Advertisement

Amazon widens its horizons with its AWS IoT Dash Button

AWS_IoT_button_shortAmazon is the latest to embrace Internet of Things with the launch of its ‘Amazon Web Services Internet of Things’ or the AWS IoT product – AWS IoT Dash button.

Even though, the Dash button was launched last year with a simple idea – a single push of this button could allow the Amazon customers to order and replenish products from over 100 brands. However, each brand was associated with a different dash button and the specific product and quantity to be ordered had to be set up using the smartphone app.

The latest buzz for this news, however is, for the developer community as the e-commerce giant has decided to expand on the technology, but is targeting developers to program their functions, beyond just ordering more of something.

Amazon wants developers to be able to create applications that can operate any device without device-specific code. Thus, they can code the button’s logic to customize and find new use cases to it. Further, it can even be programmed to respond to inputs other than push, such as a double click or a long press.

Thus, this button could be used for varying purposes, from something as simple as unlocking a car or calling a cab to keeping track of your household chores, counting and tracking items, calling someone, ordering services such as pizza or even providing feedback.

The only downside that we can pinpoint at the moment is the user-friendliness. Since the target audience is developers, the average customers might not be able to get through the setup as coding ability for either Node.js, Python or Java, etc. is required to connect the button with third party devices. Now, even though the dash button can be connected to WiFi and is configurable on smartphones or tablets; developers have to configure their WiFi network, following which they can allocate tasks after finishing the consecutive steps. Moreover, we are hopeful that the future versions will be more user friendly.

Another drawback could be the battery of the button. According to Amazon, 1,000 presses of the button is the limit and the battery is not rechargeable or replaceable. So, users have to buy another button (maybe they could launch another dash button for it!) after their last push.

While the original Dash Button is priced at $5, the AWS IoT is available at a significantly higher price. Moreover, this could also prove to be revolutionary as it widens the horizons of the companies that are considering building their own applications. Moreover, it could move beyond household and play an important role in the industrial scenario. For example, inventories could be updated on time in factories without delays.

We would like to hear suggestions on what you think can be done with this device. Leave your comments below!

Download our Mobile App

Apoorva Verma
As the Content Strategist for Analytics India magazine, Apoorva takes care of editing & writing articles, covering analytics news, taking interviews and managing the social media marketing.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Join our editors every weekday evening as they steer you through the most significant news of the day.
Your newsletter subscriptions are subject to AIM Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Our Upcoming Events

15th June | Online

Building LLM powered applications using LangChain

17th June | Online

Mastering LangChain: A Hands-on Workshop for Building Generative AI Applications

Jun 23, 2023 | Bangalore

MachineCon 2023 India

26th June | Online

Accelerating inference for every workload with TensorRT

MachineCon 2023 USA

Jul 21, 2023 | New York

Cypher 2023

Oct 11-13, 2023 | Bangalore

3 Ways to Join our Community

Telegram group

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Discord Server

Stay Connected with a larger ecosystem of data science and ML Professionals

Subscribe to our Daily newsletter

Get our daily awesome stories & videos in your inbox
MOST POPULAR