Amazon's Dash buttons are typically used to order household staples and groceries at the push of a button --- installed around the house they offer frictionless consumerism at its finest. But since the company launched a programmable IoT version last year, Dash buttons have the potential to do much more. One enterprising programmer has reimagined it as an easy way to donate to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nathan Pryor says that the idea came from a friend who wished there was an ACLU Dash button one could push to donate "any time I read about the latest offense from Trump."
He diligently ordered the customizable IoT Dash button and got to work on the coding. There is no donation API for the ACLU so Pryor had to write his own script, which would invisibly load up the donation page and fill out all his details including a pre-set $5 donation amount.
After testing it a with prepaid gift card so his bank account wasn't drained if the script got stuck in some kind of infinite donation loop, he was good to go in a few hours.
"The button resides near my laptop now, and every press sends another $5 into the fight. Sure, I could set up a recurring donation every month, but then I'd lose the tactile thrill of the press, and I wouldn't have learned my way around this technology."
Pryor has provided a link to download the script on his Medium page for anyone that wants to tinker with it. He does warn, however, that he can't offer guarantees about suitability or security. "if they change a field name or the way the donation page works, it'll break... Use it at your own risk," Pryor wrote.