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How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

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Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#91

Post by Nikker »

haswell wrote: post #3

I could see this being a useful tool when trying to form good habits. Brush teeth? push the button. Get a fresh glass of water from the fridge? push the button. When analyzing other aspects of my life such as spending, I have tools to show me what I've done in the past, and those tools can help me improve (e.g. spending reports). This is admittedly reactionary, but I find it useful nonetheless. Track enough other "st…

Keeping track and sticking buttons all over the place is going to be an "early adopter" feature. Once we get to an overwhelming number of "buttons" it will make sense just to put up a couple cameras similar to the Microsoft Kinect and use hot zone + gestures to do the same thing. RFID in boxed products might help out but the buttons will end up being a mess right quick.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#92

Post by Sanddancer »

Rimpinths wrote: post #66

Does this remind anybody of the CueCat? Same story...subsidized hardware that hackers repurposed for other uses. I think the makers of CueCat tried to unsuccessfully sue the hackers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat http://www.securityfocus.com/news/89 Do the Amazon Dash buttons come with a license agreement? Has anyone read it to see if it prohibits these kinds of hacks?

Wifi chips are cheap. So cheap, that I'd all but guarantee they're still making a profit on it, even at $5. You can get ESP8266 chips from people in china for about $2.50 each including shipping, and those will do everything these buttons do. Given Amazon's volume, they probably cost half that for them, so hacking them is pretty much free advertising.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#93

Post by d23 »

theschwa wrote: post #70
jwildeboer wrote: post #63

"Hack". Uhm. Nope.

I'm not sure what you mean by this comment. This is pretty much the definition of hacking something together.

In fact, this is my favorite meaning of the word hack. It's turned into essentially a synonym for "programmer" as far as I can tell, but I always liked this classic definition of getting a thing to something other than what it was intended to do.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#94

Post by d23 »

Awesome article and idea.

Would it be unreasonable to try to reverse or update the actual code on the hardware to get it to send a request to an arbitrary server instead? I'd love to team with a hardware person to cut out the layer of having to have a script polling the network to find the device. It's always been something I've wanted to learn more about. Or is that unrealistic?

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#95

Post by radlad »

StavrosK wrote: post #57
oliwary wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the bttn? https://bt.tn/ I think it does what you want and has wifi or mobile data.

It's 70 euros, which is an insane amount of money for a button, and it's huge :/ The one posted above is small enough to unobtrusively stick on a wall and less than half price this one. Hopefully they'll come out with a standalone mod.

There's also this one, but still not $5 - https://store.particle.io/?product=internet-button

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#96

Post by bigiain »

jo909 wrote: post #64

This is really cool. I suspect the buttons are already sold at loss, so it is probably very hard to build a similar, but more open, device at around a price point where you could just plaster the whole house with such buttons. But I wonder if it might be done when leaving out the WiFi and most of the processing power from the button, and having essentially what is a RF remote control (like used for remote controlled…

The wifi and a tiny microcontroller are available for around $5 in single units these days - google "esp8266" - I'm only _marginally_ surprised Amazon can ship these for $5, but I bet they aren't making much (if any) loss on these at their volumes.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#97

Post by bbcbasic »

nl wrote: post #90
wmeredith wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw pressing the buttons. Can I train an Amazon Echo to listen for me brushing my teeth?

I heard a VC complaining about a pitch he had for an internet connected toothbrush for kids once. It would notify parents if it wasn't used. I thought it was quite a good idea!

Or you could buy a device to bounce photons off the kid which deflect into your retina, and leverage a wetware neural network implanted in your brain to check if they have brushed their teeth.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#98

Post by vacri »

aidenn0 wrote: post #67
fweespeech wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was, simply hooking them up to a wifi network without an internet connection is functionally identical. Given that isn't something you can be prosecuted for, I don't see why you could convince a jury this was.

IANAL, but... It seems possible that Amazon could set up ToS for purchase of this that would make doing this actionable.

If you abused 10 of these units, it still wouldn't be worth one hour of lawyer's time.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#99

Post by nkurz »

d23 wrote: post #94

Awesome article and idea. Would it be unreasonable to try to reverse or update the actual code on the hardware to get it to send a request to an arbitrary server instead? I'd love to team with a hardware person to cut out the layer of having to have a script polling the network to find the device. It's always been something I've wanted to learn more about. Or is that unrealistic?

Yes, it's very possible. This project might help: https://github.com/dekuNukem/Amazon_Dash_Button

Starting with an Arduino that designed to be programmed would likely be an easier first project, though.

Re: How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

#100

Post by lisivka »

Nikker wrote: post #91
haswell wrote: post #3

I could see this being a useful tool when trying to form good habits. Brush teeth? push the button. Get a fresh glass of water from the fridge? push the button. When analyzing other aspects of my life such as spending, I have tools to show me what I've done in the past, and those tools can help me improve (e.g. spending reports). This is admittedly reactionary, but I find it useful nonetheless. Track enough other "st…

Keeping track and sticking buttons all over the place is going to be an "early adopter" feature. Once we get to an overwhelming number of "buttons" it will make sense just to put up a couple cameras similar to the Microsoft Kinect and use hot zone + gestures to do the same thing. RFID in boxed products might help out but the buttons will end up being a mess right quick.

It is cheaper to put microphone and ask for food, similar to regular shop: "Hey, Amazon", "Order, please", "Bottle of milk and bread", "Bottle of milk «Foo» $2,50. Bread «Bar» $1,75. Total: $4,25. Confirm?", "Yes", "Order accepted, wait for delivery.". Something like Siri, but activated by push of hardware button on the fridge.
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