Devices like Amazon Key, the smart (and slightly creepy) delivery service that lets Amazon couriers actually open your front door to drop off packages, makes it easy to monitor deliveries when you’re away from home. But what if you’re not having a package delivered by Amazon, but rather just want to keep an eye on your mailbox to know if you receive any letters? That’s something a new Kickstarter smart device wants to help with.
Called Mynder, it’s a small battery-powered device that fits inside either a community mailbox or home mailbox. When mail is delivered, Mynder will detect its arrival and send you a message to let you — or the whole family — know. It promises to be easy to set up and use, and works on very little power so that you’ll only have to recharge it around once a year.
“I live in Nova Scotia, Canada,” creator James Mallett told Digital Trends. “I’m originally from the U.K., and moved here 12 years ago. In the U.K., mail is delivered straight to your door, whereas in Canada a lot of mail is delivered to community mailboxes, which was new to me. Our mailbox is at the end of our road, about a mile away, and I drive past it every day. However, for a lot of people their mailbox can be much farther away and they don’t necessarily go past it on route to work.”
Mallett started working on this project after a really bad winter in which it was difficult to get to his community mailbox. “It got a little frustrating to say the least stopping by the mailbox every day and finding out that there was usually no mail,” he said. “At the same time, Canada Post announced they would be moving away from home delivery to community mailbox delivery only, so it seemed like a good time to invent Mynder.”
If you would like to get your hands on the smart gizmo, you can pre-order a unit for $64, which Mallett says is around $57 off the eventual retail price. He’s aiming to crowdfund $40,500 to bring his product to life, although right now he has only raised a fraction of that. With 56 days left to run on the campaign, if you want to join the smart mailbox revolution, head over to Kickstarter to pledge your support.
