Mailbox Hide, Newbie Down the Rabbit Hole
- Thread starter MrSurly
- Start date
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
For your reference: The mailbox is 62' from the house wall and the column is 53'. The house side cam has (currently) a 6mm focal length.
handinpalm
Getting comfortable
What a great enclosure and good job. I wonder what you do for a living? I would paint a lighter color for the TX heat. You could be cooking the cams for the long term.
ARAMP1
Pulling my weight
But busting up that many cameras adds to the damage cost and hopefully the police would be willing to do something about it then! And you will certainly get good footage!
Thanks! I'm also curious about the temperature issue. it's currently at or near 100 each day just now. I wonder if there are temp sensors in these cams??
I considered painting it all white (has been a white box forever) but the gloss black was specifically done to help obscure the presence of the lens(es).
I've thought a lot about that because it's a common problem (very nearby) on the more rural roads, but so far (twenty-four years) in THIS neighborhood I've not seen it happen knocking on wood right now.
There ARE a couple of boxes that have been knocked down repeatedly by wayward cars because of the boxes' locations at certain turns, but they've managed to miss mine.
I DID give serious thought to armoring the box, I have the tools; I have the technology; I can make it stronger; I can make it faster.... sorry, ahem...got carried away.
To be honest, even if you built the box out of 1/2" plate, if you don't build a massive footing or post, it's still going to get destroyed if a car hits it. I actually made a point to attach it quite lightly to the post such that if somebody whacked it, it should just pop off rather than get destroyed. Hopefully I will NEVER learn the efficacy of this.
handinpalm
Getting comfortable
Yes, I get the black color now. Maybe fabricate a solar shield overhead, or plant a tree nearby.
I find a few well placed large rocks (boulders) will slow the erratic cars down, and leave some good evidence.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
It would be interesting
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sebastiantombs
Known around here
Any of the remote thermometers would work. I use an AcuRite to monitor two freezers but they'll read up into the 100+ degree range with no problems.
I had a friend whose mailbox was on the apex of a curve. It got hit, regularly, on Saturday nights generally between 2 and 3AM. The bars close here at 2AM. After the fourth time he decided to put an end to the problem. He got a six inch, heavy wall, steam pipe that was ten feet long. He used a backhoe to dig the hole for it, buried about seven feet of it, then filled the hole and the pipe with concrete. It took almost 10 yards, a redimix truck load, of concrete to fill the hole and pipe. The mailbox got mounted to a piece of 1/2" steel plate welded to the top of the pipe. The pipe got painted flat brown to look like wood.
Two weeks later at about 2:30AM on a Sunday morning he was awoken by a loud crash. When he got outside the mailbox post was about three feet into the front end of a Buick with the driver passed out in the car. The mailbox suffered no real damage, nor did the post. Funny thing was, that mailbox hasn't been hit ever since and that's over 40 years ago.
I had a friend whose mailbox was on the apex of a curve. It got hit, regularly, on Saturday nights generally between 2 and 3AM. The bars close here at 2AM. After the fourth time he decided to put an end to the problem. He got a six inch, heavy wall, steam pipe that was ten feet long. He used a backhoe to dig the hole for it, buried about seven feet of it, then filled the hole and the pipe with concrete. It took almost 10 yards, a redimix truck load, of concrete to fill the hole and pipe. The mailbox got mounted to a piece of 1/2" steel plate welded to the top of the pipe. The pipe got painted flat brown to look like wood.
Two weeks later at about 2:30AM on a Sunday morning he was awoken by a loud crash. When he got outside the mailbox post was about three feet into the front end of a Buick with the driver passed out in the car. The mailbox suffered no real damage, nor did the post. Funny thing was, that mailbox hasn't been hit ever since and that's over 40 years ago.
I have a similar one that I will be using in my LPR box, if I ever get it installed.
In my brother's old neighborhood they had a problem with kids running over a bunch of mailboxes most weekends. He got tiered of fixing his and sunk a chunk of 2" square steel into the ground and had it sticking up about a foot and then placed the mailbox rod in that. On Sunday morning he woke up and all of the mailboxes along his street had been hit. But when they hit his, that 2" square stock ripped a hole in the oil pan. He followed the oil trail down the street and around the corner where it stopped at a pickup truck on the side of the road. He called the police and they came out, contacted the owner. Turns out the owner lived several streets over and his teenage son had taken the truck for the night with friends. I am not sure if that kid ever drove his dad's truck again.
mat200
IPCT Contributor
- Jan 17, 2017
- 15,388
- 25,937
@MrSurly
You have great skills... definitely armor it imho...
examples of an attacks:
Swing batter batter
Bricks are not enough sometimes
USPS sometimes the drinking starts early
A nice custom mailbox, no cameras tho
Brick box in winter hit
Neighbors and SUVs...
Snow plow likes to eat mailboxes
sebastiantombs
Known around here
In Queens that's all referred to as acoustic parking.
mat200
IPCT Contributor
- Jan 17, 2017
- 15,388
- 25,937
sebastiantombs
Known around here
Mailbox Hide Cam Swap, Lucky Fitment
The box had a 6mm bullet facing the house with a 6mm looking South and a 2.8 looking North. I decided I wanted to change the cam facing West (to the house) for two reasons: I want a wider FoV to monitor the full width of the lot and ALSO I want to have an audio source (mic) at the mailbox. I...