Rings Mailbox Sensor is one of the nerdier smart home gadgets Ive tested

One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In it, the main protagonist, Wayne Szalinski, is a nerdy scientist-slash-home-gadget-inventor who develops a shrink ray in his attic that accidentally shrinks his kids and two neighbor kids down to the size of gnats.

But it was Wayne’s other inventions that always caught my eye — in particular, his Rube Goldberg-esque system for announcing when the mail has arrived. I’m no Wayne Szalinski and I’m certainly not an accomplished engineer, but building a system to let me know when the mail has arrived has been an ongoing smart home goal of mine.

I’ve tried using Zigbee contact sensors mounted inside my mailbox, and I’ve even tried using a motion detector shoved in...

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