AFAIK tampering with the mailbox is illegal in the US, but if you are okay with it, I suggest using a thin (flex PCB or chip ceramic) antenna placed between a slit in your mailbox. There has to be a gap somewhere.
AFAIK tampering with the mailbox is illegal in the US, but if you are okay with it, I suggest using a thin (flex PCB or chip ceramic) antenna placed between a slit in your mailbox. There has to be a gap somewhere.
It probably is illegal to tamper with a public mailbox for sending mail, but not your own mailbox in front of your house. You own that piece of cheep bent sheet metal and you probably bought it yourself at a hardware store. As long as it functions as a mailbox its fine, it could be a bucket nailed to a wooden post with MAIL written on it.
In the US, a bucket is not OK. Mailboxes have to meet USPS standards: https://www.usps.com/manage/mailboxes.htm
In the end I used a D1 Mini Pro, which has a connector for an external antenna. You can buy coax cable with the proper connector on it, and strip back about 30mm of the braid at the end. That's the antenna for 2.4GHz. But of course your antenna will depend on what frequency the doorbell uses.
I don't know about soldering coax to the trace antenna. Antennas are pretty mysterious, so it might not work at all. And there's no way to tell where it should be soldered. But I'd strongly suggest you test it as is inside the mailbox first. It might work fine.
By the way, the biggest challenge may well be the cold when next winter rolls around. Your battery may not work so well.
I built mine using a Moteino clone I build with a RFM69B, it's mounted to the inside of the mailbox door so when the mailbox is opened the antenna is exposed outside. It's been working reliably for a couple years now.
The manufacturer did not state the working frequency anywhere... Not in the advertisement. Not in the manual. Is there any way to catch it with my 100MHz oscilloscope. I fashioned a near-field probe from a loop of copper wire, but I have never used it. How about a frequency counter. My frequency counter has more bandwidth than my scope, IIRC. If either will do the job, how do I take the reading?
I built mine using a Moteino clone I build with a RFM69B, it's mounted to the inside of the mailbox door so when the mailbox is opened the antenna is exposed outside. It's been working reliably for a couple years now.I take it that you mean an MCU. I don't code. I tried to learn, but I finally decided that I just do not enjoy coding (I rather dislike it considerably.) So, that is not an option. But, I understand how that might be the best way to build this project. There are so many options that you could add in.
What I meant was if you mount the device on the inside of the door and use a mercury switch to trigger it when the door is open, the antenna will be exposed when it triggers.
These days, if a US postal carrier were to spot a mercury switch on a mailbox door - prepare to be SWATted and receive an extended stay at club Fed.