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RE: Smart Mailbox

I've seen a few people DIY them. You can put a reed switch or similar on the door, and watch for state changes, to trigger a "PostBox opened last at" style sensor, or use a light sensor in the box to do the same.

If you want to seriously over-engineer, you could put the box on a load cell, and measure the weight of the post.

Use an ESP32 for your control board, and its pretty much just basic ESPHome plumbing

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Unfortunately I can't do any of those things because I live in an apartment and we have mailboxes like these: https://kopbrevlada.se/pub/media/webp_image/catalog/product/...

But I appreciate the suggestions!

A light sensor on an ESP taped to the inside of the mailbox would probably work, and a note to the postal carrier informing them of its function, but I suspect you'd have issues with the range of the device.

Yeah, I live 3 floors up and on the other side of the building from the mailboxes.

Surely low power PIR sensor would work. Something like this maybe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGZFg4SVySM

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