Letterbox sensor plan delivers success in Jersey Post contest

Sunday 20 June 2021

Students have been awarded for their vision to put letter-counting sensors on each of the island’s postboxes to help local posties reduce their daily travel times.

Over the past 12 weeks, Key Stage 4 students from Les Quennevais, Victoria College, Jersey College for Girls and Beaulieu had been developing digital prototypes using Internet of Things (IoT) technology as part of Jersey’s Post ‘Postbox Challenge’.

The goal was to come up innovative digital solutions which would help eliminate unnecessary daily journeys for postal workers to 120 potentially empty postboxes across the island.

The students were asked to design a solution which would enable Jersey Post to know which postboxes contain mail and which do not.

They presented their designs on 9 June to a panel of industry experts that included Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer at Jersey Post; Professor Andy Stanford-Clark, Chief Technology Officer at IBM UK; Alexia McClure, Chief Operating Officer at Jersey Business and Alexa Munn, Head of Governance at Children, Young People, Education and Skills (CYPES) at the Government of Jersey.

The winning team of Victoria College Year 10 students created a “well thought out” digital sensor able to count the number of items landing in a postbox. They presented a complete and functional workflow, from posting a letter to a user interface for postal workers. 

The team also included a worked analysis of power consumption and had a fully costed bill for materials, and understood the manufacturing/mass production process. 

Thomas Waller was nominated for being the team's driving force and received the ‘Superstar Award’.

The team will now be invited to the Digital Jersey Hub to polish their prototype so that it can be implemented in local postboxes.

Students from the college’s Year 11 clas were runners up with a “good functional prototype”, covering the complete workflow from posting to monitoring. 

Les Quennevais Year 10 students received the Design Award after demonstrating “mastery of industrial design principles” in their design processes from creative artwork to the quality functional CAD model. 

They also received an ‘Honourable Mention’ for creating an application to survey postboxes, which exemplified “the important design principle of fully understanding the problem before designing the solution”.

Pictured: The Victoria College team presenting their prototype. 

Jemma Harding (Beaulieu), Eathan Soar (Les Quennevais) and Taylor Clark (Jersey College for Girls) were all recognised as ‘Shining Stars’.

"We are continuously looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and this challenge was a brilliant way to involve students and promote a technological career at the same time,” Mr Brown said. “The students made a tremendous effort in coming up with some great designs that could save Jersey Post time and resource. A huge well done to each student that took part." 

Deputy Scott Wickenden, the Assistant Minister for Education, congratulated the winning team as well as participants. “It’s fantastic to see students using their digital knowledge to develop solutions to real-world problems.”