Metspitzer said:
If you've ever checked the mail repeatedly only to find it empty, or
your mailbox is a good hoof from your house, this project is for you.
It's a simple photo-sensitive alarm that will fire off an SMS message
to your phone when the mailbox is opened and the sensor is triggered.
Related
The video above shows you how it works, and while it definitely
requires some specific electronics to make it work, it's nothing you
can't do easily with a little effort. Here's how Instructables user
nikoala3 describes it:
http://lifehacker.com/build-a-mailbox-alarm-that-sends-you-a-text-whenever-yo-1394293178
How well would your router work for detecting the mailman? I was
thinking something like having a sensor on the delivery vehicle so
when the mailman gets within range of your house, it would detect it.
Unless you are in a rural area where the mailbox is so far away that you
won't be able to see it or it's hidden by woods, why bother tying you
computer to a simple detector in the mailbox? Seems you could just
build a latch circuit with a battery and a flashing lamp. A magnetic
switch would detect when the mailbox door was opened. A latch circuit
would fire to connect the strobing/flashing lamp to the battery. Just
go to a window to peer outside to see if the light is on. When you
retrieve your postal mail, just press a reset button that unsets the
latch (which could be a semiconductor or mechanical relay type).
If you don't want to buy the parts and build it yourself, you can buy
mailbox alarms, even wireless ones to ring a chime inside your house.
Adding a computer into the mix smacks of building a Rube Goldberg setup.
If your computer isn't powered up, is idling in a low-power mode, or you
have a power outage then it isn't going to help you. Plus you would
need to leave your computer logged into your account along with your
e-mail client always left running so it could popup an alert to tell you
when you got the new e-mail alert. You would need to have speakers and
they would need to be unmuted since a screensaver would prevent you from
seeing the popup alert plus you would have to be within view of your
monitor to see the visual alert. A lot of dependencies for just a door
sensor.
If you don't want to go the wireless route or even bother with any
electronics, hell, there are flip-up flags that popup when the door is
opened. When the mail person opens the door to put in your mail, a
spring-loaded flag pops up. Again, just look out the window to see if
the flag is up or not. Some don't even use a spring but instead a bit
of curved plastic. You bend it down to keep it down by the door closing
over it. When the mailbox door is opened, it flips up.
Of course, with the e-mail approach, you could be notified when you have
new postal mail in your mailbox using a mobile device; however, unless
you are home then there's no point in telling you that there is
something in your mailbox when you're not home to go visit your mailbox.
Besides, it'll do you good to get your big squashed butt out of the
computer chair or lazybox watching TV to go walk over to your mailbox
even several times. You should be getting out of the chair every hour
or two so a trip to the mailbox will do the trick. Typically I don't
bother checking for postal mail until getting home from work or during
the evening which is long after the work hours for any postal carrier.
This e-mail alert setup is a solution in search of a problem.
