A smart button is one press that does something in your system: reorder a supply, call for help, check in, start a job. It looks like the simplest device there is. It is not, and most of the work is invisible. This page covers what to decide first, when an off-the-shelf button is enough, and what a custom one involves.
Four questions to answer first
What does a press do? One action, or different actions for a single, double and long press. Which system does it reach? Your app, your server, a messaging tool or an ERP. How many? One for a pilot, tens for a site, hundreds for customers. Sample or production? A working sample to try with real users, or a run you can hand out. The answers decide the radio, the battery and the enclosure.
Off-the-shelf first
Flic prints your logo on each button and gives businesses a free SDK, including a hub SDK for connecting to internal software and MQTT. If a Flic with your logo does the job, start there. What it cannot change is everything except the print: the shape, the electronics and the route through Flic's app or hub stay Flic's. A custom button makes sense when the button has to look and feel like your product, report straight to your own server, or do something a standard button does not.
Why a simple button is not simple
A button on a wall switch is a contact. A wireless one is a small computer that has to sleep almost all the time, wake on a press, send a packet, get an acknowledgement and go back to sleep, with encryption so nobody else can press it for you. A Hackaday write-up of an nRF52 button from April 2026 walks through exactly that: power consumption, waking the chip, handshakes and acknowledgements, then security.
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cellular?
Bluetooth LE lasts longest on a small battery but needs a phone or a hub nearby. Wi-Fi talks to your server directly with no hub, uses more power and has to be set up on each network. Cellular works anywhere and needs no local setup, and adds a data plan and more certification work. Which one is right follows from where the button lives and who sets it up.
Why buttons tied to someone else's platform disappear
Amazon stopped selling its AWS IoT button in January 2020, after it had already discontinued the Dash button; a customer who had bought nearly 2,300 of them over three years found out as sales stopped. A button you have made can report to your own server, so it lasts as long as your service does rather than someone else's product line.
What does Anvol need from you?
Your answers to the four questions, even rough ones, and your logo if the button carries it. Anvol replies with the version it would build first, the choices that drive the cost, and the one question it needs answered before it can cost it. Talking to Anvol and getting a cost is free.
What the first sample round gives you
A first round can be a single sample. It ends with the working button and the files behind it: schematic, enclosure 3D model (STEP), test report, photos and video. A 30% deposit starts a round; the balance is due after you approve the sample. A small batch of tens to hundreds follows, each unit tested before it is boxed, with a certification test report such as FCC where it applies. You own what you make.
Other devices for your app: an NFC object, an e-ink display, or start with which kind your app needs. A cost is not a guaranteed final price or delivery date, and nothing is charged or started without your approval. How Anvol works · More answers.
Reviewed September 29, 2026. Talk to Anvol