An automation to trigger events based on emails from USPS

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1

I am attaching the yaml to create an automation for doing something based on if a USPS email has been received indicating your mail was delivered. For my particular use, I am only turning on an input_boolean for 10 minutes and then turning it off. I intend to use it to turn on a light bulb in a certain color to let us know we have email to go pickup.

I created a second automation that will also do the same, but for indicating via the USPS daily digest email, indicating that there WILL /should be a mail delivery today, toggling another input boolean for the digest. I will also change this to do a different notification, that I will create.


alias: "Mail: has arrived"
description: >-
  Checks to see if there is new mail in the mail box by checking email from
  USPS, and sets the boolean mail_delivered to ON, waits 10 minutes and clears
  mail_delivered.
triggers:
  - trigger: event
    event_type: imap_content
    id: custom_event
conditions:
  - condition: and
    conditions:
      - condition: template
        value_template: |-

          {% if 'Mail Was Delivered' in trigger.event.data.subject %} true
          {% else %} false
          {% endif %}
    enabled: true
actions:
  - action: input_boolean.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id:
        - input_boolean.mail_delivered
    data: {}
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 10
      seconds: 0
      milliseconds: 0
  - action: input_boolean.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id:
        - input_boolean.mail_delivered
    data: {}
mode: single

If you do decide to capture both email events, the ‘Mail Was Delivered’ message needs to be changed to ‘Your Daily Digest’.

I hope this proves to be helpful to others wanting the same, or similar information captured from email.

Regards!

2

Just FYI, there is an integration that you can use for this that will create sensors for both mail items and packages.

3

I saw that, and realized it was a couple orders of magnitude
in complexity and wanted something simple and understandable.

Maybe this can be a place to collect additional methods!

Regards!

4

What’s the complexity? You provide it your credentials and it automatically does what your above code does without the need for toggles & automations.

Plus you can opt to include any other delivery services

5

For future reference, you can simplify this:

      - condition: template
        value_template: |-
          {% if 'Mail Was Delivered' in trigger.event.data.subject %} true
          {% else %} false
          {% endif %}

to this:

      - condition: template
        value_template: |-
          {{ 'Mail Was Delivered' in trigger.event.data.subject }}
6

Or here is an alternative that gets rid of the automation and the input Boolean, and instead just creates a regular read-only binary_sensor. Put this in your configuration.yaml:

template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: event
        event_type: imap_content
    binary_sensor:
      - name: Mail Delivered
        state: >
          {{ 'Mail Was Delivered' in trigger.event.data.subject }}
        auto_off: '00:10:00'