Mailbox Notifier

Difficulty

Test & Tools

Summary

Eagerly waiting for a letter to come in the mail, I was held back checking the mailbox every day, which interrupted my ability to go into town when I needed (just in case I missed the letter arriving)

I figured "there must be a better way!" - and set out to design a system that can alert me on the phone when the mail comes in.

Materials Required

1	Wi-Fi Mini ESP8266 Main Board	XC3802
1	3 X AA Side by Side Flat Battery Holder	PH9274
1	SPDT 250V 5A Standard Micro Switch with Lever	SM1039
1	Light Duty Silicone Hook Up Wire 8m Handy Pack Black	WH3036
1	Jiffy Box - Black - 83 x 54 x 31mm	HB6015
1	Eclipse AA Alkaline Batteries - Pack of 4	SB2425

Resources

View on Github Download Project Resources

Table of Contents

Designing
Prototyping
IFTTT Phone Notifications
If THIS
Then THAT
Finish and test your applet.
Assembling
Using

Designing

The design of this system has to:

Be triggered by a new envelope entering the mailbox.

Alert me on my phone, no matter where I am.

Be relatively long-lasting, without me having to replace batteries every day.

It really comes down to two components,

mail detection

and

mail notification

and they are both exceedingly simple to do; I figured I can use the

service with the trusty

ESP8266

Prototyping

We've tried to seperate this project into two phases so that you can understand how we are going from design, to prototyping, to assembly.

Below are some notes and information from when we were prototyping the project, so that you have a better understanding of how they all fit in, and you can prototype yourself to follow along.

If you want to just get to building the project, head straight to the

IFTTT Phone Notifications

is a super simple service that we've used in our projects before. It can be a little limited in some regards, but there's no complaints for a free lunch and ifttt is completely free to use. It stands for

"If This Then That"

if you weren't sure what it meant already.

Head to

and create an account, and you can install the ifttt app on your phone too (though play or apple store).

When you make an account, you want to

create an applet

If THIS

Change the +This term to be a Webhooks service. You want to trigger when you receive a web request and set the event name to:

1  ESP_reset

Then THAT

Change the +That term to be a Notifications service. You want the action to be send a notification from the IFTTT app, and you can set the message to anything you want, such as:

1  You've got mail at {{OccurredAt}}

The {{}} indicate a special variable, that for this example, will be filled with the time and date that the event happened.

Finish and test your applet.

What you've just created is an "applet" in IFTTT lingo.

To test it, make sure that you have the IFTTT app on your phone, and that it is logged in to your account.

Click on this link to open up the webhooks service page:

To access this same page manually, from the home page:

click on your profile in the top right

click "My services"

click "webhooks"

Now click the large

Documentation

button in the top right.

You will come to a page that looks like this:

Provided that everything is set up right, you should be able to change the

{event}

code to be ESP_reset then press the

Test it

button, which will cause your phone to vibrate.

Play around with ifttt and see what other services they can do, it's a great website, and the

email/gmail service

could also come in handy for this project.

Deep sleep mode is very easy to test with the ESP; try out some code like this:

1  void setup() {
2      Serial.begin(115200);
3  }
4  
5  void loop() {
6      for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++){
7          Serial.println(i);
8          delay(500);
9      }
10      Serial.println("goodnight!");
11      ESP.deepSleep(0);
12  }

You should find that it does exactly what you expect it to: it will count down from 5 then say "goodnight!".

Once it reaches the ESP.deepSleep(0); line, it will not execute again, and for all intents and purposes could be considered as though it was turned off. It won't run the loop again and won't send serial data.

To reset the device, just bridge the RST pin to GND for half a second, the ESP should start counting down again.

Assembling

With assembling, it is important to remember that the ESP must be within range of your WiFi, and might not be able to get

any

signal when it is within your metal letterbox. We are using

so that we can seperate the switch from the esp and atleast try to get the ESP 4 meters closer to the house WiFi. Results may vary, so play around and send us a picture of what you've created.

The battery holder is the easiest to do. 3 AA batteries at 1.2V is just 3.6v which is perfect for our ESP8266

Use some hot glue, blu-tack, double-sided tape () or otherwise to stick the batttery box to the lid of the enclosure.

It should fit pretty snug just behind the screw portals.

Once the glue has set, you can solder the positive (red) lead to the ESP8266's 5V pin and the negative (black) lead to the ESP8266's GND pin

As expected from when we were prototyping the design, the microswitch just connects between GND and RESET

The microswitch is nothing spectacular, it has 3 connections:

Common

Normally Closed

Normally Open

We want GND and RESET to be normally OPEN, so that when the switch is press, it will CLOSE the connection, and reset the ESP:

Cut a decent length of your silicone wire and then cut in half again (or just cut the whole thing in half for the whole 4 meters); you will need two lengths of the same distance to reach between the switch and your ESP.

Connect as follows, using one length of black wire each:

Connection from	Connection to
Microswitch COM terminal	ESP8266's GND pin
Microswitch NO terminal	ESP8266's RST pin

The programming for this device is simple, once you have downloaded the code from the link at the top of this document, you can use the arduino IDE to upload the mailbox.ino code onto your {XC3802}. If you haven't done this before, be sure to read the manual on how to do so on the

Make an IFTTT account if you have not already.

Get your maker_key from the

instructions.

put in your wifi_ssid and wifi_pass into the code, along with your maker_key (Keep the TRIGGER_NAME to be the same)

You should be able to find that every time you turn the ESP on (ie: connect it to computer or to batteries) you will get a notice on your phone.

It is a little annoying when programming to always get notifications from the device right infront of you, but most of the debugging is done, so you should be able to just confirm that it works as intended, then go place it in your mailbox.

Once the microbit's all soldered up and programmed, you can use some double sided tape or hot glue to glue it into the enclosure, and close the lid, with the switch leads coming out from one of the sides.

It's not strictly waterproof but should do ok in sheltered environments. if you need more waterproofing you might best put it in a sandwich bag or otherwise. The outside environment is tough, so keep that in mind.

Using

As the letter comes in and triggers the switch, the ESP will effectively "turn on" (via a reset).

This causes the esp to send you a

"You've got mail"

notification on your phone.

The best place to put the switch is such that the whole weight of the letter pushes down on the part of the micro switch arm as far away from the base as possible; this should have enough torque to activate the switch.

If you find that the letter isn't doing it via gravity alone, try mounting it on the roof so that the act of the letter going into the mailbox is what triggers it.