Smart mailbox – a smart mail tracking system. Consists of a physical device (chip) and a web app. The chip is based on the CubeCell MPU and the web app is running on AWS platform.
Waiting for an important letter or a package and checking the mailbox frequently (even several times a day) is a common problem.
There are some existing solutions for this problem, but they all have draws.
In this project, a full process of developing and manufacturing a mail tracking device and a complementary web app was conducted, the device was designed to meet specifications and guidelines that have been set.
The device incorporates accelerometer for mailbox’s door opening detection, loadcell and weight sensor to determine the number of letters. The device has 2 modes of work:
The first one is using the accelerometer to check for new mail.
The second is using the MCU internal clock to check for new mail at specific times.
By using LoRaWan as the communication protocol, alongside to the deep sleep state, an estimated run time of more than 225 days with constant acceleration detection was achieved.
Electrical scheme was preformed using OrCad Capture, layout was performed using Microsoft Visio and mechanical design was performed using SolidWorks and executed with 3D printer.
The web app extends the smart mailbox device. It is a multi-user and multi-device app (each user can have several devices registered under his account). The app will send an email to the user each time a new mail arrives, the app also allows each user to reconfigure his device remotely. The app was created on the AWS infrastructure, using AWS services as DynamoDB (AWS’s database), cognition (authentication service) and more. The app was implemented in Python(for the backend in AWS service), JavaScript with React framework (for the web site) and Arduino.
