
Everyone please give a warm welcome to Matt Richardson! He’ll be making videos and posting here at Make: Online. Matt is a long-time sci-tech lover and maker. In his childhood, he wrote computer games in BASIC and then as a teenager he worked as a science demonstrator at The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia. Currently, he works in New York City’s television industry, but spends much of his free time tinkering with electronics and shooting photos and video. As an avid runner and swimmer, he has completed the New York City Marathon four times and competes in US Masters swim meets and open water swims. He can be found on Twitter at @MattRichardson or MattRichardson.com.
Matt auditioned for our open video maker call (still open, BTW) and now he’s releasing project videos here on the site and through MAKE’s YouTube channel with 190K subscribers. Welcome to the team, Matt!
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So great to have you as new member of the maker fam. Love the snail mail push vid!
Very cool – great to have you aboard, Matt!
Great debut, Matt. But there’s more to do. You’re assuming it’s convenient to run wires from the mailbox to the house. What I’d like to see is a wireless setup, which requires a lot more than a switch at the mailbox. You’d need a battery (or a solar panel with a supercapacitor?), some sort of RF transmitter, and a weatherproof enclosure.
I had started work on something like this years ago, using a broken R/C airplane (don’t let your R/C plane land in traffic!) for the RF link and having it turn on an LED in the house. I ended up abandoning it just because it seemed more work than it was worth (since I’m usually not at home when the mailman comes anyway). But it could be a cool Makezine article.
You’re right, for many people, running wires won’t be convenient. I’ve been brainstorming the best method of doing this wirelessly. Right now, I think the cheapest and most reliable way would be to hack up a wireless doorbell.
Welcome Matt!
Welcome Matt, great to have you here at MAKE!
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