re: Official WINK HUB Home Automation thread

Just thinking a little out of the box here. . .

Does your sensor have terminals on the inside that you can act as your trigger rather than the mag? If so, you might be able to rig up something inside your mailbox that will break the circuit when there's mail in it and reconnect the circuit when it is removed. That would also eliminate any false alarms.

MAILMAN JUST CAME AUTOMATION

Objective Have everyone at your house notified when the mailman comes.

You might say I'm being lazy, but we have a circular drive that's on a hill and the mailbox is on the 'exit' driveway side (see below) so nobody ever goes near the mailbox when coming home unless they're checking mail.



Problems
1. How to make your mailbox smart
2. How to set up the robots (see detail below) to identify if its the mailman dropping off mail or someone retrieving the mail afterward.
3. How to get WINK to text everyone at your house at the same time even if they don't have the app installed

Solutions
1. Installed a cheap Go-Control open/close sensor inside the mailbox. Mailbox is roughly 100ft from the house and down a hill. Zwave range has been perfect so far, no problems with lost signal.

2. See robot solution below. It will enable these features:
--> Notify when mailman drops mail off
--> Notify when someone opens the mailbox afterward to get the mail
--> Disable itself afterward so no false alarms
--> Reset for the next day.


3. I ditched the winkathome/IFTTT solution in favor of simplicity. I set up 8 filters in gmail using the TMO email-to-text addresses (phone#@tmomail.net) for each person (see last picture below)


- you need 4 robots
- first 2 defaulted ON
- second 2 defaulted OFF
- ROBOT 1 sends notification that mail has arrived (only triggers if mailbox opened after 3:30pm)
- ROBOT 3 sends notification that someone has picked up the mail left in the box
- ROBOT 2 and 4 work silently in the background to make sure things are working properly.

ROBOT 1 [ON]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 2 [ON]: MAILBOX CLOSE
ROBOT 3 [OFF]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 4 [OFF]: MAILBOX CLOSE

ROBOT 1 open triggered by mailman, turns ROBOT 3 ON (next OPEN event) and sends notification
ROBOT 2 close triggered by mailman, turns ROBOT 4 ON (next CLOSE event) and ROBOT 1 OFF (so that robot won't activate again)
ROBOT 3 open triggered by FAMILY MEMBER turns ROBOT 2 OFF (so that CLOSE event won't trigger again) and sends notification
ROBOT 4 close triggered by FAMILY MEMBER turns ROBOT 3 OFF (so that OPEN event won't trigger again)

***
This will leave us in this state:

ROBOT 1 [OFF]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 2 [OFF]: MAILBOX CLOSE
ROBOT 3 [OFF]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 4 [ON]: MAILBOX CLOSE

Its OK that Robot 4 is out-of-sync for the rest of the day because I'm not shooting out a notification so its silently sets ROBOT 3 off everytime its triggered but that doesn't affect anything.

All robots will be reset at night from another trigger (anytime after 6:45pm) to:

ROBOT 1 [ON]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 2 [ON]: MAILBOX CLOSE
ROBOT 3 [OFF]: MAILBOX OPEN
ROBOT 4 [OFF]: MAILBOX CLOSE

READY FOR THE NEXT DAY!







GOOGLE MAIL FILTERS

eta you're probably right.

wink needs an export-robots feature badly!

wait..you want ME to buy them for you or are you asking if you should go ahead & buy them?

Yeah i was looking at those. I like them but i need a new door first. Maybe when that happens i'll spring for the smart lock too.

i have been looking at them for a year now. still no price drop.

Some home depots apparently have them clearanced at $129. Not sure about the bronze. Don't see those too often.

quote:

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Well i am in another state right now. So i might go look at the HDs here.

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check these as well for discounts/half price smart doo-dads and pick them up as well

- ring ($99 instead of $199)
- canary ($99 in stead of $199)
- go control 'starter kit' ($25 instead of $50)
- go control 'premium kit' ($50 instead of $100)

Good luck

quote:

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CAD are those ebay robots setup from your ebay page, or is it a sencdary website tracking the listings.

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here's your lock for $119 LINK

and here's how to set up a robot/search:

- go to ebay
- log in
- search for..say 'be469'
- right under listings you will see green "follow this search"
- you'll get new ebay emails daily with items that match that search

quote:

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ETA: can I rekey this lock to match my key?

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yep. its like $15 at home depot to do this.

eta i haven't used a key since installing them over 2 years ago. battery lasted me over a year but that usage will vary based on how many times you flip the lock yourself vs always doing it from your phone or script. considering part of that battery usage was the 'novelty' factor of my kids going crazy with it, i expect the current batteries to last longer.