There are several You Tube videos showing ways to install the sensor. I decided NOT to install the sensor inside the box at the back as it would be almost impossible to open the case to install new batteries. I did install it on the inside of the door flap using Contact strips that allow the batteries to be easily replaced. I ran the cable thru the opening on the side to the outside to make it easy to use. The alert message is displayed on the Blink app on my iPhone so I know immediately when the mailman has put mail in our box. Works Great!!

UPDATE: 29-June-2021 - So after having worked for nine months (from 8-Oct-2020) or so, the mailbox sensor will now randomly alert me even though there is no motion whatsoever at the mailbox. Day or evening, it will randomly go off. It may go off once. Or it may go off 3 or 4 times (separated by a minute or two) in a row. I have been all over the app settings - adjusting sensitivity down and up, motion settings down and up, etc. Nothing fixes it. I replaced the batteries and cleaned the dome sensor. Nothing fixes it. Worst part of it? The customer support process is a real test of patience. After having to make 3 separate calls (first time = agent swore he'd call me back but never got to me, 2nd time = hung up on during call transfer). Call attempt #3 got me to an agent who transferred me to someone who knew something about the mailbox sensor. After looking at my account for a few minutes, she came back and said that I have a poor signal and I need to move the bridge closer to the mailbox. Oddly, it never reported a poor signal in the mobile app every time I went to check device health. And, unfortunately, the bridge is already sitting at a window as close to the mailbox as I can get it (prob 50-60 ft away?). After explaining that, she was perplexed and told me I needed to get transferred to someone else who could help me understand what "resolution options" might be available. At the time of transfer, I get hung up on. Again!! I assume all of this is accidental and a string of bad luck. While very frustrating, I get it. Accidents happen. Before I make call number four tonight, I wanted to leave an updated review. For anyone considering buying this device and expecting it to work for a long period of time, keep this in mind. For anyone expecting customer support to help you, please think twice. It seems like Amazon and Ring are still working out some issues here (both what I describe here and in my original review). I like the idea of a mailbox alert - just not the current Ring solution for it. And now off to make call #4 and hoping I can actually get this resolved... (sigh) UPDATE: Call #4 - This latest gentleman certainly knew what he was doing and walked me through removing both the bridge and the sensor from my Ring account and re-initializing and re-adding them. He says that should have updated the Ring Bridge firmware at the same time. I hope so. That process was all done successfully and now waiting to see if the problem is fixed or not. Fingers crossed. ============================================================================= [Original review of October 2020 - "Decent but clunky software and poor battery life almost kills the deal"] Overall, this does (minimally) what it claims to do. It sends me a Ring (mobile phone) alert when there is activity in my mailbox (I have the sensor mounted to a magnet which I attach inside the mailbox at the back). Unfortunately, it only sends it to me and will not send those alerts to anyone else in the household like my Ring doorbell can do. I've set it up where I can have Alexa announce that there is activity at the mailbox but that only helps if someone is within earshot of an Echo at the time it happens because the Echo has no way of indicating via light or icon on screen to show when the mail has arrived. So it is really limited. On the plus side, I do like that I can link mailbox activity to my doorbell camera and record the video whenever there is motion at the mailbox (our mailbox happens to be within the field of view of the Ring doorbell). As you know, I had to also buy a Ring bridge for this to connect. Not a deal-breaker but another expense. I've had absolutely no problem with it. I have it plugged in and resting on a window ledge where it is within line of sight of the mailbox (across the street from our house). While the bridge was an additional expense, it has been the easiest and most solid performer on the bunch. Battery life for the mailbox sensor is well below the stated "1 year under normal use" comment. Not even close. Like someone else said, I get a similar 6-8 weeks at most from using 3 brand new alkaline batteries. The system seems like it is still very early in its development, though. The software has the notification issues, joining it to the Ring software is kludgey (it shows up as a motion activated light?!?!) and it has configuration controls that are meant for lights that don't seem to make sense for a mailbox sensor. So, the hardware might have potential but it definitely needs more work. Since it hasn't seemed to receive an update yet, don't hold your breath. (Maybe they could work on battery life improvements, at a minimum, or publish how to manage all of those odd settings to improve battery life? 6-8 weeks is no where close to 52 weeks!) Do I enjoy getting the mailbox notifications? yes. Do I enjoy having it hooked to the Ring doorbell for video recording? yes. Battery life is awful (especially versus its stated claim) and the software borders on killing the deal for me. So it gets 3 stars from me. And I would certainly offer to help Amazon better think this through if they want feedback.

So, we have a 150 foot driveway, and the mailbox is probably another ten feet beyond that. We were never sure when the mail has arrived, so we got this to help get notifications for our mail delivery. It's been a love/hate relationship for the most part. We installed the antenna to boost the range, and at first it was doing a great job. We created a routine on Alexa to turn on and off some lights in the house when the mail was delivered, and leave one specific light on that we rarely use for anything else, so that was perfect. However, now it seems that the device is not usually seeing mail being delivered, but most times sees us opening the box to GET the mail. Weird, but because of the variability, we can't always rely on it. Which is a shame, because I was really hoping this was the answer to our "is the mail here?" ponderance. Setup and installation was pretty easy, even though the grommet for the antenna wire fell on the ground never to be seen again. I filled the hole with a rubber cement to keep the mail from getting wet, although it'd take a LOT of direct rain to get enough water in there to make a difference. If your mailbox is closer to hour house than mine, this is really a good idea.

The ring mailbox sensor works great. But there is confusion about whether you need a ring bridge or not. The product description says that you do not need a ring bridge. That is only true if you have a Ring or Alexa device that has the Amazon sidewalk bridge function built-in. Many of the newer Ring and Alexa devices have this. You can do a Google search to find out which devices have this. In my case, all of my ring and Alexa devices are older and apparently don’t have the Amazon sidewalk bridge function. So I had to get a ring bridge to make my mailbox sensor work. The ring mailbox sensor uses Amazon sidewalk to communicate with a bridge. if you do need to install a ring bridge for your mailbox sensor, be aware of this. When you install the ring bridge and it gets to the point where it says it’s preparing itself it never ends. You just need to exit the set up and it will still work fine, apparently it is trying to find an Amazon sidewalk device to talk to such as the mailbox sensor. So when you turn on the mailbox sensor by installing the batteries, it will connect to the ring bridge. I have a plastic mailbox. Not a metal mailbox. Therefore I did not need to use the external antenna for the mailbox sensor. I installed the Ring bridge in my garage. My mailbox is at the end of my driveway and it communicates fine with the ring bridge. my garage has metal doors, but that doesn't seem to bother Amazon sidewalk communication. Another thing to be aware of. You cannot share your ring mailbox alerts with other users like you can share doorbell alerts, and camera motion alerts. Amazon sidewalk uses three communication protocols to reach further than Wi-Fi can reach.

I chose the Ring Mailbox Sensor because it not only had reviews that seemed comparable to other brands, but I also already had some Ring cameras (so no extra apps needed). In short, I've had it installed for about a month now, and while it does seem to quite reliably give me alerts on my phone (via the Ring app), when I tap on the alert to take action, the device often shows up as disconnected/offline. My theory is that it seems the communication to the bridge device is more reliable when initiated by the sensor to the bridge, versus from the bridge to the sensor. A more annoying fact, that I did not discover until after installation and wanted to 'share' it with a family member (just as I do our doorbell), I found that the Mailbox Sensor does not support sharing. So only the account owner gets alerts. (I did vote for this feature to be added on the Ring site for feature modification requests, as many others had the same complaint.) Now for the details.... during installation, the app/instructions ask you to choose if you have a plastic or metal mailbox. Well, I have a cast aluminum mailbox installed within a brick pillar at the road. I chose metal, as it seemed the only difference was whether it recommended using the external antennae or not (I did use it). I also did not want the sensor to be easily visible, adding weight to the door, or reducing the amount of space in my mailbox for packages and such. So I drilled a hole thru the back of the brick pillar (at a carefully measured spot) and into a top back corner of the mailbox, then mounted the sensor (with Gorilla brand heavy duty double-sided tape) into the top back of the mailbox, with the external antennae run thru the hole and mounted flat on the back of the brick pillar (again with heavy duty double-sided tape), facing the house. I mounted the sensor with the word Ring upside down in the box (which does not affect functionality) so I could slide it down (versus up) to remove it from the bracket (which I left attached) to be able to change batteries. (Re: battery life, I used lithium as recommended, and they still report 100% after one month.) I later caulked the hole in the brick with silicone after confirming functionality. I installed the small bridge device in a downstairs window (technically sitting on the inside window sill, as I wanted to keep it mobile for testing until I attached it anywhere with double-sided tape), so it could be as close to direct line of site as possible. The bridge is exactly 69.3' (211"), or 536cm, from the sensor antennae, with nothing but the window and air between them. Overall, I think this sensor is a good step into the mailbox sensor market for Ring, but it could use some improvements, such as the ability to more reliably stay connected/online to the bridge, and the ability to share the device with other Ring users (as you can with Ring doorbells). I've attached some pictures in case anyone else has a brick encased mailbox and are looking for how others have dealt with the situation.

UPDATE 2/2/2024: Immediately after leaving my review for this product, Matthew from Ring (Amazon Executive Community Support) promptly reached out via email to setup a time to talk. We had an excellent conversation today. We talked through certain issues experienced and he indicated there was a 1 yr warranty on the product. I wasn't aware of that. He also provided a suggestion to help improve the battery drain (antenna). This also helps signal strength. However, my main issue is that it completely stopped working. As mentioned below, this works great, when it is working. Given the warranty, Matthew arranged to have a new device sent to me. I truly appreciate this unexpected and wonderful customer service. I'm improving my rating as a result. Thank you, Ring, for the great customer support. That was truly unexpected, and we don't see this type of service very often anymore. PREVIOUS UPDATE 1/31/2024: I purchased this unit with the bridge 7 months ago. We have a long driveway, so it is great to know when mail or packages are delivered to the mailbox to eliminate unnecessary trips. For the first 5+ months, this product worked amazingly well. It does go through batteries more quickly. I also noticed that it had trouble detecting motion in extreme heat (90+ degree weather). It was inconsistent in high heat. Lately, it just stopped working. I replaced the batteries twice just in case, but it is no longer detecting. This would be a great product if it consistently worked.

In the summer of 2021, many users of this device started experiencing annoying false notifications. Ring support did the usual "must be on your end" type of crap until enough users spoke up. Finally, Ring admitted there was a firmware issue with the device. A few weeks later, the issue was resolved.... until now battery life is dismal (a few weeks at most running lithium batteries). This issue continues and my batteries are dead again. This is getting too expensive and is un-necessary. This unit worked perfectly when it first came out and I got several months of battery life before replacement. Ring developers need to get their act together and get this fixed. Super annoying. At this time, I would NOT recommend this item. Fix it Ring. You guys are getting super lame. ----------------------------------- Original Review ------------------------------------------------ My mailbox is metal, so I drilled a hole in the back to install the antenna and associated cable to pass through the mailbox. The sensor is located at the back of the mailbox vs. on the front door. I set the sensor sensitivity to Max in the app since it was in the back of the mailbox. My setup for this device was ~150' line of sight and through a slump block wall where I mounted the bridge on the other side. Under Device Health, the signal was running Fair to Poor. Not totally surprising considering the challenges. I moved the sensor onto an adjacent window so that the signal might pass easier and now my signal is Good to Fair. That was the best I could get and ran with it. After a few successful tests of the sensor, I went into the Alexa app and set up a notification to say "Mailbox Opened" to my phone. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an option in the app to broadcast to more than one device at this time without setting up multiple Routines in the app. After about a week, the battery level has dropped a few percent. Not a big deal considering the set up. I may replace the alkaline with some lithiums on next go round. Overall, not a perfect integration but with a few improvements could be. Seems to work well for me at this time and I'm happy they came out with this product.

I just installed a new mailboss with a keyed cover. I put the sensor in the back inside the mail box. But I need to set the sensitivity to high for the sensor to work. It is also not always consistent. And I could not find out from on line or from customer service exactly how it detects motion. So I did some experiments. I found out that, at least from my unit, that it detects body heat instead of motion of objects in front of it. I tried to move objects in front of it ,with no people close by, no matter what sensitivity I set and no matter how far or how close the moving object is in front of the sensor, it does not response. The sensitivity is how much sensitive it is detecting heat (I only tried human heat). I do not want to put this inside the front door since the front door for that mailbox has a limited space for mails to drop in. I do not want to limit that further. But if you placed it behind the front door as in the instruction, it will work since it will detect the human heat opening the door. It has good long range connection from the sensor to the hub. But I would prefer a contact sensor in my case. I found one contact sensor that use lora (long range) technology so it can be placed 1/4 mile away and work well even inside a metal mailbox. The contact sensor works every time and with very long battery life and it also works with Amazon Alexia to announce " You've got mail". (I do not put the brand name here since I am not trying to sell that brand.) If I need to set ring mailbox sensor to high sensitive (in my case, it only works in high sensitivity), the battery life would be pretty low from what I saw in the reviews. I write this review to help users to see if the Ring mailbox sensor is good for their situation.

I have been waiting for this kind of product for some years. Hopefully, will help me avoid mail theft. I was very concerned that installation will be challenging but turned out to be super. Just follow the directions.

I have tried several mailbox transmitters but to date, this is the best. Yes, it requires a bridge in your home to receive the transmission from the mailbox and then transferring the info over to your WiFi. It saves energy ( bstteries) by using a different frequency from the mailbox. Bottom line is it works and it works well!! Finally, I can save my 81 year body a long walk to the mailbox when there no mail there!! JGW Athens, AL