Project:Digitizing Letter Box

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Digitizing Letter Box

Digitizing letter box - final.jpg
Status: Done
Initiator: Martin
Team: Johannes, Patrick


Johannes and Patrick created a nice auto-scanning letter box which sits in our common room.

The letter box will automatically scan documents it is fed with. After scanning, it will push them to our Nextcloud for the Managers to pick the documents up and process them further. This is particulary useful for introduction sheets and member applications!

Mailbox Build

Building the Mailbox itself was mainly Johannes responsibility. It is made out of aluminium frames which are being held together by 3D printed parts.

The door and the sides are made of plywood which has been cut to size using the Laser Cutter.


3D printed parts are also holding the scanner in position.

Scanner & Software

From an electronics point of view, the heart of the mailbox is a Canon P-208II document scanner which works nicely with SANE.


This scanner if controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The Raspberry Pi regularly checks if a document has been inserted into the scanner. If so, it requests the scanner to scan the document, converts it into a pdf and uploads it to Nextcloud.


In order to allow a secure access to Nextcloud, an upload-only link has been configured. With this setup, the Raspberry Pi can only drop documents onto the server, but can not read or change any previously uploaded documents.


Patrick was responsible for setting up the electronics. He might be willing to upload the code somewhere.