Amazon Discontinues the Dash Button

Another Internet of Things device bites the dust.  Amazon announced today it will discontinue selling the Dash Buttons.  These silly little Wi-Fi buttons were originally intended to be placed in a connected home and then when you ran out of things (sponsored buttons like Bounty), you would press the button and then paper towels would be ordered and sent to your house via Prime.  The Dash buttons were super cheap (5 bucks USD) and often went on sale for 99 cents on prime day events.  I personally bought dozens of them and never once used them as intended. 🙂 Instead, I used the amazing Dasher open source project by @Maddox and used them as really cheap smart switches.  For instance, I had one of them in my pill box and every time I took my nightly pill, I pressed the button and Home Assistant recorded the event.  Then later in the day if I still had not taken the pill, I would get notifications and alerts reminding me.  It was and is still a GREAT automation! 

Thankfully, since these buttons work completely LOCAL with Home Assistant and Dasher, it doesn’t affect me at all that Amazon is now discontinuing them.   The only thing that affects me is I can no longer buy new ones.  Since they were so cheap, when the battery died on one, I would normally just toss it.  Now I guess I will have to replace the battery or just start replacing my Dash buttons with Amazon Echo Buttons.  The Echo buttons are twice the price at 10 bucks each but look way more useful (and colorful).  Check out the unboxing video down below for the Echo Buttons.

Happy Automating!

– Carlo