Receiving mail in the traditional sense through our mailbox at home may seem like a thing of the past as most of us opt to receive correspondence digitally so why would you need an automation for this you may ask... Well in my case it's amazing how much junk mail still manages to find it's way in there and if unattended for a week it looks like the mailbox is going to bust at the seems as the individuals delivering it this special skillset in getting those flyer or newspaper to fit in that opening even if to the average person it seems impossible.
Yes a reminder of sorts could probably be set to achieve the same thing... So let's just leave it at that and I respond with: "Hi, my name is Kenny and I am a Smart Home addict."
What will you need for this project:
Method used:
The Approach was quite rustic in the sense of using an old brass door hinge that I had laying around which was glued to the inside opening of the mailbox and then mounting the Aqara Vibration sensor to the hinge which in turn will detect the vibration when the junkmail is inserted to the mailbox. The vibration detected will then be fed back to Home Assistant via the Zigbee dongle and an automation kicked off in the backend to send a push notification to my phone and an optional announcement made on google home to inform that mail has been delivered.
Automation:
| alias: You got mail! description: 'Alert when new Junk Mail gets delivered' trigger: - platform: state entity_id: vibration sensor entity from: 'off' to: 'on' condition: [] action: - service: tts.google_translate_say data: entity_id: media_player.device message: You Got Mail - service: notify.mobile_device data: title: 'ALERT: You Got Mail! ' message: Clear out the mailbox of junk mail. mode: single |