To catch a thief....

i'm bookmarking this thread to see how this evolves

Just dont have the trap go off on the actual mail man

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Just dont have the trap go off on the actual mail man

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no kidding.

around here the mail comes 2 or 3x a day w/ amazon and others feeding my mailbox.

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Just dont have the trap go off on the actual mail man

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That's what the photo resistor is for. The "trap" would only spring if it's dark outside. Secondarily, and for added safety, we could also add a digital clock and make it only active during certain hours.

Stick with glitter and hope it doesn’t get in his eye or they will arrest you. It’s fricking lame, but that’s where we are as a society now. You’ll get arrested and sued, and that fricker becomes the victim.

How far is your mailbox from your house?

Can you reach wifi to it?

I would use a d1 mini instead of an Arduino. Will give you more flexibility with wifi or BLE. Can also integrate with HA (if within wifi) to set schedule or set the trap.

Issue I see with the mailbox trap is you'll only get him once. Once he triggers it, the next time he'll just stand to the side, open door, and take contents.

But wouldn't it be easier to have a camera zoomed onto the mailbox. That way you get a good image of the car and perp.

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I would use a d1 mini instead of an Arduino

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Actually, that's an outstanding idea. I have a bunch of NodeMCU's lying around and I would guess it's 60-70' to the mail box from the closest router in my office. The biggest issue is the mailboxes are in a big stone/concrete enclosure so I'm worried about how any signal would transmit. I could always buy one with an external antenna.

I was talking to the wife about the idea before bed and she Dx'ed the idea of depositing nails on the road, and she's likely correct. I had thought about ordering two super bright 10 Watt LEDS to blind them for a second and make the person think they've been photographed. I'll come up with a we things for sure....

As for capturing a tag, my main problem is we share a MB stand with the neighbor and it's on the far right side of our property. I'd thought about something as simple as a wyze cam in the neighbors park strip, but it's all grass and would be obvious. Our across the street neighbor has some vegetation where we could conceal something and I might approach him about being a co-conspirator. As I said in the other thread, if he'd had a front plate on his car as required by state law, we'd have him already. He stays in his car the entire time and hits every mailbox on the street.

While I'm not an apple user, the other very simple thing I thought about was simply leaving a fake package in the mailbox designed to look like a credit card box or similar with an apple airtag or other bluetooth tracker in it. They're relatively cheap and would give us some sort of tracking data. Hopefully scumbag would drive it home before opening it. Just an idea.

I feel bad for the mailman when he gets hit with whatever you make instead of the perp.

50/50 odds you get sued for this

So we’ve had a similar situation with one of those kid library give a book take a book things. The a’hole across the street likes to steal the door I made AND the books.

Well, I decided to put an AirTag in the door and sure enough, he took the door and it’s in his backyard. I can see the location but the stupid cop said I would be arrested bc you’re not legally able to track “people”. So I’m stuck for the moment even though the geolocation of my AirTag shows his backyard.

Have you considered using an AirTag?