Remote Mail Notifier (and GPS Tracker)

Zak Kemble published another great project. This time it’s a Remote Mail Notifier with GPS functionality. He writes:

At the moment I’m living in a block of flats and my mailbox is in a central lobby area. I’m often receiving small surprise packets from China and never know when the postman has been, usually between 8 and 12, sometimes even twice a day! I also don’t have any road facing windows that I can look out of for the bright red Royal Mail van.

So, I wanted to make something that can notify me of when the postman comes by and pops something into my mailbox. The previous place I lived at had the mailboxes at the far end of a gated car park, not great when it’s cold and wet!

I can’t have any cables going from the mailbox to my flat of course, so a wireless solution is needed. The first choice would have been to use WiFi, but the mailboxes are too far to get a signal to my back to my flat. I could probably use some kind of 433MHz radio module with a receiver in my flat, but I had recently come across A9G GPRS/GPS modules from A.I. Thinker that can have custom firmware loaded onto them. They only cost around £4 each, and it would also mean I don’t have to deal with annoying AT command parsing like with the popular SIM800. In the end I decided to go with the A9G and add secondary functions of being a listening bug and GPS tracker since it also has a built-in GPS receiver!

Remote Mail Notifier (and GPS Tracker) – [Link]

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