Hacker News Reader

Nothing with WiFi will ever be coin cell battery powered. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be battery powered for a year or longer with bigger batteries. Otherwise you'll need a different radio technology.

View on HN

> Nothing with WiFi will ever be coin cell battery powered.

Well, except for all the coin cell operated matter over WiFi smart buttons / remotes / switches you can buy from just about anywhere…

None of those are using WiFi. Most use a different radio technology and require a hub to bridge the network.

I think some do use regular wifi, especially the amazon ones, but with a button you have an advantage where you could just stay idle and off the network most of the time, and only connect to send an event when pressed.

That likely increases your latency by a fair bit. Most of my devices take a second-ish to connect, configure the WiFi stack and start sending data.

I’m not sure I’d want a full second of latency on button presses. I would have figured Amazon used BTLE to the Alexa and used it as a BT to WiFi gateway

BTLE and/or their IoT mesh network (Sidewalk?) would be a good way to go too, but if it's just a button to reorder laundry detergent or something then I don't think even a 30 second delay would be a deal killer for most people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com