Long range wireless or other solution?

What is your budget and do you realize that even with the best equipment the catch rate is only guaranteed at about 70-80%? With mediocre equipment, the rate drops drastically with moving vehicles (even at 25 miles per hour). You may want to consider something that gives you a negative image of the plate to eliminate any light from washing out your picture at night ie tail and brake lights. This could get relatively expensive to do it properly. You could still spend alot of money and not get the result your looking for if you cheap out. You could buy alot of mailboxes for what this could cost you. Did you piss someone off or is this through out the neighborhood?

I had this problem a number of years ago. I was hell bent on finding out who was doing it re; low light cameras, infra red lights etc. until I realized that I'd probably get arrested for what I was planning to do to them. I took another approach. Much less costly too.

I made my mail box out of a piece of 12 inch cast iron pipe, welded to a 6 inch cast iron pipe, 8 foot long, (4 feet in the ground) filled with cement. The pipe in the ground is in a 3 foot diameter sonatube that I filled with 15 bags of sackrete.

I smile at the thought of someone coming along, riding in a car with a baseball bat, hitting mail boxes.

I just hope no one ever runs into it with their car.

Many years ago, I lived in a very rural part of northern Michigan. A neighbor, which was actually quite a ways down the road, made something similar but used a "I" beam piece of steal and cemented it in for the support. He too was fed up with loosing mailboxes. About mid January when the snow was at it's peak, the road crew would come by and dress the snow banks to keep the roads open. These banks got very high and they would have to dress them back further and further. Since they were not actually plowing, they would do this at a good clip. One of the county plows caught his blade on that mailbox and put that big plow into a bunch of 360's. The banks were high and packed enough it kept the truck on the road for the most part but driver was not a happy camper. Scared the crap out of the driver and it was the talk of town at the coffee shop. There was talk of prosecution etc. but I don't think anything ever happened.

Someone I know bought two mailboxes. They were both flat bottom semi-cylinders, but one was a small one (about six inches across) and the other was larger (about 12 inches across). He put one inside the other and filled the space between them with concrete. He simply mounted it on a 4x4 post.

It looks like a standard mailbox, and won't cause plows to do 360s if they hit it, but he did find a broken bat on the road one morning.

Yeah, I thought about the snowplows hitting it also. I built a planter around the bottom out off CVA wood . I'm hoping that they might see the planter or hit the planter first. I also painted the box and the planter dark brown, hoping it would contrast with the snow.

It just occurs to me ( in you story above) that if they prosecuted and won, then what would stop people who's mail boxes they were able to knock down, from filing against them for replacement? I can imagine that was at least part of the reason they didn't persue it.

That event must have been the talk of the town for weeks. The driver was probably more embarrassed, then anything else.

The few that lived out in the boonies (I was eleven miles from town and thirty one miles to the nearest McDonalds) didn't have much clout against the county. I am sure people bitched, but that was at the coffee shop too. Most mail delivery during the winter was canceled, because the mailboxes were either buried, knocked down, and in alot of cases the roads would be impassable for a day to two until the plows made it down. So 4 wheel drives or snowmobile to town to get mail and grocerys was the way of life.

I can imagine

And the fact that it is all family anyway. They probably thought it to be funny when they took down their cousins mailbox.

Anything other than getting up in the morning and going to bed at night (unless it was suspected that it was with someone elses wife) was the talk of the town. Everyone knew everyone and everyone elses business. Two traffic lights, both blinkers, and the stop signs read "Whoa". Places named Chimney Corners, Indian River, Wolverine, Bliss, Pontuange, Burtis, Topinabee. Does that paint a picture for you?

The driver

Probably, but I'll bet he brought up at one of the local redneck bars on a cold winter Saturday night. The locals would fight over anything and if no one else was there they would fight their own brothers for entertainment. Funny how long winters effect people. Glad I am in Florida.

Holy Retribution, Batman... !!

I would score a deep line on the 6" pipe with a dremel tool just above the ground, then caulk and paint. Might cause the pipe to break in the right place if a car were to hit it at speed. Could save someone's life.

The budget is somewhat variable, and partially based on how irritated the landlord is when I approach him with something. (He lives next door, and they usually hit his harder than ours.) If I can catch him the day after one gets trashed, he may be willing to split the cost of something fairly nice. (Of course, the problem then would be getting him to agree to take it to the Sheriff, rather than forming a lynch mob.)

I've been playing with the camera system at work to figure out what it's capable of, and it seems to me that, with having the pertinent info inside a 15' wide area at the relevant time, it could be done. The lights are an issue, but I've been able to read plates even with some of the older cameras in that system. My main issue in this case is the desire to avoid running a 500+ foot cable, or have to remember to go swap/clear a memory card in one of the wildlife cameras every day.

Bad placement is my main guess; they hit several boxes most times, but if anybody's gets hit, ours will every time.

I considered something similar, using an old driveshaft for the post, and welding it to some large, misshapen chunk of metal to be buried in cement.

Snowplows aren't an issue here, since there hasn't been over a six-inch accumulation in over 30 years. Most areas are hard pressed to keep sand trucks ready to go during the winter.

OTOH, I'm the vindictive sort, and they just ignore anything that's not a standard box due to several folks out here using similar methods. I want them caught. Anything less, IMO, is like decriminalizing burglary and just saying it's the homeowner's responsibility to keep them out.