Close

Update March 2015

A project log for You Have Mail

You Have Mail senses mail in a roadside mailbox and alerts the user of this via an SMS or email.

pkPK 03/25/2015 at 02:030 Comments

I have been very busy with other projects and have not touched YHM in a while. I have done some testing at the mailbox and found that the XBEE range was not good enough, +/- 30m but there are walls etc. in the way. (My XBEE modules use the onboard chip antenna.)

My options now is to either add another XBEE module as a repeater/router or add a WiFI range extender and rather use WiFi. At this stage I am leaning towards the WiFi option. (I will also use this for other things.)

My solar panel has also arrived from China, but I need to mount this in an enclosure and it is a little bigger than ideal. I have since picked up a solar mobile phone charger from Aldi (for $10.00) which is about half the size and in a nice enclosure. It should mount nicely behind the postbox.

I hope once I have the WiFi extender in and switched over to WiFi it will be up and running. So many projects so little time... :o)

Discussions