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Disassembling the Amazon Dash

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Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#81

Post by efsavage »

kbody wrote: post #47
eli wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

It scales as much as is needed, which is basically zero. The rate of growth in the number of products I buy is effectively zero. I use one shaving cream, one soap, one shampoo, one detergent, the same number I used 10, 20, 30 years ago and the same I will likely use for the rest of my life.

Also, I don't need a wall of buttons, a few inside the bathroom cabinet, a few inside the kitchen cabinet, a few at my workbench, in the garage, in my shed, is all I need.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#82

Post by jfoster »

jacobr1 wrote: post #79
jfoster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of it do you think doesn't scale?

Each product has its own button

If each button is seen as ad and paid for by the brand shown on it, the costs likely look good from both Amazon's perspective and the brand's perspective.

A button that costs somewhere between $5 and $10 might result in something like $240 worth of sales over its lifetime. (eg. 1 sale per month x $10 sale price x estimated 24 month lifetime)

Seems scalable to me.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#83

Post by meesterdude »

joezydeco wrote: post #38
Sanddancer wrote: post #34

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'm giving it at most a week before interesting things are done with these.

Or one could just (pre)order the $19 Spark Photon and get a working module with code, schematics, and support. Depends how you value your time.

i hate preorders! everything cool is preorder! Why can't the future be here today?

is the spark photon really equiv to the dash? or does it still need other components in addition?

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#84

Post by __Joker »

kbody wrote: post #47
eli wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

Some form of Dash exist with industrial manufacturing and assembly( some part call it bins) Where the no of items are limited ,where obviously it scales nicely. To think that the Dash is a solution for all the items is not productive. I think Dash may have market for consumer items like diapers,sodas, Ramens kind of stuff, basically which once you consume more frequently.

Writing it off might be premature, at least it is worth a try.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#85

Post by gambiting »

alaskamiller wrote: post #8
kondro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost of carrier access.

Spark Devices negotiated with Telefonica for $3/1mb/mo global data plans. Maybe the bigger question is... why can't there be cheaper data plans available.

$3 a month? That's really expensive for essentially a dumb button. Why would you bother with a 3G modem if you can just use someone's Wi-Fi? Especially since there's probably no GSM signal in your laundry cupboard,but a wifi router will be nearby.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#87

Post by mason55 »

pelf wrote: post #17

Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous? I mean, what'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? I guess we'll need to sort them alphabetically or by color, so we don't waste time searchin…

> Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous?

I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy?

In markets with Amazon Fresh they are also trialing a single-device Dash. It operates as a barcode scanner and microphone and adds things to your Dash List on Fresh. Then you can go in and edit them or actually confirm them to your cart.

I have one and it's very, very useful. It hangs from my fridge and whenever I finish something I scan it and when I think of something I need I just speak it into the mic. It made me an instant convert from FreshDiret.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#88

Post by mason55 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #75
eli wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

>Sure, but just a few decades ago there were people dismissing all of e-commerce Were they? From what I recall people were saying, "Why isn't this catalog a webpage yet?" I'm not sure if buying a bunch of little buttons and plastering them all over my house is necessarily convenient. Convenience is largely counter-intuitive. For example, you'd think everyone would get their groceries delivered at this point, but most…

> "Why isn't this catalog a webpage yet?"

Ah, Google's ill-fated attempt to scan all catalogs and put them online

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#89

Post by rickyc091 »

mason55 wrote: post #87
pelf wrote: post #17

Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous? I mean, what'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? I guess we'll need to sort them alphabetically or by color, so we don't waste time searchin…

> Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous? I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy? In markets with Amazon Fresh they are also trialing a single-device Dash. It operates as a barcode scanner and microphone and adds things to your Dash List on Fresh. Then you can go in and edit them or actually confirm them to your cart. I have one and it's very, very useful.…

Also a owner of the dash and I'll confirm it's pretty useful. You can also think of it as a registry tool. If you bring it into a store, you can scan a bunch of products and it'll sync up to the cloud when you connect back to wifi.

Re: Disassembling the Amazon Dash

#90

Post by ceequof »

danellis wrote: post #55
userbinator wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing forces it to be on your network. If there's a neighbor with open wifi, or easily cracked wifi, or wifi Amazon already has the key for, (from an Amazon tablet/phone that's been connected to it before) then it could talk on that instead.
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