We wanted flying cars, but instead we got one-button branded soap ordering.
I just want a milkman who comes daily and reads my handwritten note, like we used to have.
Disassembling the Amazon Dash
51–60 of 115 posts
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but just a few decades ago there were people dismissing all of e-commerce saying "why would I order online when I can just pick up the phone and call in my order?" I'm sure before that there were people saying, Why do I need phone ordering when I can just mail an order form to Sears? I think it's a mistake to bet against a more convenient form of consumerism.
The problem with Dash is that it doesn't really scale.
I see Dash more like an experiment, it may not be the final product or disapear completely to become something else.
Even if I find this idea wasteful, I think amazon does the right move with just experimenting.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The microphone is only active when you hold down the button - if it's always on (for whatever reason, accidentally or maliciously), the unit would run out of power in a few hours, it's powered by a single AAA cell.
It doesn't have to be always on, it could be remotely controlled.
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Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#54I'm disappointed that it isn'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?
It doesn't look like the ESP8266 has the necessary I/O to do the audio provisioning trick that the Dash is doing with that hybrid module. Provisioning these things can be a hassle sometimes. The TI CC3xxx has a really wacky one. A custom provisioning app transmits the SSID and password of the target network by sending encrypted packets to nobody: the CC3xxx sniffs the length of the encypted packets and picks up the n…
The CC3XXX "SmartConfig" was complete garbage the last time I was evaluating it on a CC3200. It didn't work on 802.11n networks, only b/g. And that was when it worked. I got it only once trying on both an iPhone and Nexus 5, I would hate to have to answer any customers' support questions about using something so flaky.
The audio thing does require an app though to do provisioning, which I suppose isn't a problem for the kinds of people ordering this thing.
My preferred provisioning method is to let the little Dash-like device broadcast some setup or config access point. You connect to it, get an HTML UI to input target AP credentials into, and submit the form. It works from just about any device.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not powered up, though. That's why it lasts so long on one battery. The button wakes it up.
There's a 32kHz RTC oscillator in the MCU, which can be programmed to periodically wake it up as well. Without analysing the firmware you wouldn't be able to confirm for sure what it's doing. I suppose one exercise for those inclined would be to reprogram it to listen (perhaps only during the daytime) and see how long it lasts. You wouldn't need high fidelity so a low sample rate would be enough.
> Without analysing the firmware you wouldn't be able to confirm for sure what it's doing.
It's on your own network, so it's trivial to know when it's communicating and with whom. In principle, it could periodically wake and poll a C&C server to see whether it should start streaming audio or not.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but just a few decades ago there were people dismissing all of e-commerce saying "why would I order online when I can just pick up the phone and call in my order?" I'm sure before that there were people saying, Why do I need phone ordering when I can just mail an order form to Sears? I think it's a mistake to bet against a more convenient form of consumerism.
The problem with Dash is that it doesn't really scale.
Which part of it do you think doesn't scale?
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also a key factor may have been the time required to get their own stuff certified vs using off the shelf stuff.
A lot of people prototyping in the IoT space are using the precertified modules. There's not much more to it: the transmitter is already soldered to a small piece of PCB but has the antenna and necessary tuned discretes on there and ready to go. Doesn't add much to the cost: like BillinghamJ says it's the certification time and cost that's not really worth the trouble if you can just amortize it into the cost of the…
The cost comes from adding another company to the process - the module maker.
But sure, at this stage it might not be worth it , maybe later.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#58I'm bummed that it'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 '"consumable X needs a refill/attention". We don't need a specific brand, and the brand we use can vary over time as needs and pricing change.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#59So basically Amazon is tempting you to place wifi enabled microphones around your house? I sure hope it's only capable of picking up high frequency audio.
doing more listening/processing/data transfer than just the initial setup + occasional button presses would make it drain its single AAA battery quite fast.
Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash
#60Can anyone comment as to why they'd go for a cortex M3? @120Mhz it seems like overkill for the function of this device. I know it's pretty cheap but it could have made even cheaper with a less capable micro.
First batch might be a MVP.