Disassembling the Amazon Dash

One neat thing Amazon are doing with this product, which I hadn&#x27;t considered as an &quot;internet of things&quot; option, is making each unit of hardware order a single supplier&#x27;s goods. All the example buttons say &quot;Tide&quot; or &quot;Bounty&quot; or &quot;Gillette&quot; or &quot;Olay&quot; right on the button - all Procter &amp; Gamble. And the other goods pictured [1] are all brand-name goods with fairly big marketing budgets.<p>In the jargon of the grocery industry, this means the buttons can be &quot;supplier funded&quot; - Procter &amp; Gamble probably pay Amazon a reasonable portion of the cost of the button, as a marketing method.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;oc&#x2F;dash-button" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;oc&#x2F;dash-button</a>

Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous?<p>I mean, what&#x27;s the idea, having a button for every single product we buy? And we need to set it up first. How is that any better than recurring ordering or just opening the website and ordering it? Are we expected to have an entire wall of dashes at our place?<p>I guess we&#x27;ll need to sort them alphabetically or by color, so we don&#x27;t waste time searching for the button we need.

So basically Amazon is tempting you to place wifi enabled microphones around your house? I sure hope it&#x27;s only capable of picking up high frequency audio.

&quot;Also on the bottom is the small microphone used for setting up the Dash.&quot;<p>Damn... another microphone in your household capable of recording sounds near that device.

All of those exposed pads on the pcb, as well as the silkscreening near a quartet of pads labeled TX1 make me think this thing is going to be amazingly hackable. The micro in there is no slouch by any means, and a wifi module is always fun. I&#x27;m giving it at most a week before interesting things are done with these.

We wanted flying cars, but instead we got one-button branded soap ordering.

Another always on microphone from Amazon in your home. Welcome to 1984!

I&#x27;m bummed that it&#x27;s apparently vendor-locked. A configurable Dash would make it applicable to all things Amazon. There are perhaps 100 places in our facility that a &#x27;&quot;consumable X needs a refill&#x2F;attention&quot;. We don&#x27;t need a specific brand, and the brand we use can vary over time as needs and pricing change.

I&#x27;m disappointed that it isn&#x27;t powered by the kinetic energy of the pressing: I heard some Philips Zigbee control devices work that way (but Wifi might be too power hungry for that). And I was expecting them to use the ESP8266 for this: Does anybody know if (at scale) that would have been cheaper?

I&#x27;ll put in a shameless mention that this is exactly the sort of content my STEM education side project, TakeItApart[1] was meant to centralize. OP, we&#x27;d love to see the Dash included on TakeItApart so others can learn from your breakdown.<p>This annotation of the Dash components is terrific. It would be fun to probe the exposed pads to see if they have left an STM32 SWIM&#x2F;JTAG header available. It&#x27;s interesting that they choose to use a AAA battery but did not include a battery door so that users could replace it. Perhaps that is coming? Still, the power optimization is impressive considering how power hungry it can be to do wi-fi RF transmission (on the order of a 1 watt).<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.takeitapart.com&#x2F;get-started" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.takeitapart.com&#x2F;get-started</a>

To steal someone else&#x27;s tweet:<p>AOL in a big media deal, Clinton running for office, stocks at all time highs, <i>new cuecat is here</i>. What&#x27;s not to love about 2000?

Dash was not an April fools?

I imagine if you build up a collection of these for a variety of products you&#x27;ll need something to hold them all, perhaps it could be called a DashBoard?

Can anyone recommend any resources on power management on something like this?<p>My background in electronics is quite basic though I&#x27;d love to understand how they managed to build an ARM-based, battery-powered device that is predicted to last for years. I know it&#x27;s not &quot;always on&quot; but it&#x27;s fascinating nonetheless and I think building something similar would make for a fun project.

Can anyone comment as to why they&#x27;d go for a cortex M3? @120Mhz it seems like overkill for the function of this device. I know it&#x27;s pretty cheap but it could have made even cheaper with a less capable micro.

Any clue about the software?

Why is it I feel like this is just something that is designed to get me more working hours?<p>I like going to the store, socializing, finding things to try, being a human. Pushing a button doesn&#x27;t do it for me.

Why not a 2G cellular modem that sends out SMS? WiFi for location?

Why does amazon use a module,instead of certifying their own ? this hopes to be a large volume project , so the savings could be considerate.

Irresponsible product design. Unnecessary and throwaway.