Loyal readers! Did you think this blog was dead? I’m back with another post, well over a year since my last. Living up to the blog’s name.
Recently there’s been some talk about a new “product” from Amazon the so-called Amazon Dash button. Amazon has created a small device to be placed near where you commonly use certain products. When the button the device is pressed the product in question will automatically be ordered via the consumer’s local wifi connection.
Frankly I think this is an interesting product just the way Amazon intended it. However, given that it cost me $4.99 and contains an ARM Cortex-M3 (capable of operation at up to 120MHz), BCM943362 WiFi module and various other goodies including flash for application storage, an LED and button and a microphone. (normally used to configure the dash button with an iOS device) For those who like to play with electronics, this is a very interesting platform/price point.
The device has already proven to be reprogrammable, and the WiFi module should be able to be utilized as well. I’ve gone ahead and soldered tiny wires to the PCB test pads for reprogramming with a standard ST-Link adapter. This wasn’t fun for me given how small the pads are and how shaky my hands seem to be. I purchased some pogo-pins with the intention of creating a programming adapter for these boards but decided to skip all that and solder direct. In retrospect, I should have built the adapter with the pogo pins. Maybe I’ll produce a future blog post covering that.
Other people have done good work covering the internals of these devices as well as how to reprogram them so I won’t repeat that here.
Please check out these links for more information: