Anti-Trump ACLU Amazon Dash Button Donates With Every Press
If the current administration is good at one thing, it would probably be frustrating people on the other side of the political spectrum. Make no mistake, the policies Donald Trump has either put into place or proposed since taking office have been met with a lot of controversy, but now one programmer has given us a positive way to vent our frustration. Say hello to the ACLU Amazon Dash button, where a single press will donate $5 to the non-profit organization.
Obviously, this isn't offered by Amazon, as Amazon's official line up of Dash buttons simply cover products and not donations to non-profits. What Amazon does offer, however, is a customizable IoT button that people can use for their own purposes. That's what programmer Nathan Pryor purchased when one of his friends brought up the idea of a Dash button that allows you donate to the ACLU whenever you read about "the latest offense from Trump."
After he had the button ordered, he began writing his own donation script in Python since there was no existing donation API he could find. This script would autofill a donation form with all of the relevant information and send Pryor a text message to his phone when the $5 donation went through.
With the script finished, he began the rather tough task of implementing it with the Dash button itself. It was only after "hours of frustration and troubleshooting," that Pryor was able to get his script linked with the Dash button he'd ordered. Then it was a matter of printing off a graphic for the face of the Dash button and finding a place to to put it – it currently sits near his laptop, so it's never far off when he's browsing the web and comes across news of Trump's latest exploits.
While Pryor admits that he could have just as easily set up a recurring donation to the ACLU, he also notes that there's a certain "tactile thrill," in pressing a Dash button that's been loaded with a script he wrote. If you want to pick up an IoT Dash button and try this for yourself, Pryor has made his code available at his website, which is linked as the source below. Just a fair warning: Pryor says that this is a "use at your own risk," type of thing, as he doesn't make any "claims as to its suitability or security."
SOURCE: Nathan Pryor