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I'm looking for large, battery powered customizable Bluetooth buttons (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am looking for some sort of big programmable buttons. Not sure if something simple exists.

Basically, this is to enhance flow through clinic, looking for a relatively simple solution.

I just want some big battery-powered bluetooth buttons that I can give custom commands in tasker to text tell people to assist with tasks or bring me certain things. I'm not sure if something simple like this exists. (Thinking of like three or four different colored "easy" buttons).

I haven't found anything quite as specific as this, but it's been something nerdy I've been thinking about that would save me time.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

those dog buttons would do exactly what you want... might be weird, but its bluetooth, you can have dozens of task-specific buttons and assign buttons to other people via email and such.. iphone/android app

heres the one i use. https://fluent.pet/collections/connect

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Those look like they put old flic buttons into a shell. Speaking of Flic button might work too. They are Bluetooth and support ifft and other protocols

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Why Bluetooth?

I'd do something with zigbee and home assistant. Plenty of cheap zigbee buttons can be found on aliexpress

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I second Zigbee.

There's plenty of devices available.
Battery life is amazing.
zigbee2mqtt is an easy way to bring those messages into your regular IP network; they have a huge list of supported devices.
Once translated to MQTT, you can hook any automation onto it you want: a python script, home assistant, or my recommendation in this case, NodeRED. NodeRED has a module for zigbee2mqtt that is very well integrated to just know all devices registered on your zigbee network and stringing flows together is actually fun once you get the hang of it. Plus, there is no upper bound to flow complexity.
Gateway device can be a sonoff zigbee USB coordinator and the whole thing can comfortably run on a rpi3.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Read your reply now, and not sure about the requirements you have: must not leave the local devices or must not use the WiFi?

If it's the latter, a 4g USB modem with a cheap iot data plan easily frees you of that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

This would be great, I'm okay with hubitat and smartthings (i havent used completely off of wifi, but i have a few hubs laying around), but I have a few limitations I'm not sure how to get around.. this is purely for personal convenience and IT surely would not sign off on anything network connected due to hippa.

If there was a way to have a zigbee or wave button system that was independent of a wifi network that would at least send a message to my phone, that would be ideal. I'm not sure how to do that.

Edit: I haven't had my smartthings or hubitat set up for about 8 months since I moved, but if there was a way to have them running, not constantly connected to wifi (other than when I initially set up), and have them send a message to my phone, I think that would be a pretty sweet set up.

It's been a bit since I used smartthings, I remember the local stuff being so so and it seemed like it was taken away (perhaps I'm misremembering this). I was never as facile with hubitat to be honest, but if this is possible I'd love to look into it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Last edit: looks like may be a way to do this in hubitat. I'm going to put some thought into this. Thanks!!

Probably needs a raspberry pi or something to do what I want.. maybe i will figure it out to save a minute or two on different encounters (looking for folks). That time adds up for me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Try looking for "smart buttons". There's nothing particularly "smart" about them, but they're called that because they're meant to connect to smart home devices like lights and switches and such. They're relatively inexpensive, and while some of them are locked down to specific platforms like Hue and such, some of them are a bit more "open" and will just act as a basic, programmable button that can connect to another device/network and may require some Tasker fiddling to get working correctly.

If you don't need the buttons to be spread out across multiple locations, you could also look into a macro pad of some sort, which is basically just a keyboard with keys that you can assign various functions to. Those will typically require a PC, but can handle a lot of automated tasks pretty effectively, too.