Looking for a better sensor that I can use on my mailbox....

Go control sensor from home Depot working like a charm 3 years later still no battery change.

Here's my Reddit post on it from a few years back.

LINK

Would you mind posting a link to the particular sensor you’ve got?

I bought this Go Control starter kit two years ago and it's still going strong. The price on this kit is higher than I paid so you may want to shop around LINK

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to mount the sensor inside the mailbox and the magnet on the inside of the mailbox door though. That’s my issue I’m having with the Smartthings sensor.

Mailbox sensor?

Holy shite tech has gone too far. I've never heard of such a thing. That being said, take my money.

Email sent

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It’s just an open close sensor on my mailbox So I know when mail is delivered

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I understand, but my question is why? Just open your damn mailbox everyday when you get home from work.

I'm just saying we've gone to far.

The next step is a toilet that weighs our turds and sends a data notification to an app on our phone. Once that happens you can light the turd up from your pone in whatever toilet LED color you like.

Truth be told I'll buy both apps just to be caught up on current tech.

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Sometimes the mail truck passes at 4, sometimes it passes at 8.

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Sign up for mail alerts at the USPS website and not only will it tell you when your mail is delivered but it will send you scanned images of all of your mail so you know if you have anything important

ETA: it’s called “Informed Delivery”

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it’s called “Informed Delivery”

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Does it rely on the carrier to take some action at every box? If so that is highly unreliable.

Also, the point of a lot of sensors is to automate things, or to be smarter about notifications than just popping yet another icon in your top bar. So the USPS sends you a text/email/whatever when you have mail. I'd probably read it as soon as I get it, then promptly forget about it because I'm doing something else. I still have to remember to get the mail later.

With my own sensor, I can automate any process I can think of. Maybe when there's mail in the box it'll put "get the mail" on my evening to-do list. Maybe I have a camera out front that uses computer vision to detect the mail truck, so if it passes my house but there's no mail detected I'll know that I have no mail today (as opposed to maybe I'll get mail later). Maybe my sensor doesn't just have a switch on the door, maybe it can tell mail-in or mail-out so I'll know if someone else grabbed the mail, so my system can take "get the mail" off my to-do list. Maybe I can integrate it with my package tracking/notifying system, and my to-do list will be smarter about it by making me wait until both the mail and my packages have arrived. A basic notification sounds nice, but it's far from the best we can do.

And I know a mailbox sensor sounds like a frivolous or trivial use of technology, but that's because checking the mail is a trivial task. And that's exactly the sort of things we should be automating. I spend 1 minute per day walking to and from the mailbox (5+ hours per year!), and at least once a week it's a pointless trip. A mailbox sensor would save me about an hour of life per year.

If you want to automate the mail, you should do what one of the rich guys put in back in my hometown. One of those modified bank tube things to suck that thing to his house.

Would love that. Instead I got to descend/ascend about 20 feet of steps every day.