re: To catch a thief....

So close, so many snags. I wasn't getting a consistent signal from my gyroscope sensor last night and this AM. There are 4 wires required to operate the sensor. Ground, 5v and two signal wires for IC2. To get a small enough wire to run up through the bricks, to the door of the mailbox, I sacrificed the USB cable off a $1 mouse that I got from the thrift store long ago. I've got horizontal jumper pins coming out of the board that I had used female header connectors to plug into the board. I had to be able to unplug it because the board was to thick to fit through the bottom of the door of the mailbox. However, the only way I could solder to the pins of the header board without melting the board, was to pull out the pins, solder to them to the pins and try to reinsert them. Frankly, that was a bad solution. I don't know how many times they pulled out, the wires broke off/came de-soldered from the pins or any number of other problems. I finally gave up and found an old 4 wire JST connector from the kids HO train layout. I soldered one end of the wires directly to the male header pins on the board, and the other end to the USB cable. It working swimmingly now.

And after scaring the crap out of the wife last night with the siren while testing and getting my butt chewed out for it, I've now added a siren interrupt switch to the case. Honestly, it's a good addition.

Here's a view of the prototype. I need to do some cable management and, after the spot welding incident from the other day, add fuse protection, but this is pretty much it...

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Where will the battery sit?

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We share a stone mailbox stand with our neighbors. In that There's a 6" pvc pipe for a newspaper that's about 18" deep. The battery, project box and siren will sit in that tube.

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Ahh ok. I’m assuming your neighbor knows what you’re doing

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He's retired and we call him "Our Utah grandpa". We have his FULL support, and he laughs every time I tell him about our progress.

Nice work there. Keep us posted, I am curious to hear how the story ends.

I would STRONGLY advise you to speak with a lawyer first, this could be a federal crime.

Maybe it isn't, but I bet that using a mailbox to deliver any type of booby trap, however righteous, may be against the law.

ETA: And if for some reason it were to go off on a mailman, you're fricked.

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but the stupid cop said I would be arrested bc you’re not legally able to track “people”

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If this were the case, there is little point to air tags other than finding your car keys. I'd do some further research.

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Sooooo….

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I went on vacation. But checking our cameras, he's not been back...