This all started when we moved to the country and getting the mail became a war of who/when/how far. We run a business and getting checks deposited in a timely manner can mean the difference in making payroll or not. So there’s a vigil of constantly walking the 1/4 mile to the mailbox to see “if” the mail had arrived. My wife wore me down, and I finally finished the project. It seems to work really, really well, and I solved some of the challenges the vast majority of all other solutions overlooked. Namely:
- door open/closed monitoring is highly ineffective. Both my wife and I put outgoing mail in the box, sometimes multiple times a day. this results in false triggers.
- how to discern between outgoing mail and legitimate delivered mail?
- we have a big mailbox. it holds several packages sometimes. how do you detect a small letter in a big box?
- the box is 1/4 mile walk. I’m not keen on loRa long range solutions. They can quickly over complicate things.
- Batteries are challenging. Standard Lithium ion batteries wont work when its below freezing which it is here 6 mos out of the year.
So,those are the PRDs and challenges. I address each one in my GitHub repository:
