Moving The Snail Mail To WiFi [Hackaday]

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[Zak] loves getting a notification on his phone when he gets physical mail. Enough to wire his mailbox slot with an ESP8285 to send him alerts. Previously, [Zak] used a cellular-based solution as the mailbox slot was not within WiFi range. However, the network provider for the A9G GPRS module decided to move to different towers, and suddenly the module didn’t work. Unable to find a provider that had sensible pricing, he got to work redesigning the module.

The mailbox was now in a WiFi network range, meaning he no longer had to use cellular. This dramatically simplifies the design and uses an ESP-M2 module (think ESP8266 but with embedded flash). To maximize battery life, the ESP is entirely off most of the time. A reed switch triggers a 74LVC1G98 NAND gate with an inverted input. This enables the 3.3 voltage regulator. A 4uF capacitor holds the voltage regulator on for 716ms, giving the ESP8266 time to boot and drive the second pin of the logic gate so it can stay on. Once the web request completes (a call to a PHP server that takes 4-5 seconds, including WiFi association), it pulls the pin low, and the system powers off. With a custom server, [Zak] can include a few goodies, such as temperature and humidity from the SHT32-DIS sensor.

So far, the system has been chugging along for seven months and over 110 mail notifications and has only dropped 0.3v, suggesting that the battery should hold out for another year or two before recharging. The code and schematics are up on GitHub. We love the low-power focus and the handy circuit explanation that makes it easy to use in other projects.