Microbutton
A simple small button, battery powered, to do a GET http
Headline - Button: £4 & Simple
So it is like the Amazon Dash Button - which many have hacked. What is so special; it is cheap and simple. Off the shelf parts, ebay/aliexpress ~£4.00, replaceable batteries and simple to configure.
How simple to configure ? :-
Flash firmware to board
Connect to access point MicroButton using password: microButton
Go to http://192.168.4.1/ and enter your SSID, password, and URL to get on button press
Hit reset button
Materials
- NodeMCU - ESP8266 development board - NodeMCU, ~£2.50
- AAA x 2 Battery Holder ~£1.40
- AAA x 2 Batteries ~£0.10
- 3D Printed Case - https://github.com/bmsleight/shedcode/blob/master/microbutton/case_esp8266.stl
- Software - https://github.com/bmsleight/shedcode/tree/master/microbutton
Configure
Step 1 - Flash Board
# Four lines
pip install esptool
wget https://github.com/bmsleight/shedcode/raw/master/microbutton/firmware-combined.bin
esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 erase_flash
esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 460800 write_flash --flash_size=8m 0 firmware-combined.bin
Step 2 - Access Point
Connect to access point MicroButton-xxxxxx where the x’s are replaced with part of the MAC address of your device, using password: microButton (note upper case B). Go to http://192.168.4.1/ and enter your SSID, password, and URL to get on button press.
Making it look nicer
Solder AAA battery holder to the GND (black cable) and +3V (red cable) and print the case. Place battery holder in base, add the board on top using the mounting pins. At the first part of the button to the upper case, then put cases together and add top of button.
See - Making of Microbutton to found out more technical details and how the button works.