Amazon to remove the Dash button on August 31 – you have a month to hack yours

Amazon's four-year plastic lightening "BUY! BUY! BUY!" the buttons finally seem to end.

The line of Amazon Dash physical buttons connected to the Internet, which allowed customers to buy (typically for around $ 5), replenishing a touch of homemade staples, such as snacks, toiletries and laundry supplies, will stop to function completely on August 31st. follows Amazon's decision to stop selling the buttons in February of this year, when it was so optimistic that the concept wanted to sell more than 100 Dash button brands by 2016.

In a statement to Cnet, Amazon justified its plans by saying that the use of devices by consumers "has slowed considerably" since the retailer stopped offering them as a buyable option. In addition, Amazon says that consumers can use even less energy to purchase products, especially via Internet-connected appliances that use Amazon's Dash Replenishment API to increase consumables when a device suspects that something is empty. (We're a little sad that Amazon did not just sell to consumers a robot that could automatically search for existing Dash buttons and exploit them on your behalf, but, alas.) In the meantime, if you really need to press a single colored button. button to get more boxes of macaroni and cheese, Amazon still offers a digital facsimile in the form of a virtual interface of dash buttons from the Amazon home page or from the application of shopping.

So what do consumers have to do with the physical buttons they have stuck next to their appliances or kitchen counters or to pick up the dust in the drawers? Why, hack them!

The existing Dash buttons contain everything you need to send a basic command through a Wi-Fi protocol (although little else). As enterprising users discovered it shortly after the launch of the line in 2015, this order can be customized. The problem is that the whole process starts with Amazon's general purchase application, available for iOS and Android devices, to configure the Dash button for its intended use as a & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; # 39; purchase device. There is no guarantee that the Amazon application will continue to support this first step. end of August 2019.

As explained in this media guide 2015, once you have completed the first step of the installation process and you have thus transmitted the information from your local router to the button, you can stop and delete the 39, Amazon app and get you to work. From now on, the rest of the guide will walk you through the steps necessary to turn your old Dash button into a general purpose IFTTT device, which revolves around the discovery of the 39; MAC address of the button. (The guide at one point points users to a dead URL for the IFTTT Webhooks Maker service, which you can now find here, but it is also recent enough.)

What will you use for the remaining buttons on the dashboard? We are fighting. But everything must be better than pressing the thing and do not get a mbadive carton of Doritos as expected.