IoT devices are available for a seemingly endless number of task, many of them controlled by a smartphone. On the one hand, you likely carry this device with you nearly continuously, but after you log into your phone, open the required app, do whatever action is needed, and put it away, you may be better off just using a switch!
Of course there is an alternative; just wire a single button up to the Internet to do your bidding. Amazon has been taking advantage of this for quite some time with their Dash buttons. Though originally meant to help you order consumable items, they were immediately opened and creatively repurposed. Hackaday did an early blurb about them, or check out this article article written in 2017, featuring 26 hacks for these little gadgets!
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Another interesting alternative is the 1btn, seen in the above video. It’s purpose-built for general IoT use, and for standard actions, such as sending a text message or posting to Twitter, it should be quite easy to set up. Given its open source design, it could also be adapted to all kinds of more complicated IoT tasks.
Importantly, this device doesn’t maintain a connection to the Internet. It wakes up when pushed, does its duty, gives you LED light feedback, and goes back to sleep. This allows the battery to last somewhere around 300 presses, and takes 5-7 seconds to complete its sleep-action-sleep cycle.
You won’t be using it as a button-mashing game controller, but it’s a great device for less time-critical actions. Trying to remember when you changed the water filter in the kitchen? Want a reminder ten days after you cleaned the bathroom to do it again? This is a key to automating infrequency.
