🔴 Send Slack Alerts With a Staples Easy Button

We’ve all seen the Easy Button commercials from Staples, but though that store might make office tasks easier, you have to do more than literally press a button, right?

Normally, that might be true, but hacker Nick Sypteras decided to mod one of these buttons into a device that notifies him via Slack, allowing visitors to his cubicle to alert him of their presence in a less startling and annoying manner when he’s wearing headphones.

For this build, he disassembled the button and cut several traces on the PCB inside in order to isolate the actual switch. He then wired in the ESP8266-based Adafruit HUZZAH board, which listens for a button press and sends him a Slack alert over Wi-Fi.

A clever solution, eliminating more disruptive ways of getting Sypteras’ attention!