I use a great battery for my projects. It is a Saft LS 14500, LiSOCl2 technology and is 3.6V, AA battery type. This has a fantastic capacity and is capable of running 3.3v circuits, I have circuits, using this battery with MPU sleep that have been running for over 2 years and still going! Definately recommended.
This such a great project. Beyond all the excellent tips and techniques linked into this project, it helps secure the existence of future projects through repeated testing ... with new parts orders delivered to the mailbox. ⚡♥♻
A tip: primary Lithium 1.5V AA batteries are great for these kind of outdoor applications as they have a large capacity, extremely low self discharge (10 years shelf life), high current capability and continue working in deep freeze temps. A bit more expensive though.
Great video. I ditched node-red for homeassistant automations. Node-red disconnected sometimes from homeassistant and needed to be reset. Homeassistant automations have come a long way, it is has become easier than node-red for complex automations. Above all, it is rock stable for mission critical automations.
So far, Node Red is very stable. As said, I move in the direction of HA automations. Still, the possibilities and particularly debugging is much easier in Node-Red. I would have to do a lot of YAML, and I do not like it.
Great video! Ive been wanting to get into PCD design but always stuck to soldering through hole with a nest of spagetti wires all over the PCB. It takes forever and is not much fun. Ill make sure to learn it for my current project.
I am trying to do the same but the upfront time investment needed to learn how to design them correctly is quite significant. One question about this, please: how do you create the Vcc and ground planes? Do you start with a solid copper fill covering each side of the PCB and sort of "carve" the gaps around the tracks as you route them (especially on the Vcc plane), or you only fill them after all the tracks are routed? I'm trying to figure out a good workflow for this. Thanks! (and yes, 1206 here as well thanks to age 😀 )
@@dan-nutu , there are a lot of tutorials on the Internet. You start with the ground plane (layer) and the supply voltage layer, then place the components, then connect the components.
Hi. Another great video. maybe one thing you could have added : a voltage divider to measure the battery voltage. Another thing on your design : I think there is a bit of current leaking from the opening / closing pin (from VCC to GND through 4.7kOhm resistor isn't it?
Awesome video. I also swapped back to regular batteries instead of rechargeable ones, depending on the project. Usually I prefer the so called C cell aka R14. Really cheap and safe. Install it, forget about it. Sometimes it lasts for years! And of course... silicone wires ! They're the best!
Really great watching your journey for this project in one video, very informative and inspiring. One question, is your mailbox metal? If so how well does the LoRa signal travel through it?
I also like silicone sleeved wires - their fleibility makes them easy to stuff into small spaces. However, crimp connections tend to be weak because of silicone's slippery qualities.
Thank you very much! Very interesting solution but complex due to the long distance to the letterbox. Luckily the distance to my letterbox is in range of cheap 433MHz sensors's capability. So I can use RFlink connected to my ioBroker. Powered by 1 AAA. Having no 3D printer, one reed contact is covered by a conduit and the other by an empty toothpaste tube (elmex, swiss GABA 🙂 ).
You are very creative with your packaging! I am sure, when you will get your 3D printer one day, you will be thinking: Why so late ;-) But, unfortunately, GABA was sold in 2004 to Colgate :-(
@@AndreasSpiess The toothpaste tube is made of plastics, isolating, water resistant enough and thin. I am not sure, if a 3D printer could produce a housing with such properties. At least not to such a price point :-)
With Attiny for simplicity I do the same, but with cylindrical Li-ion batteries, AAA or AA size. They go from 4.1V to 3.0V, don't need any regulator, are cheap and you can just replace it in the device by a re-charged one. The holders are also the same. For simple projects, just one AAA size battery last more than one year. The leakage is also very low. The new Attiny MCU's by the way are very simple and a lot of fun to program, even bare metal. And just with one wire + one TX wire, I can flash and debug at the same time.
@@AndreasSpiess I use normal batteries 10440 (AAA) about 12€ a pack of four, and 14500 (AA) 5€/6€ each. Or the bigger ones (18650)... Then a USB separated charger that is also cheap, about 12€. I have a 'IMREN K2', compatible with all the Li-ion cylindrical sizes, even the big ones. In Aliexpress just pay attention to the batteries too cheap or with 'amazing' capacities, in chini-amps hour.
@@AndreasSpiess And of course these chargers are not compatible with the normal 1.2V NiMH batteries. And being the same size could be dangerous, unless the charger detects it. And also dangerous for a device expecting 1.2V or 1.5V batteries. Better label this batteries clearly, and the holders.
A prev comment has been removed. I use normal 10440 (AAA, about 3€ each), 14500 (AA about 5€) or the bigger like 18650. And a USB charger of about 10€, compatible with all cylindrical Li-ion batteries. In the usual places, just be careful with batteries too cheap or with amazing capacities, in chini-amps hour.
Correction - the better DuPont wires actually copper inside, not just more. The cheap ones aluminum or chinesium if you ask me. Any breadboard problem I ever had, was related to cheap DuPont wires !!
I am not sure if the reduced resistance of copper matters on these small distances. Or why do you prefer copper? But the quality of the crimp definitively matters. I also think, that thicker wires do not break easy.
can you share you PCB design that we can order the same plank PCBS ( it will be great if they populate with components ) / if we decide to build this concept for our home mailbox ?
So many things I have never even heard of.. Node-Red/HomeAssistantIo , EasyEda, Reamer, etc! Then there's things that seem to be specific to the application / availability and rules in your area. For example, the choice of low-power, long-range wireless standard... LoRaWAN/LR-FHSS, Zigbee/Z-Wave, Mioty, Thread/Matter, Sigfox / HayStack / X10 , ANT/+, etc. If you were a contractor doing this project for a customer, how many engineering hours do you estimate it took? BTW, what PCB house did you use? Something local in Sweden, or something oversees (OshPark, JLCPCB, PcbWay, MacroFab, SeeedStudio Fusion)?
Tried building something similar with off the shelf lora/meshtastic devices, but failed miserably due to battery limitations. Any way to convince you to sell a semi-built notifier ? Any signal concerns inside a standard Swiss milchkasten ?
I love this project as it is exactly what I am looking for. I would just need to water proof the transmitter box a bit more but otherwise - ideal. Problem is between getting all the components and soldering onto custom PCB I would never be able to finish it myself. Is there anything like this that can be purchased already made that can be integrated into home automation?
Don't be that pessimistic. I went from "No idea how all of that works" to a custom made PCB in 6 weeks while having a full time job. If you are lacking the knowledge, there are a lot of people who can help and a lot of easy to follow tutorials. Beginning with a simple Arduino or ESP dev board and a breadboard is a good start. If you are lacking the equipment for soldering or 3D printing a case, there may be a makerspace not far from you.
Nice work. Suppose you’re not going to share the gerber and bom of that pcb ? 😋 you could always upload that to pcbway so that lazy people can order directly and you get a % from that , just saying 😊
Heh, it's just that I like it more when you say "you can always sit in the front row", than when you say "you can always sit in the first row". It's just linguistic pedantry. Blame my autism. But I have noticed that you've sometimes started saying "front row", which I like :-)
I really don't get the point of MQTT in all these projects. Just another unnecessary software component that is a headache to maintain and configure. HomeAssistant and ESPhome have a perfect direct integration with each other and the HomeAssistant native API is all that you really need. The mailbox notifier project idea is quite cool though, I might try it.
@@basileus9343 I think you misunderstand me, the ESP will still be the gateway for the LoRa communication with the attiny. It's the communication between ESP - HomeAssistant that will not use MQTT but they normal HA API.
@@AndreasSpiess No unfortunately it doesn't support LoRa modules directly, but you can easily alleviate this with a lambda piece of code under the UART sensor of ESPhome (that's my guess though, haven't tried it for LoRa modules).
I am not a fan of Internet cloud based brokers and related garbage. There are plenty of other stand alone options that I am in total control of and can trust. For such a simple application this has too many layers of complexity, such as node-red.
Excellent work as always. Congratulations on this new printer (it is on my wishlist). Did you explain the notifier's purpose to the mail delivery person?
@@AndreasSpiess , many years ago, German companies provided components and gadgets (in central Europe and beyond). China exported rice. It's amazing what happened.
Who owns the mailbox? Here in Canada, if you put something like this into your mailbox, you could be fined, and the device would be removed and destroyed. The mailboxes in Canada are the property of the government owned postal service and they don't like their customers messing about with them. 🙁😖
You mean the mailbox that is on your property where your mail gets delivered to? Don't you buy these yourselves? In Germany and I also think in Switzerland, this is a mailbox that you buy and mount either directly on your house or near to the street, there mostly attached to a fence like object. You chose the design and size and as long as the mailman can find it and put your mail in it they don't care what it is. Some even put USA style mailboxes out on a post.
@@drstefankrank Nope. If you live in an urban area of Canada the post office no longer delivers to your home. They deliver to a set of mailboxes they have installed at key locations, usually within 100 meters of your home. As a home owner I don't buy a box from them, they are just provided by Canada Post. Thus to get your mail you are given a key to your box and you have to follow their rules, which does not allow the installation of electronic devices. I still have a mailbox attached to the wall about 2 feet away from my front door, but I've only ever received 1 very small package from Amazon in that box in the past 20 years.
@@mcconkeyb Ah ok, Canada is much bigger and less densely populated, so that system seems to works for you. Spares the post office a lot of travel time for just a letter. This isn't the case here. I'm not aware that we have a system like that anywhere. I could only think of some single houses up on the alps who could have their mailbox down near the next village.
The home owner has to provide one, but the place is defined by the postal service. Where I live, many boxes are in one place and they are owned by the company that runs this place. That is why I did not want to make a hole for the antenna.
"Here is the guy with the Swiss accent" makes me laugh every time.
:-)
But the best sections are: the suggestion for the Christmas present and the reason for testing the mail-in function. ;-)
For me this accent sounds very positive\cheerful. And yes, great video as always
Using orange wires for clock signals is brilliant!
:-)
Very good points today for any general purpose projects.Thanks Andreas!
I use a great battery for my projects. It is a Saft LS 14500, LiSOCl2 technology and is 3.6V, AA battery type. This has a fantastic capacity and is capable of running 3.3v circuits, I have circuits, using this battery with MPU sleep that have been running for over 2 years and still going! Definately recommended.
Your methodical layout, and using 1206 components makes this a winner! 👍
Thanks for your kind words!
Very cool, time to make my first LoRA device 👍
This such a great project. Beyond all the excellent tips and techniques linked into this project, it helps secure the existence of future projects through repeated testing ... with new parts orders delivered to the mailbox. ⚡♥♻
i love the silicon wire. been using it for a while now.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
A tip: primary Lithium 1.5V AA batteries are great for these kind of outdoor applications as they have a large capacity, extremely low self discharge (10 years shelf life), high current capability and continue working in deep freeze temps. A bit more expensive though.
In my experience they never have the same capacity, that is the ones that include a voltage regulator and charger in the battery case
You are right! And the Best: I have plenty of Them free of charge from my found Weather Ballons 😀
That must be a very crunchy polenta! 😀 (yes, it's clear you meant to write "plenty of them", but I read this and wondered what were you talking about)
Haha, I was wondering the same! I still cook polenta. Everybody loves it, a delicious dish that I inherited from my Italian ancestors.
Wonderful auto-correction ;-)
Excellent video !! Bravo
Great video. I ditched node-red for homeassistant automations. Node-red disconnected sometimes from homeassistant and needed to be reset. Homeassistant automations have come a long way, it is has become easier than node-red for complex automations. Above all, it is rock stable for mission critical automations.
So far, Node Red is very stable. As said, I move in the direction of HA automations. Still, the possibilities and particularly debugging is much easier in Node-Red. I would have to do a lot of YAML, and I do not like it.
@@AndreasSpiess they are moving away from YAML in the current releases. You can do almost everything from the UI now.
Great video! Ive been wanting to get into PCD design but always stuck to soldering through hole with a nest of spagetti wires all over the PCB. It takes forever and is not much fun. Ill make sure to learn it for my current project.
Before these cheap PCBs I also used your method. These days, I tend much more towards PCBs. They look much more professional ;-)
I am trying to do the same but the upfront time investment needed to learn how to design them correctly is quite significant. One question about this, please: how do you create the Vcc and ground planes? Do you start with a solid copper fill covering each side of the PCB and sort of "carve" the gaps around the tracks as you route them (especially on the Vcc plane), or you only fill them after all the tracks are routed? I'm trying to figure out a good workflow for this. Thanks! (and yes, 1206 here as well thanks to age 😀 )
@@dan-nutu , there are a lot of tutorials on the Internet. You start with the ground plane (layer) and the supply voltage layer, then place the components, then connect the components.
@@dan-nutu These programs do all the heavy lifting. You just add a copper plane and they carve the insulation like magic...
Hi. Another great video. maybe one thing you could have added : a voltage divider to measure the battery voltage. Another thing on your design : I think there is a bit of current leaking from the opening / closing pin (from VCC to GND through 4.7kOhm resistor isn't it?
Awesome video. I also swapped back to regular batteries instead of rechargeable ones, depending on the project. Usually I prefer the so called C cell aka R14. Really cheap and safe. Install it, forget about it. Sometimes it lasts for years! And of course... silicone wires ! They're the best!
The R14 seem to be a bit bigger. Because I have many other devices using AA batteries, I always have a stock in my drawer ;-)
The one thing that improved this hobby for me was: Divorce. 😁
Also a possibility ;-)
Really great watching your journey for this project in one video, very informative and inspiring. One question, is your mailbox metal? If so how well does the LoRa signal travel through it?
Did you have any concerns about placing the device in a metal enclosure and having signal strength issues?
Great video, Andreas. Anyways, have you heard about MIoTy protocol? Maybe in one of the next video you will evaluate this technology?
So far, nobody was able to show me the advantages over LoRaWAN with its large installed base :-(
I also like silicone sleeved wires - their fleibility makes them easy to stuff into small spaces. However, crimp connections tend to be weak because of silicone's slippery qualities.
I agree they are slippery (sometimes an advantage). But so far, I did not have issues with the crimp quality.
Could you have used a single 18650 cell and replace it when it needs to be recharged (which would not be often)?
I agree. If rechargeable, I also could have used 2 NiMh batteries. I wanted to avoid the LDO. Or one LiFePo4...
I've been wanting to try the Code Red for a while, so maybe I'll try it.
I like it for complex stuff.
Node red... makes it easier to search on google or in HA 🙂
Thank you very much! Very interesting solution but complex due to the long distance to the letterbox. Luckily the distance to my letterbox is in range of cheap 433MHz sensors's capability. So I can use RFlink connected to my ioBroker. Powered by 1 AAA. Having no 3D printer, one reed contact is covered by a conduit and the other by an empty toothpaste tube (elmex, swiss GABA 🙂 ).
You are very creative with your packaging! I am sure, when you will get your 3D printer one day, you will be thinking: Why so late ;-)
But, unfortunately, GABA was sold in 2004 to Colgate :-(
@@AndreasSpiess The toothpaste tube is made of plastics, isolating, water resistant enough and thin. I am not sure, if a 3D printer could produce a housing with such properties. At least not to such a price point :-)
With Attiny for simplicity I do the same, but with cylindrical Li-ion batteries, AAA or AA size. They go from 4.1V to 3.0V, don't need any regulator, are cheap and you can just replace it in the device by a re-charged one. The holders are also the same. For simple projects, just one AAA size battery last more than one year. The leakage is also very low. The new Attiny MCU's by the way are very simple and a lot of fun to program, even bare metal. And just with one wire + one TX wire, I can flash and debug at the same time.
I agree with the ATtinies. I have to try the AA or AAA size Li-Ion batteries.
I just looked at the choice. Which one do you use? The USB chargeable ones?
@@AndreasSpiess I use normal batteries 10440 (AAA) about 12€ a pack of four, and 14500 (AA) 5€/6€ each. Or the bigger ones (18650)... Then a USB separated charger that is also cheap, about 12€. I have a 'IMREN K2', compatible with all the Li-ion cylindrical sizes, even the big ones. In Aliexpress just pay attention to the batteries too cheap or with 'amazing' capacities, in chini-amps hour.
@@AndreasSpiess And of course these chargers are not compatible with the normal 1.2V NiMH batteries. And being the same size could be dangerous, unless the charger detects it. And also dangerous for a device expecting 1.2V or 1.5V batteries. Better label this batteries clearly, and the holders.
A prev comment has been removed. I use normal 10440 (AAA, about 3€ each), 14500 (AA about 5€) or the bigger like 18650. And a USB charger of about 10€, compatible with all cylindrical Li-ion batteries. In the usual places, just be careful with batteries too cheap or with amazing capacities, in chini-amps hour.
12:44 Placing the antenna inside the steel mailbox seems a bit counterintuitive to me.
What is the alternative in a shared (apartment, HOA) mailbox situation?
You and @alexdrinkwater28 both are right ;-)
Brilliant
Thank you!
Correction - the better DuPont wires actually copper inside, not just more. The cheap ones aluminum or chinesium if you ask me.
Any breadboard problem I ever had, was related to cheap DuPont wires !!
I am not sure if the reduced resistance of copper matters on these small distances. Or why do you prefer copper? But the quality of the crimp definitively matters. I also think, that thicker wires do not break easy.
Does the transmit power depend on how much voltage the RF module is getting? Might 3x AA be a better choice to give it some more voltage?
can you share you PCB design that we can order the same plank PCBS ( it will be great if they populate with components ) /
if we decide to build this concept for our home mailbox ?
So many things I have never even heard of.. Node-Red/HomeAssistantIo , EasyEda, Reamer, etc!
Then there's things that seem to be specific to the application / availability and rules in your area. For example, the choice of low-power, long-range wireless standard... LoRaWAN/LR-FHSS, Zigbee/Z-Wave, Mioty, Thread/Matter, Sigfox / HayStack / X10 , ANT/+, etc.
If you were a contractor doing this project for a customer, how many engineering hours do you estimate it took?
BTW, what PCB house did you use? Something local in Sweden, or something oversees (OshPark, JLCPCB, PcbWay, MacroFab, SeeedStudio Fusion)?
Because it is my hobby, I never count the hours ;-) And I used JLCPCB because I know them and their price and quality is good.
Are you happy with those tiny little antennas? I was under the impression that their SWR is around 3 + at 915mhz
Mine are always close to 1:1. After my "Treatment especiale" ;-)
Great video: I would like it to be much more detailed. Maybe several videos.
This channel is for advanced users and they would be bored by much more details :-(
Tried building something similar with off the shelf lora/meshtastic devices, but failed miserably due to battery limitations. Any way to convince you to sell a semi-built notifier ? Any signal concerns inside a standard Swiss milchkasten ?
I love this project as it is exactly what I am looking for. I would just need to water proof the transmitter box a bit more but otherwise - ideal.
Problem is between getting all the components and soldering onto custom PCB I would never be able to finish it myself.
Is there anything like this that can be purchased already made that can be integrated into home automation?
As this is a Maker channel, I do not extensively research on available products. So I do not know if something like that is available :-(
@@Edsdrafts , there are some products, but I don't know how easy/difficult they could be adapted to a home automation.
Don't be that pessimistic. I went from "No idea how all of that works" to a custom made PCB in 6 weeks while having a full time job. If you are lacking the knowledge, there are a lot of people who can help and a lot of easy to follow tutorials. Beginning with a simple Arduino or ESP dev board and a breadboard is a good start. If you are lacking the equipment for soldering or 3D printing a case, there may be a makerspace not far from you.
Hello from Zürich! How does the RF-signal get out of the aluminium mailbox? is this not a good rf-shield that will block all signals?
Any link for the reamer? That is an amazing tool and great tip for 3d printing holes
I added the links
Very nice! Is the mailbox of steel? Antenna inside?
Yes and yes.
Great
One suggestion: UPDI connector, pins order, vcc, gnd, updi instead of vcc, updi, gnd.
What would be your reason. Mine is: If I power the ATtiny with a different source, I only need two pins.
@@AndreasSpiess If you mistakenly reverse the connection cable, the attiny will receive the reverse voltage. With vcc, gnd, updi there is no damage.
@@mama9712 Good point!
Why not use a supercap and solar charging for the notifier ?
Because I do not want to drill holes in a mailbox I do not own.
You could use rechargable AA batteries. There are even 1/3 AA batteries, so u could have a batterypack, that has the size of a signle AA battery.
A good idea!
Wouldn't you have issues with the voltage, because they are 1.2v?
@@userou-ig1ze Look at the discharge curve.
@@userou-ig1ze AFAIK they stay for quite long on 1.2V
Nice work. Suppose you’re not going to share the gerber and bom of that pcb ? 😋 you could always upload that to pcbway so that lazy people can order directly and you get a % from that , just saying 😊
I added the links (to my project on JLCPCB). No % for me, though ;-)
Aw heck yeah my favorite dood uploaded a new video
:-)
why not use Solar panels for notifier? small solar panel could have done the job?
Because I do not own the mailbox and I did not want to drill holes. And because I do not have something outside the box that is not secured.
@@AndreasSpiess I would love to see a project with LORA and solar panels. I introduce you to my colleague as Father of DIY electronics.
@@yousaf.saleem These are two different topics. I made a few videos on solar. You can combine them with whatever you want...
Does your mailbox not act as a Faraday cage?
Yes, nearly. That is the reason for all the effort. LoRa with its very high link budgets get through it somehow.
Hey Andreas, whatever happened to Mailbag vids?
They are not very liked by the public. So I reduced their appearence.
@@AndreasSpiess I loved them. Please reconsider :) Double-check your assumptions. Thanks for vids, Andreas!
@@kilosierraalpha UA-cam gives me the statistics...
I'm honestly here for the "first row" -> "front row" arc in 2024
I do not understand :-(
Heh, it's just that I like it more when you say "you can always sit in the front row", than when you say "you can always sit in the first row". It's just linguistic pedantry. Blame my autism. But I have noticed that you've sometimes started saying "front row", which I like :-)
@@herwighochleitner422 Now I understand. I use Grammarly to check my English. It proposed it. That is why I changed.
Where is the link for the boxes?
I now added them to the Github Repo (link in the description)
@@AndreasSpiess Thanks.
"Divide et impera" Julius Caesar
"Impera" over all my electronics devices ;-)
I really don't get the point of MQTT in all these projects. Just another unnecessary software component that is a headache to maintain and configure. HomeAssistant and ESPhome have a perfect direct integration with each other and the HomeAssistant native API is all that you really need. The mailbox notifier project idea is quite cool though, I might try it.
Its not ideal in this application due to:
-Mailboxes often being out of range of wifi
-Higher power draw and lower battery life
@@basileus9343 I think you misunderstand me, the ESP will still be the gateway for the LoRa communication with the attiny. It's the communication between ESP - HomeAssistant that will not use MQTT but they normal HA API.
So far I did not see that ESPhome supports LoRa modules. and ARQ. MQTT is a standard used by many sensors and is well integrated into HA.
@@AndreasSpiess No unfortunately it doesn't support LoRa modules directly, but you can easily alleviate this with a lambda piece of code under the UART sensor of ESPhome (that's my guess though, haven't tried it for LoRa modules).
@@XavierGr Then I definitively stick with MQTT. Much easier for me. And withstands all Firmware upgrades...
Good idea to mount the LORA module right beside the ESP32 touching metal /s /j.
The sheets do not touch because of the tape. But soldering them together would indeed be better.
@@AndreasSpiess I'm just saying how the LORA can interfere with the esp32 being so close.
@@4bSix86f61 In this case, the timing might help (there should be no Wi-Fi traffic before the acknowledgment message is here).
@@AndreasSpiess 👍
I am not a fan of Internet cloud based brokers and related garbage. There are plenty of other stand alone options that I am in total control of and can trust. For such a simple application this has too many layers of complexity, such as node-red.
Excellent work as always.
Congratulations on this new printer (it is on my wishlist).
Did you explain the notifier's purpose to the mail delivery person?
No. I do not think they care. Most of them know that I get a lot of packages from China and sometimes, we have a chat about it.
@@AndreasSpiess , many years ago, German companies provided components and gadgets (in central Europe and beyond). China exported rice. It's amazing what happened.
Nowadays in the Western world everybody prefers to create "wealth" by providing services or all sorts of financial shenanigans
Who owns the mailbox?
Here in Canada, if you put something like this into your mailbox, you could be fined, and the device would be removed and destroyed. The mailboxes in Canada are the property of the government owned postal service and they don't like their customers messing about with them. 🙁😖
You mean the mailbox that is on your property where your mail gets delivered to? Don't you buy these yourselves? In Germany and I also think in Switzerland, this is a mailbox that you buy and mount either directly on your house or near to the street, there mostly attached to a fence like object. You chose the design and size and as long as the mailman can find it and put your mail in it they don't care what it is. Some even put USA style mailboxes out on a post.
@@drstefankrank Nope. If you live in an urban area of Canada the post office no longer delivers to your home. They deliver to a set of mailboxes they have installed at key locations, usually within 100 meters of your home. As a home owner I don't buy a box from them, they are just provided by Canada Post. Thus to get your mail you are given a key to your box and you have to follow their rules, which does not allow the installation of electronic devices. I still have a mailbox attached to the wall about 2 feet away from my front door, but I've only ever received 1 very small package from Amazon in that box in the past 20 years.
@@mcconkeyb Ah ok, Canada is much bigger and less densely populated, so that system seems to works for you. Spares the post office a lot of travel time for just a letter. This isn't the case here. I'm not aware that we have a system like that anywhere. I could only think of some single houses up on the alps who could have their mailbox down near the next village.
The home owner has to provide one, but the place is defined by the postal service. Where I live, many boxes are in one place and they are owned by the company that runs this place. That is why I did not want to make a hole for the antenna.