Driveway sensor alarms?

[S Viemeister]

We can't see the mailbox from the house - it's down at the end of a fairly long drive. I'd like to know whether the postie's been, without having to bundle up and slog down the drive in winter weather - it would also be good to have at least a little warning before guests drop in.

Ideally, I'd like more than one sensor - one perhaps _inside_ the box, so passing sheep, cattle and cats don't set it off, and one part-way up the drive (above cat level), as a drop-in-guest-detector.

Wireless, of course, with a plug-in receiver.

Anyone here have useful experience of such things?

[WeeBob]

I have these:

Hooked up to a mixed X10/Insteon system.

The Luminite stuff is pretty good, but expensive (imo). Linking it into Home Automation (HA) is initially simple, but becomes complex depending on what you're trying to achieve.

[S Viemeister]

I'll take a look at that. Thank you.

[Bill Wright]

1. I found that the easiest way to have a nice-sounding chime that warned of a visitor was to feed a bog standard ding-dong door bell via a relay. You can have several different chimers from the same unit if you have several IR beams.
2. If you use CCTV don't try to get two camera signals up one CAT6. There's crosstalk. It's unworkable.

Bill

[The Natural Philosopher]

This place has one. Pigeons delight on alighting just in front of it, and cats walking up the drive also set it off.

To be fair, a car always does.

[Peter Andrews]

I've got a number of Niteguard PIR's protecting a roof and hooked into a burglar alarm, occasional false alarms from birds (two or three magpies squabbling normally - I've also got CCTV!), PP9 batteries last at least a year sometimes two (if I forget to change them). Been in service for nearly 10 years.

One would fit inside your mailbox, but aerial would need to be outside if box is metal.

Peter