LoRa Mailbox Notifications
I bought this awesome device that sends me notifications whenever we get a new letter or package in our mailbox.
I bought it from the creator's online store:
PricelessToolkit
The design is also open source and available on GitHub:
PricelessToolkitThey included STLs for a 3D printed case. I also designed a custom mailbox flap with embedded magnets. The flap opens whenever a letter is pushed into the mailbox. This triggers a reed switch that turns on the Mailbox Guard and sends a notification to the receiver.
Sensor case and custom mailbox flap
I bought this LILYGO TTGO LoRa32 board to receive messages and send them to Home Assistant via MQTT.
I 3D printed a case for the receiver: TTGO Lora32 T3 Slimline Case on Printables
It turns out that most of our mailbox notifications are flyers and leaflets, and sometimes the wind. I will probably turn off the real-time notifications and just show the status on a dashboard somewhere.
I've noticed that LoRa is more reliable than some of my Zigbee devices, and has a much longer range. I might try designing some of my own LoRa devices in the future.
Future Ideas
I would like to add a second reed switch on the main door of the mailbox, so that I can automatically reset the count to zero whenever we take the letters out of the mailbox. But I don't know if this is possible due to the design of the board.
I would also like to add some LoRa transmitters to our cars, so that I can automatically open and close our garage doors. I've already set this up with the Home Assistant mobile app for home presence detection, but sometimes there's a delay, or my wife is driving my car (or vice versa.)
