Not a question of my belief… I’m just wondering what one does with this tidbit of information once one has it in hand.
The old Ozzie & Harriet thing where the wife is home all day is atypical nowadays. So if there’s no one home to immediately run out and grab the mail when the alert sounds, of what value is it to know whether the mail arrived at 11:30am… or gotten horribly delayed, and not arrived until 11:37am?
And then, imagining your wife is home all day, if you have a sensor in your mailbox you certainly have a sensor on your door. So if you are tracking what time the mail is delivered, are you then timing your wife’s performance in mail retrieval? “Hon, it was six minutes and fourteen seconds from when the mail arrived until you finally got off your lazy butt and went to get it… what were you doing all that time? Eating Cheetos?”
I haven’t put a sensor in my mailbox, but just a couple thoughts on reasons for doing so:
My mail arrives at different times of day. On the weekends it would be nice to have a notification when mail arrives, so I don’t waste time checking the mailbox before it arrives.
I guess it would be nice to detect whether the mailbox is being opened at times other than delivery and pickup, so that I can know if potential mail thieves or nosey neighbors are probing.
Also, I’ve seen mailboxes not closed all the way, so the door falls open and the wind scatters mail everywhere.
I wonder if this is partly an age thing…being a lagging/younger member of the post-war baby boom, I grew up in an era when mail was all we had to keep in touch w/remote family/friends (and no one used long-distance outside of special events, that was considered too expensive/spendy!). The mail arriving each day meant a lot more than today’s collection of bills and junk mail. It was contact from people you cared about that you didn’t get any other way, and especially important for a family like mine that moved frequently due my to father’s work.
So knowing the mail had been delivered was a much bigger deal than it is now, and for some reason I carry some of that anticipation forward to today…even though my mailbox is primarily a source of junk mail, bills, and other unexciting stuff. I don’t have a sensor on my mailbox, but I have found that since I put in a Ring doorbell, one of the things I do like about it is that I know when my mail has arrived.
“Oh boy, the junk mail and credit card offers are here!” (Plus my parents still mail me articles cut from their newspapers…I love that.)
To be honest, out of the 200+ devices I have, I probably only need about 5% of it. I don’t need the house to tell me that the washer or dryer is done, the garage door was left opened, the car charges for x amount of minutes costing x amount of dollars. I don’t “need” the light to automatically come on or turn off. I don’t need the speaker to tell me that the alarm is in or off. I don’t need to know when someone come or goes…
I don’t need the mailbox to alert me that is was opened…
However, I wanted it to so I set it up so it could. I can tell you that we are way more in tune now with what we were NOT doing now than before all of the automations.
On the other hand, sometimes knowing that mail has not arrived is the whole point. Not too long ago, a day without mail was quite rare-- two days without mail was really unusual. Nowadays, with e-delivery for almost every periodic statement (and opt-out lists for junk mail) its not that unusual for the mail carrier to just pass me by; I went three days without paper mail more than once last year. Add to that the ever more random delivery schedule (thanks, Amazon) I really like having my mailbox text me when there’s something in it so I can make the stop as I pull into my driveway, or skip the stop if there’s nothing inside.
Ok honestly, it is starting to look like you are just trolling these forums arguing over pointless stuff. If you are asking those types of questions then you don’t need to be here. Home automation is not the thing you are looking for. None of the home automation features are something we need, it’s just something we find fun and useful. If you don’t see any use of it then why are you even spending time in these forums? I really don’t see a reason other than just to cause problems.
The real problem is I have a spare sensor, and an unmonitored mailbox, and I feel this irrational ‘pull’ to set up the sensor in the mailbox, and am trying to either talk myself out of it or find adequate justification for setting up the sensor…
Just do it! You will then be able to know how hot your mail gets in the summer. Here in Texas mine often got up to 120F! So much useless information can be gathered by these little devices.
Never knew an Iron would need Automation but…That Plug was just sitting in the box.
Furthermore, even with the Iron having an Auto-off feature, it still was drawing 35watts of power. Now, just like not having to worry about things such as, did the mail come yet?; or have the clothes been put in the dryer?; or, did I leave the iron on?..I know that I have a Piston for that!
Need?..Not really. Cool to have? You bet your arse!
I’ve now had 2 of these start to burn through batteries. We have had a cold snap for 2-3 weeks where high is like 10-15 and low is 0 to -5. Both the problematic ones are ones I have connected to windows so am attributing it to that. They also were already on replacement batteries so maybe I didn’t get good ones. Other than that, any suggestions?
I signed up for USPS informed delivery. It sends me pictures of what mail to expect that day. It doesn’t show the time the mail was put in the box however
I have the same issue with one in a closet. Burns through batteries within weeks. Not sure why. I’ll try replacing it soon to see if the replacement does the same thing.
I got 10 of these a few days ago. They came with between 79 and 89 or so percent in battery. The samsung smart sensors I got had 100 percent. They are cheap enough to buy in bulk on amazon so no big deal but irritating.
In my opinion it’s a reporting problem. I’ve had one of these sit at 1% for over a month before it died. I’ve also dropped a brand new battery into one and it starts off at 89%.
Ugh. I missed the $10 price again as I was out of town. I’ll get my hands on these at this price one of these days.
Amazon and mydigitaldiscount.com are currently showing it at $14.99. Not sure if you guys are usinbg different links to grab these than what’s in post #1 and post #35.
I just keep taking a look at mydigitaldiscount.com every couple days/weeks. I’ve never bought them from Amazon. I actually missed them too. I saw this post come up, replied that they had them and was going to buy some when I got home but never got to it until a couple days later and they were back to $14. Oh well, have to wait for the next sale
