Staples Easy Button Hack and Resource Page

I get so much traffic on my site from random searches on hacking the Easy Button. Staples Office Supply store sells these to reinforce their advertising campaign that you can get everything in one place for your buisiness. Proceeds, (up to $1 million) from the sale of these $5 buttons also goes to Boys and Girls clubs of America.

To my knowledge, I was the first one to crack the thing open and circuit bend it. I made a song from the weird sounds it made. After that, I got a new button and replaced the soundboard with a circuit board from a Radio Shack voice memo recorder. Here’s the video that came out of that.

Incidentally, I also had some detailed instructions for how to do it, but lost most of the work when my hosting company pulled the plug on my server without telling me. I lost two years worth of blogs including the easy button stuff. Here’s a basic recreation of that.

First, get a Staple’s Easy Button. You can get them in Spanish now, too. Flip it over and take off the little black rubber feet. That reveals 4 screws that hold the thing together. Take it all apart and

You’ll want one of these too. I picked it up at Radio Shack. It was like $8, I think. It’s a voice memo recorder.

You need to unscrew the case and remove the circuit board. Hang onto those batteries. There are easier ways to do this (see below), but this is how I made mine.

After that, I cleared out the plastic where the old circuit board sat so I could fit the new board in place. I had to get rid of the metal clicker too. I used a soldering iron. I recommend a dremel tool.

These are shots of the voice memo recorder showing where the record button attaches and how things are wired roughly. You should be able to derive where things should go based on what buttons and contacts did their thing in the voice recorder to begin with. There are larger pics at Flickr.

And here’s the original board from the Easy Button. I’m not using it’s audio anymore. Just the switch–that rubbery white thing–to “play” the memo recorder. The switch is still triggered with the huge red button, just no clicker.

And the coolest part. Take out the batteries and use the space for the record button, microphone, and an LED that tells you you’re recording. Just drill proper holes and fish the button through from the inside.

The way I did it took quite awhile and the inside is a mess. In fact, so much so that the batteries have gone out awhile ago, but it’s such a rat’s nest, that I don’t really want to open it to change the batteries.

The project has appeared on Hackaday.com and Makezine.com. I think it’s the reason my site is on stumbleupon.com. I felt badly that these links have been dead for about 5 months now, so I wanted to rebuild some kind of Easy Button resource page for people looking to hack this thing. Seems like a lot of people are interested…

EASY BUTTON HACK WEB LINKS

• A garage door opener project that came shortly after mine. His Flickr Photos are beautiful, too. He got dugg for this one.
• Here’s the “Evil button” (pdf). It was the one linked at Hackaday. It had a video.
• Here’s the Easy Button as a Musical Interface.
• And this one is just too cool with the big potentiometer on the front. Be sure to listen to the sounds it’s making. Crazy.
• This hack is the one you want, but the video moves pretty quick. Fortunately, he put the detailed instructions on his page.
• And just to round out this list, here’s a virtual easy button you can put on your computer to get to Staple’s Web site.
• And a Mac dashboard widget Easy Button.
• A few interesting blog posts on the Easy Button:
  Sundog.net
  2020church

BY THE WAY: Since you’re here, why not take a look around. I’ve just released a new CD and you might like it. Check it out at iTunes or at amiestreet.com/jeffcaylor. You can buy the CD online at cdbaby.com. Peace out!

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