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Shelf buttons (dash buttons, reborn)

Remember Amazon Dash buttons? Pantry Raider brings the idea home, with no cloud and no vendor account. Stick a cheap Bluetooth button on a pantry shelf, next to the paper towels or on the coffee bin, and a press adds that product straight to your shopping list. A double or long press can do something else: add a different product, or start a kitchen timer, or fire any action a Stream Deck key could.

Everything happens on your own network. The button broadcasts its press over Bluetooth, the same reader that listens for your thermometers and fridge sensors hears it, and the app runs whatever you mapped. Nothing is paired or connected, and battery life is measured in years because the button sleeps until pressed.

Supported buttons

The button has to broadcast its presses in a format Pantry Raider can read. Two formats are supported:

  • BTHome buttons (recommended). BTHome is a published, open Bluetooth broadcast standard, and the Shelly BLU Button1 is the flagship: a coin-cell button around $10-15 that broadcasts single, double, triple, and long presses plus its battery level, unencrypted out of the box. The four-button Shelly BLU RC Button 4 works too (each of its buttons maps separately), and so does any DIY ESPHome device that broadcasts BTHome button events. If you are buying a button just for this, buy a BTHome one.
  • Xiaomi Bluetooth switches, unencrypted broadcasts only. Buttons that broadcast plain (unencrypted) MiBeacon press events work. Be aware that many Xiaomi devices start encrypting their broadcasts once bound to the Mi Home app, and encrypted broadcasts cannot be read; the BTHome buttons above are the safer purchase.

Not supported, honestly: encrypted BTHome devices (they need a per-device key exchange that has no place in a press-to-add flow; Shelly buttons ship with encryption off), encrypted Xiaomi MiBeacon, and SwitchBot's remote fobs (their press broadcasts are not reliably decodable without a connection). A button that only speaks Zigbee or Z-Wave is a different radio entirely; bring those in through Home Assistant automations calling the Pantry Raider API instead.

Adding a button

Buttons ride the same Bluetooth reader as the thermometers, so if probes or fridge sensors already work on your device there is nothing more to install; see Bluetooth kitchen thermometers for the one-time reader setup.

  1. Open Settings, Thermometers & Sensors, and find the Shelf buttons section.
  2. Click Listen for a press, then press any button on the device. A button only broadcasts when pressed, so the press is what makes it appear; it shows up marked "just pressed" within a few seconds.
  3. Click Add, give it a name that says where it lives ("Paper towels shelf"), and map its presses.

Each button maps three press types independently: single, double, and long. Each one can:

  • Add a product to the shopping list. Start typing and pick the product from your Grocy inventory; the exact product is linked, so it lands on the list properly, not as loose text.
  • Run an action. Any action token the Start Page and Stream Deck understand: timer_eggs, timer_pasta, an ha_1..ha_5 Home Assistant slot, or a custom key id. One press can start the egg timer from across the kitchen.
  • Do nothing (the default).

Use Try it next to a mapping to run it once without pressing the button, and watch the kitchen screen: every successful press shows a toast ("Paper Towels added to Shopping list") so whoever pressed it knows it worked.

Good to know

  • One press is one add. Bluetooth buttons shout their press several times to make sure it is heard; the reader collapses the repeats, and the app additionally ignores a second identical press within five seconds, so an enthusiastic double tap cannot put the same product on the list twice.
  • Battery shows on the button's card when the button broadcasts it (BTHome buttons do), with the same low-battery badge the other sensors use.
  • Triple presses and other exotic press types show as the button's last press but cannot carry a mapping; single, double, and long cover the presses every supported button sends reliably.
  • Presses only act while the Shelf buttons switch is on (adding your first button turns it on for you).
  • A button near a Bandit works too. A Bandit satellite with the Bluetooth reader relays presses to your main server, so a shelf button in another room (or next to a radio-less server's satellite) fires the mapping configured on the server, exactly once.