Disassembling the Amazon Dash

http://www.bitsofcents.com/post/118749233621/disassembling-the-dash

by monkeypod • 11 years ago

117 112 11 years ago

bitsofcents.com

alaskamiller2• 11 years ago

Why not a 2G cellular modem that sends out SMS? WiFi for location?

kondro• 11 years ago

Cost of carrier access.

alaskamiller2• 11 years ago

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.

bucketsofdirt• 11 years ago

I think the first gen. kindle put them off of that.

Ecco• 11 years ago

Any clue about the software?

rooiboss• 11 years ago

So 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.

yincrash• 11 years ago

doing more listening/processing/data transfer than just the initial setup + occasional button presses would make it drain its single AAA battery quite fast.

flurdy• 11 years ago

Dash was not an April fools?

IshKebab• 11 years ago

No, and it was pretty clear it wasn't at the time tbh.

kubiiii2• 11 years ago

So clear that amazon did not bother avoiding around april 1st for the product presentation.

michaelt• 11 years ago

One neat thing Amazon are doing with this product, which I hadn't considered as an "internet of things" option, is making each unit of hardware order a single supplier's goods. All the example buttons say "Tide" or "Bounty" or "Gillette" or "Olay" right on the button - all Procter & Gamble. And the other goods pictured [1] are all brand-name goods with fairly big marketing budgets.

In the jargon of the grocery industry, this means the buttons can be "supplier funded" - Procter & Gamble probably pay Amazon a reasonable portion of the cost of the button, as a marketing method.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-button

cushychicken5• 11 years ago

That's a really insightful strategy. Amazon wins by not needing to sink more development time into cheaper hardware by getting P&G to offset costs, while P&G wins by effectively pays a one-time fee per customer per product to ensure a steady stream of sales.

Hadn't thought of that angle at all. Enlightening comment!

monkeyprojects• 11 years ago

$2 a year for a permanent advert within someone's house which also generates sales.

Sounds like a win / win for both P&G and Amazon...

deegles• 11 years ago

What if the Dash becomes very popular? I believe we'd see an explosion of companies funding dash buttons which would, in my opinion, be a bad thing for the customer. I don't like the idea of locking myself into a brand for the life of the device.

I'd like to see a configurable button that orders, say, the cheapest paper towels that have at least a 4-star rating. The suppliers probably wouldn't be happy about the competition though.

mseebach2• 11 years ago

The point of funding Dash buttons is that they're free for the consumer. You're locked in, only so far as you can't be bothered to throw out the button, or just not push it, or instead push the button provided to you for free from a competing brand.

That said, it's almost impossible to imagine that a future where Dash is successful doesn't contain configurable buttons like the ones you describe - they probably just won't be free.

DanBC• 11 years ago

I don't like the idea of locking myself into a brand for the life of the device.

You're not the target market. Some people exhibit strong brand loyalty for some stuff. In the UK you'll get people saying that baked beans must be Heinz and no other brand.

I tend to agree with you. I want a button I can push to order the cheapest washing detergent. But that gets complicated. Do I mean actual cheapest price at the till, or do I mean cheapest per wash? Does that mean I want to buy a huge 15 litre tub of industrial detergent?

that have at least a 4-star rating.

Amazon ratings are already sub-optimal. I could imagine a time when all P&G employees have to buy P&G products from Amazon, and have to give high star ratings, in order to help fix the ratings. Perhaps I'm just overly cynical.

minthd7• 11 years ago

Why does amazon use a module,instead of certifying their own ? this hopes to be a large volume project , so the savings could be considerate.

jon-wood2• 11 years ago

The article is estimating the price of one of these things as being $5 - I imagine that at least for an initial trial Amazon have decided they can make a decent return on them at that cost without certifying their own components.

BillinghamJ• 11 years ago

Also a key factor may have been the time required to get their own stuff certified vs using off the shelf stuff.

cushychicken5• 11 years ago

To me, the choice to use off the shelf hardware reflects Amazon's dedication to lean values. In this sense, they're doing the absolute minimum (using off-the-shelf hardware instead of spending 2 years spinning their own SoC) to verify that their product (on-demand household commodity ordering) is actually something people want. Makes a lot more sense in terms of turnaround time and money - if the idea proves valuable, they can start expending the effort to reduce costs through SoC development.

As the top commenter pointed out, though, I don't think they would really need to spend the time recouping those margins - since all the brands signed up for this service are big-name brands owned by Proctor and Gamble, it could indicate a relationship wherein P&G helps them absorb some of the costs of the hardware in exchange for what is effectively marketing.

joezydeco12• 11 years ago

What's also interesting is that the circuit board left on the micro-SMA connector for an external antenna.

The early press releases mention deeper hardware integration with consumer products. I'm guessing they're going to be dropping this board into other things besides the Dash product.

aioprisan• 11 years ago

Another always on microphone from Amazon in your home. Welcome to 1984!

mseebach2• 11 years ago

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.

minthd7• 11 years ago

It doesn't have to be always on, it could be remotely controlled.

PanMan• 11 years ago

I'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?

cushychicken5• 11 years ago

I'm not sure if the 8266 could be powered kinetically - wifi is particularly power hungry.

steckerbrett2• 11 years ago

The ESP8266 has peak draws of almost a watt when transmitting, unless Amazon releases a crank-to-order device that doesn't seem particularly plausible. I'm slightly surprised that they didn't use the Espresso solution here to keep their part count down, but it is possible this model is just to gauge market interest.

ohitsdom• 11 years ago

You are disappointed a wifi device isn't powered by the force of pressing a single button? High standards...

joezydeco12• 11 years ago

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 necessary information from the string of those length bytes.

The audio thing is a lot more elegant, but needs some filtering and processing to make it happen.

nemik2• 11 years ago

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.

pelf• 11 years ago

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 searching for the button we need.

madprops2• 11 years ago

Or you know, why not a phone application that would order the same thing with a single tap.

joezydeco12• 11 years ago

I think the idea is that this is eventually built right into the products. The washer with the built-in Amazon button for detergent, etc.

seanwilson• 11 years ago

I don't think the concept is so ridiculous: it's easier to press a single button that is placed in the area where you'd normally notice the product you're looking for is running out compared to getting out an mobile app or visiting a website. Ease of use is likely to lead to more sales.

Maybe the idea won't work but it sounds worth experimenting with to me.

akhatri_aus• 11 years ago

It's also about the sense of seeming control, even if the result is a perfect weekly subscription.

eli• 11 years ago

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.

kbody• 11 years ago

The problem with Dash is that it doesn't really scale.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

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 of us drive to the grocery store. There's a larger convenience in having all these products at your fingertips, trying different brands, shopping for lower priced items, seeking deals, etc. You lose this flexibility with the Dash. Its also really ugly to have what look like ads plastered all over your home.

I'm surprised we all don't have a home robot with enough computer vision and fuzzy logic to figure out what we're low on and produce a list of items that need to be bought that week. I feel like some kind of robot revolution that was supposed to happen never did, so we're finding weird automation solutions that don't really work. I imagine this is what is was like when computers were rare and you could only use the ones at work because home computers weren't a thing yet. Smith-Corona kept making better and better typewriters but you really just want a word processor and printer.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

It's the mindless-consumerism aspect of the idea that I find most disturbing: "press this button to feed yourself with product".

soylentcola• 11 years ago

I'm tempted to start a conspiracy theory that these are just phase one of a plan to eventually have us all living in actual Skinner boxes.

Goronmon• 11 years ago

How mindful does a task such as "Buy another tube of toothpaste" or "Buy more shampoo" need to be?

kubiiii2• 11 years ago

I especially find the instant delivery order disturbing. Is that even close to necessary in 90% of the use cases? Putting the product in a shopping cart would be more than enough and would allow group shipping.

swalsh• 11 years ago

I can't speak for Amazon, but I've cancelled every single recurring order I've ever setup.

I once had coffee on recurring order. Then I went on vacation, and I was always one tin ahead. Then I had a business trip, and I was 2 tins ahead, then I was sick for a week and didn't want to eat anything. it was too much.

I once set up a recurring order on wine, at first I drank a bottle every other day. What fun! but then I just wanted a glass with dinner every now and then. Bottles started piling up, and now I have a good $100 of wine that tastes like vinegar.

Recurring orders suck. If you have a huge house to store things if you aren't on a perfect schedule it might work. For normal people, it's not ideal.

viggity• 11 years ago

we have diapers on recurring delivery (honest company, not amazon), but they send us an email asking us if we still want them or if we want to delay shipment by a week, two weeks, etc. Seems to work fine. Does Amazon not do the same thing?

rtkwe5• 11 years ago

I don't see this becoming a single button for ever item in the house. I see the Dash button riding the middle ground between objects that you have highly predictable usage patterns or have a proscribed life span like toothbrushes where recurring orders make sense and less predictable items like paper towels where usage is harder to predict.

I think the goal is also to make using the button easier than just opening the webpage and ordering it so that when you notice you're running low you can just press the button instead of doing what most people do and adding it to a grocery list. It's also far easier than figuring out how often to set up the recurring ordering.

Their aim is at the utility closet and bathroom consumables like soaps/detergents, paper towels, and maybe cleaning products. Things that are stored an some particular place in the house where when you're getting low on X you push the button and get more 2-3 days later.

jacobr12• 11 years ago

Or have it built into the bottle, perhaps even measuring the current fill level.

hammock• 11 years ago

I believe it's not intended to be an actual product for very long. Its a stepping stone to get consumers to the point where they are making purchases in situ, via the Amazon Echo for example. It's a behavior grooming thing, a social test balloon.

mason552• 11 years ago

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.

rickyc091• 11 years ago

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.

mbesto• 11 years ago

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

It's a button for every repeatable commodity buy you make. Most applicable use cases are: toilet paper, detergent, cleaning supplies, certain groceries. In other words, it eliminates pretty much all friction to ensuring that you're always stocked with those products. You're right to be skeptical, but even just reducing a small amount of friction to buying means better convenience for the consumer and more money for Amazon.

davb• 11 years ago

Can anyone recommend any resources on power management on something like this?

My background in electronics is quite basic though I'd love to understand how they managed to build an ARM-based, battery-powered device that is predicted to last for years. I know it's not "always on" but it's fascinating nonetheless and I think building something similar would make for a fun project.

minthd7• 11 years ago

Basically it always sleeps, and wakes only when you press the button - does it job rapidly and goes back to sleep.

Since you rarely press the button , it can live for years.

steckerbrett2• 11 years ago

Most microcontrollers have extremely low power sleep states, maintaining interrupts on external inputs often only draws the smallest amounts of power. When you're designing for low power electronics like this you often run into the problem of the self discharge of the battery completely dwarfing any consumption your microcontroller has. I'm reasonably confident they chose a lithium AAA simply because they have very low self discharge, and a AAA over something like a coin cell due to the rather enormous amount of power needed to transmit 802.11.

I get the feeling that this device is pretty tentative for Amazon, they haven't gone to huge lengths to keep the price of the build down. In particular there's also a connector on the bottom right of the PCB that looks a lot like it could be for a small screen or some other peripheral.

TickleSteve3• 11 years ago

The main loop looks something like this: Note that the button is hooked up to an interrupt to wake the processor and return from the Sleep() fn.

  main()
    while true
      Sleep();
      InitialiseNetworkStack();
      SendPacketToAmazon();

cubano• 11 years ago

We wanted flying cars, but instead we got one-button branded soap ordering.

a8da6b0c91d• 11 years ago

I just want a milkman who comes daily and reads my handwritten note, like we used to have.

sukilot• 11 years ago

Instasoap can't kill each other, tho.

Sanddancer• 11 years ago

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.

joezydeco12• 11 years ago

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.

meesterdude• 11 years ago

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?

spacefight• 11 years ago

"Also on the bottom is the small microphone used for setting up the Dash."

Damn... another microphone in your household capable of recording sounds near that device.

tomkinstinch• 11 years ago

I'll put in a shameless mention that this is exactly the sort of content my STEM education side project, TakeItApart[1] was meant to centralize. OP, we'd love to see the Dash included on TakeItApart so others can learn from your breakdown.

This annotation of the Dash components is terrific. It would be fun to probe the exposed pads to see if they have left an STM32 SWIM/JTAG header available. It's interesting that they choose to use a AAA battery but did not include a battery door so that users could replace it. Perhaps that is coming? Still, the power optimization is impressive considering how power hungry it can be to do wi-fi RF transmission (on the order of a 1 watt).

1. https://www.takeitapart.com/get-started

maguirre• 11 years ago

Can 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.

jfoster3• 11 years ago

First batch might be a MVP.

TickleSteve3• 11 years ago

The setup process involves some audio processing which requires slightly more than trivial signal processing and also some RAM usage... Also handling the network stack requires some RAM. The combination of those two requirements and the low cost of the STM32s of that level of capability mean it was probably a sensible choice.

zwieback• 11 years ago

I'm surprised they went with F205, though. There are 32Lxxx chips with similar capabilities and lower power.

The whole thing looks like a quick turn of a reference design and the real low-cost design will follow later on.

ukandy• 11 years ago

Irresponsible product design. Unnecessary and throwaway.

ISL• 11 years ago

I'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.

rtkwe5• 11 years ago

You will see a list of available options from the product line your Dash Button is associated with. For example, if your Dash Button can be used for Tide detergent, you may see a list of various Tide detergent scents and sizes that you can choose from. Tap the item to select it.[0]

That is disappointing, from the early materials it seemed like the face plate was just branding and you could select anything you wanted. They're probably partnering with the various brands that there are buttons for pay some of the cost of manufacturing the devices. There might be a non brand locked version coming in the future once they've moved past the initial release and rollout. At least I hope so.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

minthd7• 11 years ago

Maybe this could help:

http://www.ecinews.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti...

danielsamuels• 11 years ago

I imagine if you build up a collection of these for a variety of products you'll need something to hold them all, perhaps it could be called a DashBoard?

cognivore• 11 years ago

Why is it I feel like this is just something that is designed to get me more working hours?

I like going to the store, socializing, finding things to try, being a human. Pushing a button doesn't do it for me.

discardorama• 11 years ago

To steal someone else's tweet:

AOL in a big media deal, Clinton running for office, stocks at all time highs, new cuecat is here. What's not to love about 2000?

Disassembling the Amazon Dash

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