wireless mailbox sensor

If you are anything like me, you look forward to the mailbox arriving like a kid nervously waiting for his presents on Christmas Eve. Since the time my mailbox arrives is not always consistent, I checked my mail multiple times a day. To solve this problem, I created a wireless sensor that tells you whether there is mail in the comfort of your own home.

Here’s how it works:

The transmitter will sit under the mailbox and when the door is opened it will send a signal to the receiver telling it the door has opened ( indicating that the wireless mailbox sensor has put the mail in). The receiver will then light up a LED indicating that the door has been opened and that’s it!

I can group emails that I receive into different priorities, the highest priority is for instance reserved for emails that concern my websites and servers. Messages that inform me about server, database or website downtimes for instance have the highest priorities while confirmation orders from Amazon have not. There is however no option in Thunderbird to configure extra notifications or alerts for specific emails. Users who want to receive notifications for important emails can use the Thunderbird extension Mailbox Alert to do so.
New notifications are configured with a right-click on an email folder in Thunderbird and the selection of mailbox alarm from the context menu.
Mailbox Alert works on the folder level which means that it works best if a distinct folder structure exists already as it would not make sense to configure alerts for the inbox unless it only catches high priority email messages by default.
Three actions or notifications are available. It is possible to show a message, play a sound or execute a command. Messages are configurable with macros to customize them. It is for instance possible to add the name of the sender to the notification.

Commands can be executables which can also be combined with available macros.

Two additional options are available to configure alerts for child folders and to block alerts for the child folder if alerts for a parent folder are already configured.

The full list of macros is available by clicking on Help in the configuration menu. The http://mailboxsensor.com developer page contains additional information and a handy third party program to display popups in Windows when priority mail arrives.