle of the night times, but when we put the child into bed at night I wanted a simple button to press to do the same thing. I hunted around and just could not bring myself to pay $50 to $100 for a damn button! Especially if I had to rely on some web service... It just seemed ridiculous. In the end I realised that I could just use a cheap wireless mouse. It is stuck onto the change table; we left click to trigger playback, right click to stop, mouse wheel to volume up or down.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
foobarian 10y ago
Along that vein I stuck an R-Pi into a radio and rigged it to autoplay all MP3s on an inserted USB stick. Then I gave my small kids (2 and 3) small cheap colored USB sticks with different albums on them (Frozen, dancing, kid songs, etc.). It kind of replicates the "insert disc" experience for them and they love it.
- Fuzzwah 10y ago
  I have something similar to that too! Mine is based on an R-Pi that I've got an RFID card reader hanging off, which triggers playback of music in Kodi (aka XBMC) Here's a video demo I made ages ago of a very early version (before I learned how to capture the RFID reader prior to Kodi/XBMC grabbing it, which allowed me to eliminate the MK802 device): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyq2xqjHW0 My toddler loves it and thinks that the standard interface for playing music is to select a card from the magnetic board and swipe it against the reader. As a special bit of fun, I've also cut open some cards and bit the RFID loop into a few of her toys. When she swipes them the appropriate theme tune plays. I worked on the system recently to add a web interface to manage the playlists and cards, but I haven't made the code available on github yet. Though I do have a repo with the old version here: https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music https://github.com/Fuzzwah/xbmc-rfid-music

braymailloux 10y ago

You don't need a computer to turn on a light in the same room. you don't even need digital electronics.

cxseven 10y ago
It's pretty odd to see all of these energy-saving LED bulbs being made "smart", totally killing the energy savings. (Not to mention the Rube Goldberginess of needlessly using wifi when you could use a few million fewer transistors on existing wiring.)
- StavrosK 10y ago
  A 5W LED bulb that's equivalent to a 100W incandescent bulb is not having its savings killed by a 1W computer.
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    Depends on the duty cycle ... if it uses 1W all the time and is only on 5% of the time, then yes it is having its savings erased.
    - samjohnson 10y ago
      There's still significant savings at 5% usage: 100W * 5% * 24 Hours = 120Wh 1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 5% * 24 Hours = 30Wh So it does depend on the duty cycle - As long as the 5W lightbulb with a 1W computer is used less than ~19 hours a day (80%) you'd still have savings: 1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 80% * 24 Hours = 120Wh
eddieroger 10y ago
There are a lot of things we don't need. That's not a good reason not to try something. The author learned a new skill and built something with his hands, which is the reward, forgetting that his kid also had a stable light switch now. Seems pretty fine to me.

curioussavage 10y ago

I also am constantly looking for better easier solutions for things like this. right now I think the wemos d1 mini is the sweet spot for ease of use/versatility.

mratzloff 10y ago

Learning something new is great, but if you just want to turn the light on or off with a remote, you don't need a computer or the Internet: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087EIDRS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087EIDRS

ecaron 10y ago
This is more than that, though. This attaches to a web site where I can see when the button was pushed, control the color based on time of day, and turn it on/off remotely (plus define the length of time for the auto off).

dvcrn 10y ago

Very cool! I too am a "pure software" guy. A few years ago I was really into hardware but started to go with buying finished solutions instead of building things on my own to save time and concentrate on the software. I had no idea it's this simple to solder something together and speak to it. Now I'd love to know how to do the same with a arduino or similar "less heavy" build. Does anyone have links to resources in how to do that and how to get started?

StavrosK 10y ago
I keep meaning to write a post about how to get started, but I don't remember what "getting started" means any more. If you want, email me with a few questions and I'll try to incorporate them in my post.
tmuir 10y ago
Both sparkfun and adafruit have tons of tutorials for both arduino and traditional microcontroller development. Both companies also sell all kinds of development boards, breakout boards, and prototyping tools and supplies.
exDM69 10y ago
> Does anyone have links to resources in how to do that and how to get started? If you don't mind spending a little money (less than $100), get one of those "starter kits" for electronics that come with an Arduino (or similar) and a bunch of leds, resistors, caps and chips to tinker with. From there on, it's really easy. There should be tutorials that work with the kit you get or find a set of tutorials and get a kit to match. If you want to build things that talk to the Internet, a Raspberry might be a better starting point than an Arduino (for which you need an Ethernet or Wifi shield, but they should be easy to use too). I can wield a soldering iron but I've only dealed with analog audio electronics before, but I was able to whip up a custom gaming controller for flight simulator use using shift registers, multiplexers and LEDs (and 64 buttons) in just a few nights of tinkering.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > I can wield a soldering iron but I've only dealed with analog audio electronics before, but I was able to whip up a custom gaming controller for flight simulator use using shift registers, multiplexers and LEDs (and 64 buttons) in just a few nights of tinkering. I would love to read about that!

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

man, I love the RPI. I will love the CHIP, especially the CHIP Pocket, if it's any good, because it's a mobile device with PHYSICAL BUTTONS. That I can kinda TYPE ON. And it RUNS LINUX, so I can code on it. This is truly a brave new world. >If you think tech that was in the PPC in '05 was revolutionary, that is... SHUT UP! goes to sob in corner

seanp2k2 10y ago
pulls out Sony Clie PEG-UX50 with wifi, Bluetooth, IR, color screen from 13 years ago whistles pulls out Palm Tungsten C from the same year, also with wifi, SD slot, and VPN support removes 1988 Cambridge Z88 from backpack, begins calculating in the spreadsheet app how far we've come
KnightHawk3 10y ago
Are you familar with the Nokia n900, I have a feeling you might like it.

mrb 10y ago

Note that Amazon rolled out a second revision of the Dash button that is 4x more energy efficient: "I measured the new Dash Button’s energy usage to be 4.3±2.2 J per activation and the original Button’s energy usage to be 16.4±0.1 J per activation." Source: https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown-jk29lp/ https://mpetroff.net/2016/07/new-amazon-dash-button-teardown... Although the Dash is still much over-engineered: for every activation it has to establish (I believe) an HTTPS session and exchange a few requests with Amazon servers. A much dumber wifi button sending a single packet should be able to use 1/10th of this energy.

iofj 10y ago

A radio control LED light seems like it'd be a far, far simpler solution: http://www.milight.com/milight-rgbw-remote/ http://www.milight.com/milight-rgbw-remote/ and http://shop.easybulb.com/easybulb-plus-round-rgbw-6w-light-bulb-colour-changing-energy-saving/ http://shop.easybulb.com/easybulb-plus-round-rgbw-6w-light-b... Or buy on ebay. It's much cheaper than this solution.

gwbas1c 10y ago

Interesting! My house is full of multi-way switches that I want to replace with "on" and "off" buttons. Whenever I look at fancy electronic switches, they are expensive and the reviews indicate that they are very unreliable. Perhaps I should just find some time to make my own on and off buttons?

jon-wood 10y ago
(Disclaimer, I work for a sister company of Fibaro's UK reseller) Depending on your definition of expensive you might like to look at Fibaro's z-wave switches. They're small wireless modules that go inside the switch box, sitting between the switch itself and the light circuit, allowing wireless control and monitoring of the switch. They effectively decouple the physical switch from the act of turning a light on and off. You'll need a z-wave controller as well, and a bit of time to learn how it all fits together, but the flexibility it gives you is pretty impressive.
- tmzt 10y ago
  Can they be returned to manual operation, such as for inspection or turning off a socket to change a bulb?
  - jon-wood 10y ago
    From what I've seen of them, no - they effectively turn the single loop between switch and powered device into two distinct things, the switch(es), and a relay that can turn the device on and off. Even if they could be it would involve opening up the switch/socket box and removing it to get at the actual device, which you'd presumably want to kill the entire circuit for anyway.

IgorPartola 10y ago

In case you decide to go with a Dash button anyways, I made it easier: https://github.com/ipartola/amadash https://github.com/ipartola/amadash I like the dash buttons because for the price you actually get decent value. Compared to an ESP8266 board, you also get the button, the case, and the battery. The interface for it is not th best, but this actually lets you monitor for many button presses from a single Linux node, so I think this is the cheapest solution. That is not to discourage anyone from learning how to solder, or make their own electronics, but in case you have a bunch of these Dash buttons around already.

roel_v 10y ago

Jebus, running a raspberry pi off a battery to turn a light on and off, and it's dependent on an internet connection to function as well? Get a zwave remote control and lights and have something that won't need rebuilding every three months... Yes it'll be more expensive than 15$ or whatever, but he claims he 'just wanted someone to take my money' in the post.

abricot 10y ago
This story wouldn't be very interresting if it wasn't a bit overengineered.

artpi 10y ago

I was also tempted to use new IOT amazon buttons with the IOT AWS offering ( https://aws.amazon.com/iot/ https://aws.amazon.com/iot/ ), but after looking a bit deeper, the free limit is not that high. Instead, I bought ESP8266 Wemos D1 mini for $4 each. Instead of AWS IOT I used Google Firebase and I have to admit, it works pretty sweet for me. IFTTT, Siri integration and all. https://piszek.com/2015/06/24/smartpi/ https://piszek.com/2015/06/24/smartpi/

SunboX 10y ago

The Raspberry Pi Zero is nice, but he should decider using a Arduino device instead. Both are very different devices. Using a Raspberry Pi for this kind of task is like using a big truck to get a sixpack beer.

snarfy 10y ago
In this case the big truck costs as much to both purchase and drive as an economy car. As much as I love my Arduinos I think this argument is flawed. For a one-off project like this you should use whatever works for you. Also, you could argue arduino is the big truck if you consider the software side Nodejs vs C.