Royal Mail trials solar-powered postboxes with barcode scanners

Royal mail really seems to be lacking in the innovation department - this is the first innovation I've seen for years.

Ideas for other improvements to their service:

* Ability for the recipient of a parcel to pay to expedite things. Ie. "Pay £10/month, and all parcels sent to your address will be delivered in 24h, even if the sender only paid for slow shipping".

* Auto convert all incoming letters to emails. Should save them delivery costs, especially when the sender uses the reverse service.

* A premium 'I need it now' service where you pay say £200 and an Uber driver is dispatched on a motorbike direct from the parcels current location to you.

* 'Choose address later' service for sender's. I package up an item and send it to royal mail, and later can tell royal mail where to deliver it. Would be very handy for online shops. Royal mail then becomes an Amazon logistics competitor.

* Packaging service. Frequently I have an item I want to send, ie. A laptop, but no packaging materials. When I request a collection, I should be able to request they bring packaging materials too and pack it for me (for a fee obviously).

Its interesting they have gone with Solar panels. Most post boxes are built over the top of power cables that run under the street likely right next to them but its a testiment to the cost and difficulty of getting them connected that solar cells integrated into the top of the box is cheaper and easier.

Looks to me like they are using ~43 cells of the 60mm x 90mm variety. They are about 0.6W peak so about 26W of peak output but its never at the right angle. You get about 1000 hours of that in the UK over a year with a good angle, so about 26Kwh a year of energy but I suspect they get half that. At typical UK rates that is about £3.5 a year.

Its certainly enough to run a raspberry pi zero and something else, on average they have about 1.5W but during the winter it only be about 0.3W available, which a zero can do at idle so long as the scanner doesn't add much on average. If they have done a completely custom embedded system then potentially pressing that button wakes and powers the device for a period of time or until its finished the scan, connected to 4G and then sent the details, which would save a tonne of power and allow them to do a lot of parcels off a modest battery.

Interesting engineering problem where going deeper with more custom hardware and software pays off a lot in reduced power consumption and a basic raspberry pi zero is going to waste a lot of energy and be marginal in the winter.

Interesting but also seems like something that'll be a bit problematic to work with when vandalism happens.

The sensor is right outside the box, it'd be better if that was recessed and harder to see/access (I can see these little black dots getting little dabs of paint).

But, tbh, I don't really see the utility of this over equipping the postman with a scanning gun (or even phone) that does the same thing. You might still want 4g and solar panel, but I'd use those for a "there's something at this box" and not "let's scan it to let people know it's on the way".

There is a new function available in their app which does similar (i.e allow for proof of posting from a postbox). They've also been pushing collection by postman too.

It saves a trip to the post office which is a hassle which would be a cost for the Royal Mail (which was privatised as a separate company to the Post Office).

Meanwhile in the US all the post boxes near me have been gradually retrofitted so that you can no longer fit small packages into them, only thin envelopes. It was a nasty surprise when trying to mail gifts.

The second picture in the article shows a person dropping off a parcel that seems marginally thicker than the drop off hopper.

I am dying to know if she managed to fit the parcel through the slot.