My mailbox shown below is 247 feet from my house. And is essentially a large metallic faraday cage. I would love to get notification when open the small door to insert my incoming mail. So I bought a Zooz ZSE11 Z-Wave 800LR which is said to have a range of 1,300 feet and paired it with my ZWA-2 controller. I wrote a “You’ve got mail” automation and placed the sensor in the back of the mailbox. But it did not work. It was below freezing which may have affected this sensor which is meant for indoor use. So I ordered a Zooz ZSE70 which is rated for outdoor use. I am not optimistic that this sensor will work either.
I thought of putting something like a motion/tilt sensor on the outside of the mailbox door, but I’m not sure if this is government property or not.
Can anyone recommend how to get notifications from this metal mailbox 247 ft. from my house?
I use the Dakota Alert Long Range Driveway Alarm Motion Detector. I already had their magnetic driveway sensors. So I did not need the receiver as the one I had would take in this signal too. The RE-4K receiver has dry contact outputs.
Paired with a Zooz Zen17 Universal Relay, you can get the signal into HA.
Overall, not cheep. But, as I already everything else, I just needed the motion detector that is in the mailbox.
I just saw the inside of the sensor in the one video. The PCB is small. I guess I could just remove the board and connect a 9v battery. Does that sound reasonable?
I think the fisheye on the front of it expands the view of the sensor. But, I am just guessing.
Might want to do it in a way to put that back on. I am thinking turned sideways, cut off the top and/or bottom as needed and put new screw holes outside of the PCB.
Hi. I just wanted to let you know that if you get your sensor working, you’re going to get lots of false positives. That’s because the mail isn’t delivered through the individual doors. The entire front of the box opens like french doors so the postal carrier has access to the entire inside. Therefore, everytime ANYONE receives mail, it will trigger the sensor.
I handle this with a boolean helper. Because even on my single mailbox, if the mailman puts multiple items in there with multiple reaches, it does trigger motion each time. And, when I retrieve my mail.
So, when it triggers, I turn on a boolean. All automations (flipping the color on a card and announcing You’ve Got Mail through our S3 Box 3s) only happens when that boolean turns on.
I manually turn it off when I walk in with the mail.
I ordered this sensor and hub about which I read in a couple of places that it works inside of a metal mailbox. It arrives tomorrow. I’ll post how it worked (or didn’t) in my situation. Home assistant has a YoLink integration that allows it to access devices in your YoLink account.
I have this yolink contact sensor and hub. I tried it in the mailbox and it didn’t work so I mounted it under the mailbox. At first, I tried with the hub inside my house putting it about 190 ft away from the mailbox through several walls and thick stucco plus the detached garage was in direct line of sight so 2 more stucco walls. It didn’t work well. I then moved it into the detached garage where it’s 136 ft away. It works every single time.
I installed it because we had a mail thief who stole a check, washed it and wrote a new one for $2K. Took 9 months to get the money back. This guy has been stealing checks from all over 2 counties and the could never catch him.
Within 2 months of installing it, Around 2AM, I got an alert that the mailbox had opened. I hopped in my truck and and got his plate. Reported to the several police/sheriff agencies as well as the postal inspector. Got clear video of him going mailbox to mailbox and the vehicle was identical to the one that stole our check. There hasn’t been any mail theft in the area since so hopefully they got him.
Home automation to the rescue! That’s great glad you caught the scumbag.
I just setup mine today. Unfortunately, the mailbox is built like a vault! I don’t have the option of installing anything outside the mailboxes. I’m amazed that I get a signal at all! According to the Yolink app the signal strength is -76 dBm. It says it is “strong” but it’s actually flakey. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. I might try placing the hub outside my house on Wi-fi and see if that helps.
Ahhh…Yep. That’s going to make it hard to get consistent results. Mine is just a standalone mailbox at the end of my driveway. Everything is completely hidden. Even when you open the door, you can’t see anything. I mounted the reed sensor on the bottom lip of the door on the back side so when you open the door, it moves up and under the bottom of the mailbox and trips the wired end of the sensor which is mounted on the bottom of the mailbox.
I finally got this working in the “bank vault” of a mailbox using a YoLink LoRa Smart Outdoor Contact Sensor & Hub Starter Kit. Specs say 1/4 mile range. The signal strength was flaky until I moved the hub outside in direct line of site with the mailbox. Now it works 99% of the time IF the temperature is above 25 degrees.
I was looking at doing this with a Zooz ZSE41 800LR contact sensor and the HA Connect ZWA-2. Our neighborhood has a community cluster box, which is about 320 feet from our house. Theoretically a 1300 ft (line of sight) range should do the trick.
