> Your biggest problem may be transmitting through the Faraday cage of the mailbox.
Use a plastic mailbox. Mine has lasted 30 years, so they are pretty tough. The camera is a nice idea for telling you how much mail there is, and if there's a big box delivered that you need to get before package theives get it. The post office now has a free service where they will send you pictures of each piece of mail, via email. (I know there's a meta joke in there somewhere about email eating it's own ancestor...) You also might consider a passive wifi amplifier. It turns out that a Pringles can -- the old style that was lined with metal - is a near-perfect wave form for wifi frequencies, and had been demonstrated to amplify the signal to a 1-mile range. Don't know about the power requirements, though. Look into mesh networks instead of wifi. At 250', you'll need intermediaries, I'm sure. Or a laser point to point system, which needs to be perfectly aligned but would be really fun. Lasers might have issues in the rain, but using a reflector at the box and the laser at your home would solve the power issues since all you'd need is a little piezo speaker to tilt a mirror in/out of alignment to send a serial signal. Think about how the cold will affect battery/charging power, and if you'll need to waterproof the system, even inside the box. -g -- Gregg Tracton: tired, retired & inappropriately unattired (PJ's)
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