Mailbox theft is a growing concern for many homeowners. Not only can it result in the loss of important mail and packages, but it can also compromise personal information and identity. We have had our mailbox pried open, and have had some packages taken. The first thing that we did was to replace the mailbox with a stronger locking mailbox. This makes it harder for people to pry open the box, and it prevents people from reaching their hands in to grab the letters or packages.
But a locking mailbox doesn't completely solve the problem, it just adds barriers to slow potential mail and package thieves. I also wanted to implement something that would minimize the time that mail remains in the mailbox.
There are several goals that I wanted to accomplish with these notifications
- Generate notifications, on my phone and in the speakers in the house, when new mail is received.
- Generate reminder notifications, if new mail has been sitting in the mailbox for too long
- Generate notifications, if the mail retrieval door has been left open too long
- Turn on the lights in the front of the house (primarily landscape lights) if the mailbox door is opened after midnight.
For these notifications, I needed to determine when the doors, for new mail and the one where the mail is retrieved are opened. I was able to use two Aeotec SmartThings Multipurpose Sensors to do this. For the new mail door, I placed the sensor on the right side of the mailbox, where the magnet is mounted to the bottom part of the moving door.
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For the mail retreival door, I mounted the sensor on the left side of the mailbox. Since the door has a thick lip, I needed to use some shims to make sure that the sensor aligned with the magnet.
Since these sensors are Zigbee sensors, that rely on RF signals, the metal sides of the mailbox significantly reduced the range for these signals. The Zigbee controller in the house wasn't able to get data from these sensors. The mailbox is about 20' from our house, and luckily there is an outlet on the corner near the mailbox. I added an Enbrighten Zigbee Outdoor Plug-In Switch to my Zigbee network, and plugged it into the outdoor outlet that is closest to the mailbox. This switch was able to bridge the signals from the sensors in the mailbox to the rest of the network.
With the sensors reporting data, here are the automations that I created
