Echo Buttons are much more useful than you might think. They can be used to play games but they can also be used to control your environment and make announcements. In one facility serving people with disabilities, echo buttons are used to initiate Amazon Alexa routines that vary from turning on and setting the temperature of a smart oven to announcing that a client needs help in one of the bathrooms. There’s already a design for an Echo Button mount on Thingiverse. All we did was to extend the housing for stability, add a lever arm and a fulcrum for the arm to attach to. The result looks like this:
The final print is comprised of five pieces. A housing that serves as the base that sits on a horizontal surface or screws onto a wall, a screw-on retention ring, a lever arm, a small bumper, and two semi-circular posts. The two semi-circular posts can be glued together to create a cylinder or can just be left as is and inserted into the arm assembly hole together. They’re designed and printed as halves of a cylinder to make them as strong as possible without requiring the use of supports. The bumper should (optionally) be printed using a flexible filament to protect the plastic face of the button.
The bumper glues into a circular recess on the underside of the lever arm.
The STL files for this device can be downloaded from Printables.
The arm provides an approximate 3.5 to 1 mechanical advantage. Normally, it takes about 700 grams of “force” to activate the button. With the lever arm, it takes only 200 grams of force.
To change the batteries on the echo button you can swing the lever arm back and unscrew the retention ring. If the arm is still in the way and prevents you from unscrewing the retention ring, just slide the attachment post out and remove the arm entirely.