When Amazon’s Dash Buttons were first revealed not many people saw them as a must-have item despite facilitating your life by ordering your most-used household items. However, their basic function can be reprogrammed to complete various tasks with just the press of a button. For example, thanks to the new ACLU dash button, you can easily donate $5 to the organization.
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has polarized the world and the US, with many people from the opposite political spectrum are becoming more active in politics by taking a stance against the controversial policies of the current administration.
One way to do so is to donate to organizations that represent your values like the ACLU, which has seen record-breaking donations in the last few weeks. Now, a programmer, Nathan Pryor, has facilitated the task of donating with the ACLU Dash button, by clicking every time Donald Trump makes you frustrated.
Pryor described how he came up with the idea and how the button was actually developed in a Medium post. He revealed that the idea initially came from a friend of his, who wished to have an ACLU Dash button, as a way to combat the policies of the current administration by funding organizations who are going to fight against his agenda.
Once he settled on the idea, he had to create his own Python script to set up an automatic donation, as ACLU does not offer any API or programming tool to facilitate donations. He installed the script to the AWS Lamda, Amazon’s cloud platform, which he connected to the programmable $20 Dash button. The donation was confirmed through a text message.
Through a process of trial and error, Pryor had successfully received that message confirming his donation. All he had to do is decorate the button with an ACLU graphic, in a similar fashion to other Dash buttons.
While this is a somewhat roundabout way to donate to ACLU, which support recurrent donations each month, the ACLU Dash button does provide more gratification to people. There’s nothing like reading the latest move by the administration and then pressing the button in retaliation.
What do you think about the ACLU Dash button?
Image credit: Nathan Pryor